Sixers: James Harden joins 'Big Shot Bob' Robert Horry in NBA history with OT winner vs. Celtics

James Harden has joined an elite club of players to have hit multiple go-ahead threes in the final 20 seconds postseason game in the same year

James Harden has joined an elite club of players to have hit multiple go-ahead threes in the final 20 seconds of a game in the same postseason.

Harden made it a club of three with his overtime dagger to level the series at two games apiece against the Boston Celtics, joining only Robert Horry and Rashard Lewis as the only players to have achieved the feat in the past 25 seasons.

Harden has often been criticized for his inability to replicate his regular season feats in the playoffs, but while that’s been the case at times this year, too, he’s also been an unstoppable force on offense at times – including tonight.

He ended the game with 42 points on 16-23 shooting (including 6-9 from three) to go with eight rebounds, nine assists, four steals, and of course a game-winning corner three with 19 seconds to go to give his Philadelphia 76ers a 116-115 lead that they wouldn’t relinquish.

That followed on from a brilliant 45 point-effort in Game 1 without Joel Embiid, a performance which helped the Sixers steal home court advantage in the series. Wedged in between those two games, however, were a couple of nightmares. In Games 2 and 3, Harden was a combined 5-28 from the field, and the Sixers lost both games comfortably as a result.

Following those two efforts, the critics were unsurprisingly out in force, but Harden has silenced them once again with his monumental effort in Game 4.

In the past, much of the criticism centered around James Harden’s playoff failures related not just to his inability to make shots, but his unwillingness to take them. When he caught Joel Embiid’s pass from the paint in the dying seconds of Sunday’s game, however, there was no such hesitation.

Few would have expected Harden to be find himself in a club of just three players over the past 25 years in a stat related to clutch playoff shots, but now 33, perhaps those postseason demons are being exorcised. His lack of consistency has been alarming this series, but with two game-winning shots in four games, he has been the most significant player on the floor for either team.