James Harden’s shooting struggles continue in Sixers’ Game 3 loss to Boston Celtics

Instead of attempting a shot at the rim when he got deep in the paint midway through Friday’s third quarter, James Harden tried to loft a pass to 76ers teammate Tyrese Maxey in the opposite corner.

As Boston’s Derrick White tipped the ball out of bounds, the Wells Fargo Center crowd desecended into exacerbated grumbles. Doris Burke, the Hall of Fame television analyst for ESPN, echoed that collective reaction on the national broadcast.

“Wow, I mean, he’s completely indecisive,” Burke said of Harden. “Total and complete indecision. Wow.”

Indecisive and ineffective, at least when it came to scoring. Harden went 3-of-13 from the floor in the Sixers’ 114-102 loss in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinals, complementing his 16 points with 11 assists, five turnovers, and six rebounds. That performance — which followed a 2-for-14 clunker in Wednesday’s Game 2 blowout — provided further evidence that Harden’s 45-point Game 1 outburst was the stunning exception, not a reasonable expectation as the Sixers try to claw back from their 2-1 series deficit beginning with Sunday afternoon’s Game 4.

“I’ve got to watch the game,” Harden said of his struggles in a locker-room postgame media session that lasted less than two minutes. “But I’m pretty good on basketball instincts. I know when to score. I know when to pass. I’m pretty sure a lot of them were the right play.”

After making his first shot from the floor, a three-pointer in transition less than 3 1/2 minutes into the first quarter, Harden missed 10 consecutive attempts that came from all three levels of the court. And his inability to connect in key moments was a reason why the Sixers couldn’t push ahead of the Celtics after closing the gap in the second half.

Following a P.J. Tucker three-pointer that cut Boston’s lead to 74-72 with 5 minutes, 25 seconds left in the third quarter, Harden misfired on a step-back three and Al Horford buried a deep shot on the opposite end. Harden then missed a midrange pull-up on the Sixers’ next possession and could not prevent Jaylen Brown from getting past him for a layup.

Later, when a De’Anthony Melton three-pointer got the Sixers back within 95-89 with 7:35 left, another Harden long ball clanked off the back of the rim, and Boston’s Malcolm Brogdon went 2-of-2 from the free-throw line. About a minute after that, Harden was booed when he ignored another apparent free driving lane to the basket, though his pass out to the perimeter eventually wound up in Melton’s hands for another three-pointer.

Harden finally saw the ball go down when a crafty layup made the score 100-94 with 4:36 to play. He collected a steal and hit a three-pointer at the top of the key to reduce that deficit again to six with 2:05 remaining. But boos returned when he missed a free throw about 30 seconds later, and even his meaningless deep shot with the Sixers trailing by double digits with 12.1 seconds left did not fall.

“We didn’t score the basketball,” Harden said. “We didn’t play well offensively.”

Coach Doc Rivers echoed that he would need to rewatch the film before evaluating what exactly went wrong for Harden. Yet Rivers did express overall displeasure with the times the Sixers lost pace, when they did not hit the paint with “force,” and when they did not demonstrate the trust to make the “simple pass.” Superstar center Joel Embiid agreed that the Sixers did not start their play’s actions fast enough and believed they were “tentative” while missing layups and floaters, though acknowledged Robert Williams’ defensive presence is a significant difference-maker for the Celtics.

“There were a couple times we came out of a timeout where we really thought we had the lane,” Rivers said. “I thought we were trying to snake dribble more than just go straight down and make plays. That’s something we talked about getting in the paint with force, with pace, and if they come, let’s make plays.

“Just didn’t think we did that. We’ll figure it out. We’ll be good.”

To be fair, dominant scoring has not been Harden’s role since becoming a Sixer last February. The former MVP and future Hall of Famer led the NBA in assists (10.7 per game) this season, masterfully reading the floor as a primary ballhandler for an offense that ranked third in the league in efficiency (117 points per 100 possessions) and helped Embiid lead the NBA in scoring and hoist the MVP trophy before Friday’s tipoff.

Harden has also demonstrated he is most often capable of turning back the clock to his shot-making ways when he has ample rest.

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After a full summer to rehab a hamstring injury, Harden scored 35 points on 9-of-14 shooting in the Sixers’ regular-season opener at Boston. After nearly a week between the end of the regular season and start of the playoffs, he scored 23 points on 7-of-13 shooting from long range in a Game 1 victory over the Brooklyn Nets. In the next three games of that first-round series, however, Harden shot 32% from the floor, including 8-of-26 from two-point range with consistent struggles at the rim. Then, after another eight days to rest and prepare for his spectacular Game 1 in Boston, Harden has gone 5-of-28 from the floor in the two games since.

The bad news for Harden: Game 4 is less than 48 hours away. And the next time the Sixers will have more than two days between games is between a hypothetical Game 6 and 7 — neither of which is guaranteed unless the Sixers win Sunday.

In the meantime, Embiid said his message to Harden will be “keep shooting.”

“Obviously, it’s up to him to figure out how to best help us,” Embiid said. “It’s fine. Sometimes you make them. Sometimes you miss them … I have the trust in him to just telling him to keep being aggressive.”