Former NBA champion Kendrick Perkins sounded off on his podcast with fellow former NBA champions Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye to discuss the all-time great player debate between James Harden and Dwyane Wade, prompted by Patrick Beverley ranking Harden, who has never won a championship, above Wade, a three-time NBA champion and 2006 Finals MVP with the Miami Heat.
Harden, however, won an MVP award in 2018. The only time he reached the NBA Finals was in 2012 when he and Perkins were part of the Oklahoma City Thunder, who lost in five games to Wade and the Miami Heat, with the first of back-to-back championships in Miami’s Big Three era.
Kendrick Perkins Says James Harden Ran Into Golden State Warriors Buzzsaw
Perkins, on “The Road Trippin Show,” compared Dwyane Wade and James Harden as all-time shooting guards and gave both players credit for their greatness. He pointed out that Harden faced one of the most stacked rosters of all time in the Stephen Curry-Kevin Durant-led Golden State Warriors, just as LeBron James did.
“When he had those runs in Houston, he ran into the same problem that LeBron f*cking ran into,” Perkins said. “He ran into something LeBron couldn’t get past. However, both are top 5 SGs of all time. I will say D. Wade showed up in the NBA Finals, earned the nickname ‘Flash,’ and is one of the best shot-blocking guards this game has ever seen. That MF James Harden is a top 5 offensive player I’ve ever seen in my life, period. Everybody says, ‘Luka this, Luka that,’ but James was before Luka.”
Harden played the Warriors in two straight postseasons but lost both times, most notably in 2018, when they lost to Golden State in seven games, a series hampered by Chris Paul’s hamstring injury in Game 5. They also lost their last two games of the series. Wade forever established his legacy with his 2006 Finals performance, averaging 34.7 points per game.
Kendrick Perkins Ranks Dwyane Wade Above James Harden All-Time
Perkins has been on the record on “First Take” that he would never put Harden above Dwyane Wade because of Harden’s numerous postseason disappointments, especially in Game 7.
“I would never, and no one should ever, ever, ever, ever put James Harden before Dwyane Wade because of how he fails in the postseason… It’s like he’s afraid of the moment. When you think about all-time greats, we think about what they do in the postseason, the championships. How they shine on the big stage. When you look at James Harden’s history in game 7s, he folds like clean sheets.”
Perkins is right that it is unfair to say rings should not matter in the debate between two players, but performance does matter in postseason play, and both Wade and Harden have shown who the superior player all-time is in that area: Wade.
