After the initial surprise at the trade wore off, mine and my friends’ first thought was about this post by u/AngryCentrist from a few years ago, regarding Harden’s performance in relation to the overall standard rating of a given NBA city’s strip clubs. According to their conclusion: “I have proven, to a statistically significant degree, that James Harden’s game performance declines in cities with higher rated strip clubs.”^(1) We thought, since an impact has already been measured historically, let’s revisit that data and see what kind of performance this trade might facilitate.

Essentially thinking, “Cleveland can’t be THAT high on the list.”

As it happens, Cleveland had the SECOND LOWEST average strip club rating of any city on the list according to the data. Based on the information gathered, we can draw some conclusions about the environment Harden will find himself in while playing out the rest of the schedule.

• The Cavs have 31 games left.^(2) Of those, 13 (42%) are at home in Cleveland.
  1. If we expand to the bottom five city ratings on the list, that adds 3 more games (between Charlotte and Milwaukee), bringing the total to 18 (58%)
  2. If we expand to the bottom half of the list, that adds another 6 games (in Sacramento, Denver, Brooklyn, San Francisco, Memphis, and Atlanta), bringing the overall total to 24 (77%).
  3. Only 5 (16%) of the remaining 18 away games are in cities in the top five of the list (between Los Angeles, Chicago, Salt Lake City, and New Orleans)

So - how does this affect the outlook for Harden’s performance, and what impact could he have on Cleveland’s position now that we’re in the second half of the season? It seems to me they’re poised for a competitive run toward a top 3 spot in the East coming out of this trade.

I will say - the information and data from u/AngryCentrist’s post is from at least 5 years ago. If anyone has any insight into an updated view of the adult entertainment landscape in Cleveland or any NBA city, please come forward in the comments. Your input would be greatly appreciated.

NOTE: One thing I didn’t initially consider when this idea popped into my head was that the initial analysis did NOT consider data from home games, which at the time were in Houston. Without access to any pertinent data, it’s hard to say where they would land in the ranking of current or past NBA city strip club ratings, but seeing as the Cavaliers don’t play in Houston anymore this season, I feel it’s not that large of an omission. There is a possibility its accurate placement might alter the groupings of cities mentioned, and thus the associated percentages, but anecdotal wisdom leads me to believe that strip clubs in the city of Houston would probably rank within the top 50% of the list, if not registering a spot in the top 10.

^(1 -) I analyzed James Harden’s performance in every NBA city to see if there is a correlation between his box score and the city’s average strip club rating. : r/nba

^(2 -) cleveland cavaliers schedule