[Zach Lowe] Leaves Harden off his All-NBA ballot, thoughts?

Klay Thompson is a guard, not a forward, and Draymond Green is a forward, not a center.

 

Green spent plenty time as a 5, Thompson also plays at 3. It's basically position-less for the GSW when they have the "small unit" out there, which won most of the games than anyone else.

 

Smith has been erratic since he left the Hawks. I odn't know what the reason is. I do know he's not as good a player as he was then.

 

LOL I think Lowe basically argued himself into leaving Harden out. Sure Harden didn't really show the leadership we expected during the season and he was the reason for the Rox poor start, however once he got in shape Harden played like we all expected he would and carried the Rox to a lot of wins.

Klay Thompson is a really good player but the ability to win 73 games isn't really done by him, the biggest factors for those would be Draymond Green and Curry so I don't even know why Lowe is making that his decision point, I think if you switched Harden and Thompson GSW still wins 73 and the Rox don't make the playoffs. If you're talking about individual performance then Harden should get in over Klay Thompson, if you're talking about team performance he should also get in, I mean Lowe had no issues last year with Westbrick making the all star team, and didn't OKC lose more games when he reaches 40 pts last year? They couldn't even make the playoffs LMAO and there wasn't all this brouhaha about leaving WB out. Hopefully Harden takes this as an insult and makes a point to show everyone up in the playoffs.

 

Hou really shouldn't be in the playoffs either without a winning record. OKC with WB still had a winning record at the end of the year and would have made it this year and be the #5 seed. not much of argument for OKC missing the playoffs at 45-37 because in reality thats not that bad,

 

I sincerely doubt a majority of fans or GMs would agree with you, but you're welcome to your appraisal. I think you're still thinking of 2000s Howard. Wrapped up in the name.

No, that's exactly how it works, unless you're discussing prospects or players who are pre-prime. For prime/post-prime players, "talent" is how good a player is. Smith isn't a draft prospect...he's a player on the downside of his career.

Not too often, but I did say that they were a good team last year. With the Thunder crippled by injury and the Spurs under-performing, the Rockets overperformed their talent (but not by a huge amount...56 wins is nice but hardly an amazing number). In the playoffs, they got a 0.1% shot to pay off and get them past the second round. If they had bowed out in the second round, no one would be talking about how tremendously talented they were.

And, again, Harden was better last year and Howard hadn't declined as much. This year's team is worse talent-wise. Last year's team was good, this year's team has declined to average.

 

The Klay Thompson is automatically a top player because team wins meme

Throw him on any other team and people will forget about it forever.

 

Good choice Zach. You know what's up

 

Zach Lowe is a ****. Not new information. Those are my thoughts.

 

Winning matters.

 

fwiw: Jordan only had one other teammate on any of the All-NBA Teams in the year they won 72 games.

 

Maybe this will egg Harden on, who knows

 

Not very often. And thars why Harden was MVP. It's pretty simple

 

Maybe he should try on defense.

DD

 

My rule of thumb is would you trade for them straight up. Salaries and age thrown out the window.

Curry and Westbrooks past the test.
Kyle and Klay do not.

As good of players as Kyle and Klay are, they are a step below Harden.
The numbers and the Eye test back that up.

 

Who had a year with stats only Jordan, Lebron, and Robertson have had before?

 

I never said that.