The NBA’s most lopsided 1-way players: Offensive edition

You can call him biased because of his name but you still didn't offer any new information to refute what he said.

 

Do me a favor and watch the video I linked. The highlights show the complete possession....from the inbounds/rebound to the made basket. These highlights do tell the whole story.

And the video very clearly shows that for game 1, the plan was for Lillard to guard Paul.

Disagree.

I think opponents would prefer for Harden to guard the ball-handler. He would be forced to exert significantly more energy on defense which would negatively impact his offensive performance.

 

I don't think it even 100% accurately represents what it purports to represent.

People bring numbers and claim that they are "facts." Numbers are not facts. What happened on the court are facts. The numbers are quantified models of representation of the facts. No models can perfectly capture the facts they purport to represent. It is especially true with a game as complex as basketball. It has so many interrelated actions going on all at the same time.

 

Fair enough.

 

Good luck, fought this fight before and some people just don't understand this basic fact. They rather blame Harden for everything. EVERYTHING that is wrong with this team. Anything that Harden achieves is because of stat padding or star chasing. He's also so incredibly lazy that you wonder if he put any effort into anything if he'd be the greatest player of this generation. I mean apparently right? Some people make it seem he just goes out on the court and diddles around for 4 quarters.

Not even Kawhi would get the defensive respect he gets now if every time someone blew past him (and it happens.) the guy gets a lay up or dunk and if he gets no help from his team.

Hell, look at Curry now.

Team defense is EVERYTHING. Having all guys on a string is everything.

 

If we are being completely unbiased and subjective, there is absolutely no such thing as fact. Whether it be basketball or anything in this realm. There is only data/evidence and perception.

Perception is very misleading especially once you become biased to one side of any argument or debate of trying to figure out something. When perceiving something we tend to focus on one thing at a time instead of the whole picture. If we see something we believe supports our hypothesis and claim we tend to give that more weight than something we recognize that refutes our claim. Its common bias and that's OK but it is also why data/evidence is important to keep us unbiased.

Conversely, numbers don't tell the whole story and can be misleading. And also since there is so much data to choose from you can indeed cherry pick to support your claim because once again every human is biased and the ego makes it difficult for us to admit defeat. But that doesn't mean that data collected isn't very important because it is. It is nothing but more tools used to find out what could or couldn't be the truth. Same as perception.

You are to use both in conjuncture with one another in order to try and figure out what is the best answer, not totally dismiss the other because you believe one side more then the other or one side supports your claim more then the other.

When it comes to Harden, he is a below average defender, average at best. Which would be perfectly passable given his offensive heroics. But defense is a scheme and team thing. Tony Allen gets burned all the time, doesn't mean he is a bad defender. He is a serviceable one on one defender and a decent post defender. But what irks people is when he does that patented swipe from behind. Sometimes that's him being lazy, other times he's doing what the defense dictates and is funneling his player into Dwight.

Hardens biggest problem is lack of focus and ball watching. But it happens with every great player, but doesn't excuse him. He needs to get better at it but he also needs a better defense around him.

Harden is far from the worse defender in the league and is closer to the middle then he is from the bottom. But some people focus too much on one form observation.

 

I only have one question about the original chart. How is KAT on there? Is that a Timberwolves thing? Wolves were bottom 3 in drtg.. but I feel if KAT was included then someone like Brook Lopez should be too.


Ok, other than that this whole entire board is just weird, man. You got people who don't understand how these "numbers" are formed saying they're not facts. You have one guy trying to argue that Damian Lillard guards the best player by providing one game out of 82+ where he's guarding Chris Paul. Like the OP isn't trying to say Harden is a good, great, or an average defender. He admits James is bad/below average. What he is trying to do is providing statistical evidence that there are much bigger culprits than James when it comes to defense.

Does the OP have an agenda? Maybe... perhaps.. and likely so, but the article wasn't created by him. Does Kelly Scaletta have an agenda? I'm not sure. I remember a Rockets centric article from him being posted on this board last season before where he was defending us, but he doesn't seem lIke he's a Rockets fan or anything just by looking at his work.

RPM, DPM, VORP, ts%, and anything.. these are all statistics created to add context to things. It's really a disservice to the game of basketball if we refused to acknowledge then is prefer only the eye test. I don't think there's be people like Harden's Beard on this forum defending everything about him if there weren't an enormous amount of people on this board trying to discredit and hate James for one part of his game that isn't completely bad. Turvovers... that I understand because while you believe Harden is the worse defender the other team likely scores more points off turnovers instead of off of Harden's defense. Even then. Harden is at the top of that list, but he's not the worst albeit not by much.

If we adjust per 100 possessions then Harden would be ranked 2nd of players who play 20 minutes or more. The reason I do 100 possessions is to make things even because some players play less or more possessions than others.

1. Westbrook - 6.2
2. Harden
3. Schroder
4. Wall
5. Cousins - 5.3
6. Mudiay
7. Rondo
8. Bledsoe
9. Durant
10. Teague - 4.8
11. Carter-Williams
12. Curry
13. Evans
14. George
15. James - 4.7
16. Mack
17. Jack
18. Jackson
19. Knight
20. Wade - 4.6
21. Green
22. Holiday
23. Lillard
24. Russell
25. Vasquez - 4.4

I'm trying not to defend Harden, but in a way I am. It sucks. Harden is so bad at taking care of the ball. Sorry if I got off topic. James isn't a perfect player, and he needs to be held accountable for his flaws. I just don't like the approach some people take with the #BlameHarden for everything and forget about all the other stuff he does. Like being 4th in points per 100 yet also 19 in FGA per 100 and 2nd in FTA per 100. He's 16th in assist per 100.

 

Props to the fact warriors in this thread.

Glad someone is still doing it. After a while though, you start to believe it doesn't matter. People just want to believe whatever dumbass thing they want to believe.

 

Careful, JayGoogle. You might labled a Harden "nuthugger"!

 

the debate isn't if the stats perfectly represent what's happening on the court. The stats crowd knows they only represent quantifiable factors we've discovered so far.

The debate is, whether quantifiable properties of a defensive player, normalized against the league, contain less bias when evaluating defensive talent than an "eye test" and "lowlights" gathered by an uninformed third party. The answer to this should be obvious.

Using an "eye-test" is essentially playing tag, and then declaring yourself safe forever. You have no way of proving your own eye-test wrong. If you can't prove it wrong, then you also can't prove yourself right to others. This is why the most basic tenant in statistics is called "rejecting the null hypothesis."

To make things even more ironic, anyone that can't see the utility provided by stats, either for or against them, probably isn't intelligent enough to evaluate basketball without them. Exhibit A: Charles Barkley.

 

If you post in every Harden thread with the same message every time, you MIGHT BE a... redneck... err, in this case a hater or a hugger.

There are tons of Harden threads & as per usual the same guys/gals posting the same message every time. The "haters" repeat how Harden is fat, lazy, immature and generally the worst. He plays terrbile because of strip club, Kardashians, partying, lousy heart/focus and is a cancer as well as the worst defender in the NBA. The huggers argues against the strawman of him being responsible for all the Rockets problems. They say Harden is nearly as good this year as last year, isn't responsible for the Rockets problems and deflect/defend his faults with excuses, such as play A or B is way worst, too many minutes, etc etc etc.

Hater or hugger, neither acknowledges the possible truths in the others message, but rather fight over the extremes.

 

It's difficult to acknowledge both sides as potentially correct when one side brings analysis and facts to the table, and the other brings essentially nothing to prove their position except anecdotal evidence. Like a picture, or 3 minute YouTube clip, or an eye test.

The real problem is that we have an extremely vocal minority on clutch fans. I firmly believe the vast majority know our teams problems are just that, "team" problems.

 

False.

A rash of overemotional children (Mr. Clutch, Fchowtexx) or people who just can't stand being wrong (Joatmac) piss all over every thread with the same bull**** narratives over and over again. Just because people show facts to counter those narratives, whenever the narratives surface, doesn't make someone a "hugger". People don't start threads over and over again praising Harden. The reverse however does happen.

 

I actually love stats. I was one of the people who kept defending the use of analytics when Morey first came. I still think that it is dumb to criticize analytics as a great tool.

What I am trying to point out is that using numbers, especially some kind of all-in-one measurement of individual offense and/or defense, to present them as "facts" is as guilty as the eye-test crowd.

Basketball is a continuous motion team sport. It is extremely difficult to isolate individual impact to the game. Stats is a great tool. But it is easy to cherry pick. Eye test is very subjective. But you cannot totally dismiss eye test.

I believe the debate about individual player's value is by nature partially subjective, which is fine. I am always skeptical whenever someone comes out and try to end the debate by presenting some "facts" and label those who disagree as stupid.

 

I watched Harden for 82 games. He was a terrible defender this last season. Just because he's 21st on some theoretical list doesn't do away with 82 games of evidence and somehow make him an average defender or a defender that doesn't hurt the team. He was terrible defensively. And he hurt our team performance defensively.

 

The point your attempting to make is irrelevant to us winning a championship. Harden has to play significantly better defense for us to win a championship. He was an awful defender this last season. And James knows he has to play significantly better defense.