Other than being teammates with LeBron, there is nothing that Kyrie does better than Harden. Irving is guilty of all the same things people criticize Harden for (or worse), but does not make plays for others and is undersized. He played well in the Finals, but Harden would have been an even better second banana to LBJ than Irving.
Didn't we see what Irving could or could not do without LeBron? They were 33-49 the year before LeBron arrived.
no. my how people have severely overreacted to Kyrie. He's a very good individual player but we've already seen his track record as far as impact on winning when he is the leader of his own team. Lebron by his side did wonders into making people believers.
Irving never led the Cavs to the playoffs or even a winning record in a bad East. Harden has led the Rockets to the playoffs every season here he's been here in a tough West. He is a couple of years younger though.
Hell no. I wouldn't trade Harden for Irving + Love. Irving is a super talent, probably top 10. But he's still a meh team player, can't involve teammates, bad defense, bad shot selection, without Lebron he couldn't even lead the Cavs to the playoffs in an embarassing east two years ago playing with a healty Varejao, contract year prime Deng, Thompson, Jack...has a leader he was involved in a brawl with Waiters...
Instead of making stupid threads like this, people need to realize we absolutely wasted two years of Harden's prime by not pairing him up with another star player, let alone a superstar. All season long I've argued that the main problem with this team is not ISO ball or Harden's defense, but the fact that we simply lack talent, especially on the offensive end. Look at what OKC, Raptors and the Cavs have achieved in this year's playoffs. They all play kind of similar way to ours except with two or three star players in their line-up, who can absolutely go off at any time, taking turns each time. For the love of god I just don't understand why some people won't acknowledge this obvious fact. We're not gonna win jack s**t with Harden being our only offensive threat. People think just because we had a good run in 14-15 season, that roster was good enough, not realizing we actually massively overachieved relative to our overall talent level (hence why Harden was in the MVP discussion.)
I wish he was a star player, unfortunately he hasn't been for two years straight, especially on offense. We absolutely need another offensive threat to pair with Harden, this is becoming increasingly obvious.