Is Harden a top 5 player in the league?

Absolutely wrong.

With a lineup of Terry/Brewer/Ariza/J.Smith/Dwight, the Rockets came back from a 19 point deficit to win an elimination game against a Clippers team led by Chris Paul in the WCSF.

In other words, Harden's supporting cast was good enough to win without him and prevent the Clippers from advancing to the WCF.

Given that fact, how can it seriously be argued that Harden > CP3 b/c Harden has not only made the WCF, but did so with a much less supporting cast?

It can't. Those reasons are invalid. Using them makes you ignorant.

 

thats been addressed in the thread

 

thats great. at the same time if you're going to use that route why is that at the most important time in the series and even in recent Rockets history Harden was sitting on the bench and they won without him.

 

1. no thats not what you said. if you would have clearly said that then there wouldn't be a misunderstanding here especially when you came off sounding trying to check someone.

2. again if you're going to try and call cp3 a choker while straight back harden, you dont have much room to talk. you can't have it both ways. you can take a wcf and believe thats somehow "more success" in your book but just remember who was sitting on that bench in LAC series. especially against an injured cp3 throughout the entire playoffs. Just because cp3 isn't in your top5 doesn't mean you have to bring him down as a player just to try and make your case for harden. Its simple you just don't agree with it but the criticism you are trying to use for cp3 can be applied just as easily to Harden.

 

Using one fluke game where Brewer and Smith got hot to make absolute proclamations on Brewer and Smith's contributions makes you ignorant my friend.

 

Cp3 is a stud one of the top 5 best PGs of all time so I get it, he's 6 on my list. But I still think harden is the better player going forward and the probability of winning a chip with his as you best player is higher than if Cp3 is the number one guy. Biggest reason being hardens size and scoring ability, in the playoffs you need than guy who can get buckets.

With the Westbrook year without OKC you can't look at it like he led his team to 45 wins because he did have KD putting up 25 a game on 60+% TS for 27 of them. It's better to look at what he did without KD in the lineup which was a
25-23 record. Not terrible but not as good as 45 win pace.

Now look at what harden did without Dwight for 41 games and I won't even factor in that harden played a lot of those games with Tarik black and cannan starting. His record was 28-13 in those 41 games minus Dwight. So harden was still leading the Rockets on a 56 win pace which as we no was good enough for the 2 seed that year. The factor in that Dwight Howard is not nearly the impact player that KD is and it becomes and even bigger gap.

I like Russ but I think harden is the better player by a pretty big gap they do a lot of the same stuff harden is just so much better shooting and scoring the ball.

We'll see this year but I would be shocked if the rockets arnt 10 games better than the thunder this year maybe more.

 

This is one of the cases of where the Ignore feature really sucks. Even when said poster is on your ignore list, you can still see their idiocy when others get drawn into replying to them.

It is hilariously stupid (not yours, the guy you were replying to) post though; to try and extrapolate from a game any meaningful, long term decisions from a single game where both players VASTLY overachieved.

 

I echo a lot of the same thoughts here overall. Yeah we'll see this year with WB. Its going to answer a ton of questions with him having his own team and being the unquestioned lead dog and how positive his impact on winning truly is.


And just to be clear at the end of the day I think Harden is the better player over cp3 at this point of their respective careers. Its just the longevity, leadership, and consistency that gets the edge for me in favor of cp3 just in my own preference for top 5.

 

Sorry, but no. You want to give Harden credit for making the WCF with a weak supporting cast despite the fact that the supporting cast overcame a 19 pt deficit in game 6. You can't have it both ways.

Was it a fluke game? Absolutely. Did they all over-achieve? Definitely. Does it also disprove the notion that Harden led the Rockets to the WCF with a weak supporting cast? Unfortunately, yes.

 

You can't possibly be this dense, so I'm going to assume this is trolling.

 

I'm just being objective and calling out flawed arguments.

Even the guy who originally made the flawed argument agreed with me.

So how about, instead of being a blind homer, you start using some critical thinking?

 

Using one quarter of basketball and ignoring all other evidence of the contrary is not "critical thinking", it's just being dense.

 

Not when that quarter is the crux of the argument (that Harden > CP3 b/c Harden led the Rockets to the WCF and CP3 didn't).

 

Except it's not the crux. It's merely 1 quarter. It is 1 fluke quarter out of many other quarters of basketball that were played. Yes, it's the most memorable and yes it was very important, but it's silly to be this selective.

Also...Harden was not better than CP3 that year because of a WCF appearance. He was better than CP3 that year because he played basketball better.

 

That 4th quarter was undeniably the turning point of the series. Therefore, it's the most important quarter. Therefore, it's the crux.

 

Please, PLEASE stop arguing with that dumbass. He was the one insisting Nash's Suns teammates from 2006 were worse than Harden's last year.

 

Like I said before, how about a $50 tipjar wager? You prepare an argument, I'll prepare an argument, and we'll start a poll at Spurstalk.

 

Yeah, you're right. I am too easily suckered in. My apologies.

 

thread shouldve been terminated here.

 

What about the fact that harden had a huge triple double in game 5 which was also a elimination game to even get the rockets to game 6? Does that not count either? Or the fact that he absolutely killed the clippers in game 7 which was also another elimination game.

Picking that quarter is like saying ohh Lebron wouldn't have won a chip against the Spurs if not for Ray Allen or same thing with Mario Ellie hitting big kiss of death in the Hakeem championship days. Or Robert horry hitting big threes for the lakers against Portland to go to the finals or when Derrick fisher hit that buzzer beater against the Spurs to advance.

You see were I'm going with this? All Teams that advance deep or win the chip have performances from role players that are out of the norm. Your acting like Jordan the best player ever didn't have dud playoffs games when he was winning 6 championships or even before when he was getting bounced in the first round for like 4 straight years.

You can hold onto you argument but make sure you apply it to all the greats because at one time or another they were all saved from elimination by a role player.