Business Insider: Jazz's radical defensive strategy showed how unguardable James Harden is

Bottom line is the jazz coach just told his players I don't think you're good enough so I'm going to roll out this gimmick and hope it's so radical it might work.

 

And he would be right in that compared to Harden nobody is good enough.

 

Bucks strategy is overrated; it worked for one game when Harden was dealing with a wrist injury and the Rockets shooters weren’t knocking down their threes.

Nobody mentions the 1st game when a healthy Harden went for 42 and 6 without CP3 and EGO.

 

Every damn reporter, analyst, etc... have scouted Harden for the opponents all year long. I've never seen any single player ever have so many "how to stop" theses. Their simultaneous obsession (hate) and lack of recognition is pathetic.

 

If it doesn't help their narrative, of course it won't be mentioned.

 

Let every analyst and casual NBA fan in the world try to stop him. Harden will still score 30+ on every team. Harden has mastered the offensive end like nobody else. The only thing that can stop him is an off night, and thankfully that doesn't happen often.

 

You must be too young to remember Jordan.

 

I wish, but the internet and social media have given everyone a platform which is why I think it's worse now than anything Jordan faced. Plus none of these haters will put Harden on Jordan's level which makes their obsession even more fraudulent.

 

That Bucks game is kind of a blessing in disguise. I understand trying to imitate that strategy but it was one game out of 82 regular season games. If the Rockets shot/played like they did against the Bucks when they did this strategy or even got close to their shooting averages, we wouldn't even be seeing it now or even being talked about.

So thank you Bucks for giving us a freebie Game 1 against the j*zz.

 

I tried to tell anyone that would listen after that last loss to the Bucks.

EG and Tucker went 1-13 combined from 3 and almost all of them were wide open, no one within 8-10 ft of them.

If they hit 6-13 combined the game is tight going down to the last minute. The bucks are great so that’s no knock on them. I don’t expect houston to just blow them out but that strategy will always lead to wide open 3s either in the corner or the slot. You can’t guard everyone if you imploy that strategy.

The bucks were also really physical that game we didn’t get to the line a lot plus Bledsoe and Lopez went combined 8-12 from three.

Their both solid shooters but I don’t think either of them are elite, I think Lopez is 35% and Bledsoe is 32%.

I don’t expect them to shoot that good together every game.

 

Those picture of the Bucks . . . .. . they should simply say the Officials allowed the Bucks to play an illegal defensive zone

Rocket River

 

1. Harden is unstoppable.

2. Jazz are doing the right thing defensively. They're just not doing it well enough. But they're setting up the recipe for it to work...

The best defense against us is to take away the 3's, force Harden to his right and then deal with him at the rim with extreme length. Jazz shouldn't change their strategy. They should improve upon it. And consider using Favors or Udoh out high on Harden forcing him right and trailing him into Gobert/Capela.

 

The Rockets should score on this defense almost 90%. The reality is they didn't. I was actually disappointed that several of the lobs and dumps were off, and while Tucker handled this much better, I don't like my playoff in the hands of Tucker even if he is wide open. Harden's floaters were a little dumpy too. It was far from ideal. That said. I want to see this defense every single time because it can be destroyed. My biggest disappointment was that D'Antonio sounded like they didn't game plan for it, assuming that Harden will blow it up, and my second disappointment was that once again we went back to Paul at times when the truth is, we should give it to Harden on every play if they do this. Every single time. But I did note the Rocks stopped running a pick against this defense to get the three for Harden, which again, was moronic...if they want to give you a layup, if they want to give you an automatic fast break, you take it.

I can't say it worked, but I would say the Rockets should have handled it better.

 

Just make him go right!

 

Didn't we win by 30 points!

 

Damn, we worked the Jazz so bad we ended up on Business Insider!! Rockets in 4.

 

More like Jazz stupid defensive strategy didn't work on Sunday. Will they try again on Wed with adjustments?

 

If I’m Utah I’m packing the paint and daring this Rockets team to beat me on the road shooting 3’s.

Allowing Harden to get into the paint, whether it’s by virtue of G1’s absurd gimmick defense or tonight’s hybrid of G1 tactics and straight up defense, has been absolutely killing Utah.

Harden gets into the paint, the defense collapses, he finds Clint or an open shooter. He’s making it look easy. It’s the reason why Tucker has been so wide open all series.

Above all else, they need to do something radically different. That’s the basketball fan in me talking. The Rockets fan in me, of course, hopes they keep fumbling their defensive strategy

 

first thing i noticed