[Amick/TheAthletic] Fertitta discusses the Westbrook trade and why it made sense

What Austin Rivers is working on in the off-season has 0.000000000% to do with what I am talking about or what I am trying to tell you.

I honestly don’t understand why you even brought this up.

Unless there is a podcast/article/interview where Rivers is saying that Harden is going rogue and slowing the pace and isolating even though the coach and Gm says otherwise than it literally has nothing to do with this discussion.

 

What? Because you happen to bring up what rivers said to begin with. So bc I bring up other things rivers actually says it doesn’t apply? Ok

You literally post about rivers first. Then now claim Rivers has 0.0% to do with this

 

he probably said that on occasion, but CP prefers to probe and take his time...if u go back to his time with the Hornets, they also played slow as hell with him controlling the ball (21st, 23rd, 26th, 28th, and 16th in pace during his years there)

in either case, we know that Harden can play on some of the fastest paced teams in the league since he’s done so most of his career in Houston...in 15-16 he was 2nd in the league behind only Russ in fastbreak ppg (he was in transition 21% of the time), and in 16-17 he was 17th (in transition 15% of the time), then we got this huge decline the past 2 years...we’ll see if he keeps up the plodding, ridiculously heavy ISO style with Russ or reverts back to more of what we were seeing before CP got here

they will speed up the pace if they want to do what’s best for Russ since he damn sure ain’t no 17-18 CP3 that can thrive in some slow paced, ISO ball system

 

My dear lord....

What I quoted Rivers saying is relevant to the topic of our pace and play style and why we do it. And it contradicts the notion that many feel that Harden decided that this was how the team was going to do things.

This other stuff you brought up about what Rivers said belongs in the thread titled : What Austin Rivers says he is working on in the off-season.

 

of course, bc you have an agenda. so in this case anything else that he says that is still relevant to how the rockets player doesnt apply. nice logic there. typical cf's

 

harden did play at a faster pace but that was in his younger days. I'm not really buying harden wants to play at a much faster pace this year. As you know I'm not sold on the mix anyway in the end. so well see. pace will probably pick up some because wb loves to play out of control but it doesn't necessarily mean its all a good thing, especially when we've seen what this team does on fastbreaks with numbers lol

 

Thank you! I was about to say the same thing but figured I better read the thread first because surely someone else would have pointed this out.

I saw CP3 shouting at his teammates to push the pace last year. He wanted to push the pace but nobody else would run with him.

Westbrook will push the pace alone if he has to. He will jam the ball down the opponents throat by himself if it comes down to that.

I hope nobody is waiting for harden to speed up the game though. He is one of the slowest PGs I’ve ever seen, if not the absolute slowest. He is fast off the dribble and can switch directions on a dime but he is going to walk the ball up and get into the offensive set at a snails pace.

 

be careful man, this is probably going to insight a bunch of folks.

 

IMO, with the organization’s obsession with GS the past 2 years, the organization realized that u can’t beat them by trying to play fast and just hope to make 20 threes...u had to slow the pace down significantly

it turned out that Harden had became a god in isolation, and running a bunch of isolation sets is a surefire way to slow the pace to a crawl...and by also implementing a switching scheme to negate GS’s off-ball movement, you’ve now turned the game into who can score the most efficiently in the halfcourt and in ISO sets, and there was no one more efficient than Harden when it came to isolation, and our shot selection in the halfcourt was catered to taking the most efficient shots possible

they had a nice balance in 17-18, but it got taken to the extreme last season due to the decline of CP and our slow start to the season

 

I’m really genuinely trying to figure this all out. My mind is blowing at this conversation.

What is it exactly that Austin Rivers has said in other podcasts?

All you said earlier was that in a different podcast Austin Rivers said he knows that Harden will have the ball and so he has been working on his spot up 3 point shooting.

What exactly does that have to do with the topic of our pace slowing, isolations increasing and why it happened all of a sudden after the all star break of the 17/18 season?

Did I miss you quoting Rivers of saying Harden made that decision?

 

These podcasts are almost an hour long. They’re posted for your convenience.

 

LOL you're killing the CF narratives with all these facts. It's mystifying why some on this board think that a PG in his mid 30's, with two bad hamstrings, would want to play at a fast pace consistently.

 

Would like this twice if I could.

 

we’ll just have to wait and find out if Harden really does want to play faster or if he now just truly prefers this slow paced ISO ball...I can look at his history of playing on fast paced teams, but no one can say for sure what Harden truly wants until we see it on the court this season

I’m worried that we’ll revert back to being that dumb team that used to average like 16 turnovers a game...even tho I was pretty much done with CP0 after this season, 1 thing he did bring, especially in 17-18, was a calming presence for the times when Harden was fcking up on the court...Russ ain’t providing that...if Harden is having a meltdown, Russ might be right there with him racking up dumb decisions

I am hopeful that things will work out and am excited about the upcoming season, but Lord help us if Westbrook’s shooting and scoring drop off that we saw last season wasn’t just a blip, but a sign of the decline that’s to come

 

You clearly have an understanding of what was discussed, just summarize real quick.

Did he shed any light onto the topic of whose decision it was to all of a sudden slow the pace and start isolating so much more? Because as been proven by others in this thread it is a drastic departure from what we as a team had done before.

Because when he was asked on The Jump about our playstyle AR’s response was that James is doing what he is being asked to do.

If he is saying something different afterwards then I’d like to hear it, but if the other podcasts have nothing to do with that then again I don’t know why they were even brought up in the first place.

 

This. I really don’t think you can put/explain everything any better.

 

I dont know why y'all are debating this...

Harden likes to play slow... he has said he likes to slowly walk the ball up so he can evaluate the defense and start deciding how he is going to want to attack it...

MDA is Mr 7 seconds offense... he prefers to push the pace...

MDA doesnt want to get Mchaled - or driven outta town for pissing of another superstar...

so we play it slow...

why is this a debate?

 

Umm a hrs worth of quotes isn’t something for me to do. If you have no interest in then stop talking about. If you do then you should listen to them. Plenty have. They definitely helped in having a better appreciation for him

 

Funny part is... when CP3 signed that contract everybody insisted it was a reasonable deal because of his 'leadership ability'... it wasnt about about the value of what he was actually doing on the court - it was supposedly about his ability to mentor and get everybody to maintain a higher level of focus and consistency...

come to find...


LOL!

 

Because the Rockets have been at the top of the league in pace and fastbreak ppg for the majority of Harden’s time here with him controlling the rock for the majority of the time? Because Harden was usually in the upper echelon when it came to time spent in transition as well as fastbreak ppg even finishing 2nd in 15-16 behind only Westbrook?

Pace
12-13: 1st
13-14: 6th
14-15: 2nd
15-16: 7th
16-17: 3rd

fastbreak ppg
12-13: 2nd
13-14: 3rd
14-15: 2nd
15-16: 3rd
16-17: 4th

MDA’s 1st year here were were 3rd in pace and 4th in fastbreak ppg. We were also 3rd in apg, but also 6th worst in turnovers per game. This was all with slow, plodding Harden. However, that was when we thought we could run with GS and hoped to beat them by getting hot and hitting 20 threes. Nah, the way u beat GS is by slowing the pace down and limiting turnovers while slowing down their ball movement. So that’s what we tried to do. A bunch of halfcourt and isolation sets replaced running out in transition. We cut down the passing to reduce the amount of turnovers. CP probably had an issue because things that we were doing in 17-18 got taken to the extreme in 18-19, but a lot of that had to do with his own decline and our slow start. CP could no longer play as well in this ISO system.