[SI] Rockets Unable to Hide Harden's Defense Faults

That's because the coach won't settle on a definitive starting line-up. They need one more decent defender in the line-up to compensate. In comes Terrence Jones. Stop screwing around with that TT garbage.

 

gameplan against the rockets: whoever Harden is playing, give them screens and backdoor cuts
gameplan against the rockets in the 4th: hack-a-howard

 

What the coach needs is stop having Harden to play the PG and ISO all game long.

 

It is surprising that Harden seems so lackadaisical on D. You would think he'd care more.

 

Not sure what happened. Harden talked alot about working on defense during the off season. But he is injured, so we'll see when he gets better.

 

Not so much his defensive woes, but being able to hide them better. TT can't close out on the perimeter as fast as Jones/D-Mo/Smith. These three have the right amount of size and speed. Casspi can, but he gets bullied heavily by bigger, more athletic PFs.

 

It's this reason why I would rather have Paul George on my team than Harden. Love Harden, but George is maybe the 2nd best 2-way player in the league.

 

That's not an option so all we can do is hope he gets better at D once he regains full health.

 

the defense has been atrocious since last year. do you remember that dallas game late in the season, where 90 year old mike james and mayo took times beating harden and bev off the dribble? i didn't think so because we routed them by 25+ points

and like in every other blow out, ball movement was the culprit and it began with our starting pg.

you can hide the bad defense when on offense you're sharing and scoring efficiently. But when balls get sticky, the bad defense is going to become more noticeable.

 

Yes so he has more energy to handle his own Defensive assignment.

 

You can't hide a guy just standing around, ball watching, with no attention paid to his defender. My daughters point out that Harden doesn't even seem to know where his defender is most of the time. He just waits for the ball to fly so he can try for the rebound. No boxing out. Nothing. Cut baseline or simply move from point A to point B and Harden's man has an open shot.

The only place you can hide that is on the pine.

 

working on it is different from playing in it. you can work on your physical ability, but you grow mentally by experience.

right now, he's just not a smart defensive player at all, and that's putting it mildly. he doesn't know when to help, when to gamble, what the opposing offense is trying to do, where to position his body, etc. he's trying hard in some instances but it only made him look like a wild man that doesn't know what he's doing. he doesn't have the ability to gamble and recover like patrick beverley, so he needs to be more disciplined and play positional defense.

 

If he needs to conserve energy on D to use it on O, then maybe he should play less, or maybe he should shoulder a lesser load on O.

 

Limit his minutes. The dude plays more than anyone in the league.

 

He just plays very lazy and not very fundamental at all. He wouldn't get surprised when playing help defense if he'd just take his pistols out.

What I mean by pistols is basic fundamental help defense:



Head straight, arms out pointing to both the ball and your man. (Called pistols because your fingers resemble two pistols). Use your peripheral vision to see both.

This is just lazy:




And it's such an easy fix.

 

But seriously... is this on Harden or the coaches?

These are easy fixes. He can still play lazy defense but use correct fundamental technique while being lazy.

He's not doing either. He's not playing defense correctly, AND he's playing lazy.

Why can't the coaches correct what he's doing wrong?

 

Not being held accountable will cause you to disregard your responsibility. He's at fault for his lack of defensive effort, but he needs to be held accountable for it by McHale.