everyone knows i am not a fan of james harden. i havent said much about harden for a while, as i felt l had said pretty much all i had to say about him. this is just a curious question for the many harden fans (*) out there. the rockets came off a good season from last yr. and kept basically the same personnel. the result this season is obviously quite disappointing to everyone and by any standards. so, as the #1 guy and the supposed leader of the team, what, if anything, can and should harden be blamed for? or he's basically got no fault at all? the latter is the impression i got from many posts (some with not-so-funny sarcasm) on this board. (*) this incl. those harden-only-fans (there's nothing wrong of being one, imo, really). i know there are some hof's out there. one night there was a one point game in the 3rd or 4th quarter, and all that some cared about was if harden would get a 4-double. lol.
Harden should be blamed for his defense, leadership, and turnovers. Nobody has ever denied that. It's the other nonsense he's blamed for like Lawson's pathetic play or being "the sole reason" for the Rockets disappointing season thus far, among many others, that remain silly.
You're going to get different responses from Harden fans as opposed to HOFs. I'm Harden fan but the Rockets come first. He's not without blame and if he wants to be considered a leader, he needs to act like one, e.g., start placing the team before stats. That includes working harder/smarter on defense.
He's a key piece, just nowhere close to being a 1st banana. He's more of a WB than a Durant, with terrible character and discipline.
general consensus is harden is to blame for TOs, leadership and defense but people cut him some slack because of how much weight he carries on offense plus the fact people also blame coaching and Morey regarding Harden's crappy teammates.
Harden fans here are only Harden fans because he is a Houston Rocket. It's a natural thing to wanting to root for your best guy. I think some of the posts you've seen lately in favor of Harden is a reaction to unfair amounts of criticisms he has been getting on this board, including just outright haters and fans of other players on this team. And to answer your question, Harden should be absolutely criticized for coming into season out-of-shape, occasional display of lack of defensive effort & awareness (although, the extent to which it has been bad is way blown out of proportion. If you think Harden's D is bad, go watch Lillard or Kyrie Irving's defense), and his turnovers. But at the same time, he should also get credit for carrying this team with basically no help from other players, and also for his durability, since he is playing the most minutes in the league, and has not missed a game yet, even with an ankle injury. We are having a mediocre season mostly because we don't have that many talented players on this team. We overachieved with very little last year, but that doesn't mean this roster we have is really deep and is truly on a championship contender level. Now, factor in Dwight's decline. Then it's no surprise that we are not doing as good as last year. Harden is having A or A- season overall. He is projected to be on the ALL-NBA 3rd team this season, or even the 2nd team, according to ESPN. Of course, he was A+ player last year. So yeah, he can certainly do better, but that does not mean our mediocre team record is entirely on him. Micheal Jordan, Kobe, Wade and other great SGs in the history of NBA couldn't do it all by themselves. When they had no help, they all had mediocre team records too.
He basically has the same numbers as last year. Assists and turnovers are up, but the biggest difference to me is he is not closing out games like he did last year. He looks gassed at the end of games. Never seen a player fall down or lose track of the shot clock like he has this year. I think everyone could agree that we lean on him way too much and he needs at least one more scorer to complement him. Howard is not that guy.
Or improve his cardio. That's another option. I mean he's THIS exhausted with only expending energy half the game?
Harden have always had these problems, they just didn't get noticed as much last year because we were winning more games as a team. Everything about him got a bit worse, defense, effort, stamina, TO's etc. That said these drops aren't significant in any way, he's still a great great player, just a little worse than the MVP from last year. We got lucky last year in a way because we beat a lot of weak teams by very close margins through hustle, effort and mostly Harden playing at a historically ridiculous level in the clutch. Weak teams got better this year, we got worse as a team and Harden rightfully can't maintain whatever magic he was doing last year because it wasn't sustainable. People like to look for scapegoats, Harden is someone good to pick on because his flaws are always so apparent. However he's not close to the reason why we dropped from WCF to not making the playoffs this year. If Harden was 98/100 last year, he's like 90/100 this year, but the Rockets dropped from 90/100 to like 55/100.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/h/hardeja01/on-off/2016/ Houston's Offensive Rating w/ Harden on the court 109.4 Houston's Offensive Rating w/ Harden off the court 101.8 Houston's Defensive Rating w/ Harden on the court 108.8 Houston's Defensive Rating w/ Harden off the court 107.9 Harden's Net on/off +6.7 Our main problem is not Jame Harden's defense, although he is certainly a negative in that area. Our core issue is that our offense just turns into a scrub level when Harden is not on the floor. 101.8 offensive rating when Harden is off the court is second worst in the league, only marginally better than the 76ers. This is why Harden is playing so heavy minutes, and I'm worried that it might eventually catch up to him in the playoffs.
In my opinion, Harden can be blamed for having a bit of a hangover year after a very long, very taxing season last year. In the offseason, he was dealing with frustration and letdown from finishing 2nd in MVP and WCF despite an utterly amazing season. He played maybe more minutes in the NBA than anyone, then had a long, draining playoff run, and all that was on top of the FIBA run. It was a long, draining year. Then it was followed by a strange offseason. He got seriously paid by Adidas, and he dated a Kardashian. All of it meant that he didn't enter this season with his absolute best level of focus/preparedness. How you feel about that likely has mostly to do with how you already felt about him before. I wish he'd been laser-ready from day 1. But he gets a whole lot of pass from me from last year. I've watched the Rockets for 30 years, and last year was probably the 2nd-best season by a Rocket I've seen. A detractor can say that Curry went through most of the same stuff, but I wouldn't concede that at all. There are massive regenerative differences between winning it all and having an incredible supporting squad and finishing "2nd" and having a bunch of hot garbage you carry everywhere you go. I fault/blame Harden for some immaturity and less than elite mental approach to this year. He's young. He's figuring it out. Not different at all to Hakeem before he figured it out. I can't speak for all Harden supporters, but I know my issue with most of the bull**** I read on this site is the implication or outright spoken accusation that Harden in any way, shape or form is this team's biggest problem. That is so far from the truth it's simply laughable. Harden's offensive game is all-time elite, and is without argument the best thing this team has going for it. And his defensive issues have at this point been wildly, wildly overblown. By defensive real +/-, he is as straight up average as it gets defensively as a SG. The following are all significantly greater issues/problems impacting this team: 1) An offensively useless, defensively declining player eats up the largest amount of our salary cap 2) Our defensive stopper from 14-15 has seriously regressed as a defender in 15-16 (and, as a #3 guy is very lacking) 3) A position of relative strength in 14-15, PF (Smoove/D-Mo/Jones) has been a laughably inept cartoon of ****tardery in 15-16 4) Our PG position, outside of Beverley, has been utterly useless (Lawson and Terry) compared to their 14-15 counterparts (Prigioni and Terry) 5) Coaching There is not one Harden issue, not turnovers, not defense, that is as big a contributing factor to this crap season as the issues listed above. I fault Harden for having a below-average offseason/approach to this year. And I "blame" him for setting an incredibly high bar last year. If Harden next year is more like Harden this year than like Harden last year, I'll start re-evaluating some things. But I expect he'll be Khloe-less and Olympic-ful this summer, and he'll likely come back next year and beast. A year older, a year more mature, and a year wiser from this lousy ass year. Maybe we'll even get him some help.
Honestly, I don't remember people blaming Harden for Lawson's pathetic play, or saying Harden is the sole reason for the Rockets disappointing play. I don't live on this board like some of you guys, so I don't read every post. But, I think you are talking about a VERY few people who blame Harden for those problems.
