Ignoring the mid range game like the plague while leading the league in scoring? Sure, sounds great...... in the regular season. Every year the playoffs roll around around and Harden’s 3 PT% dips, the refs swallow their whistles/he doesn’t get the calls he would’ve gotten in the regular season so his FG% dips from the non calls when he drives and misses and the dummies here wonder WTF happened and blame everyone but Harden. It’s like a broken record. You’d think G whiz if I’m not getting calls around the basket and my 3 is off wouldn’t it be nice to be automatic from mid-range or at least utilize that portion of the game instead of selling yourself short? We’re never winning a ring with this style. No superstar that’s ever won a ring avoids the midrange like the plague. The closest we’ve ever gotten was with a 2nd star that actually utilized the mid range J. MJ Kobe Wade Dirk Curry Durant Kawhi All the guys above were either automatic or well above average from mid range and it was/is a heavy part of their arsenal. Remember RIP Hamilton? He’s not on the same level as those guys but he absolutely killed it with the mid range game. Less than 1 3 point attempted in the regular season and 1.7 attempts in the playoffs and was the leading scorer on a Championship team. The games changed over the years but that doesn’t mean you just completely forget about the midrange.
Anyone who tries to justify that shot is just not willing to admit there's context to those who believe in taking the best shot available. Tell me that in your right mind, you actually believe that Harden taking that mid-range shot after creating space is a worse shot than giving the defender time to recover so you can shoot a contested 3? If you do then you're a moron, plain and simple.
heres another example, out of the box, to help us think more clear, gain some perspective. Sometimes coaches and players intentionally take a technical giving away points, how efficient is that?
So is it your belief that Harden taking some mid range jumpers would have put us over the top all these years? There isn’t any possibility that a combo of clearly superior defensive opponents, some bad luck and flat out poor execution(missing open shots) and not to mention some embarrassing officiating of Harden weren’t the biggest culprits to our offense dropping a bit in the postseason? It’s a few mid range jumpers by Harden and we are champs?
I don’t think citing 3 point attempt stats from an era when the league hadn’t woken up and realized the inefficiency of their shot selection is really an honest argument. Nor citing a few of maybe the best mid range shooters ever as a reason to take more mid range. Dirk admits now he should have been shooting more 3s. MJ, Kobe and Wade were all pre 3 point revolution, Durant’s mid range greatness wasn’t able to take down GS anymore than our strategy was able to and he had to join Curry who is likely the greatest shooter ever whose teammate Klay might be the 2nd best shooter ever. (Guys no one should really mind taking those midrange shots, just like we didn’t mind Paul taking those shots) I’d also argue that it’s a fairly dishonest take to say the closest we ever got to a title in this era was with Paul taking some mid range jumpers and point to it as THE reason we were that close. Fairly certain it was because it was the one year our defense was just as good as our offense has always been. I see the point in some of y’all getting bent out of shape if the play this video highlighted was last second to win the game, but it wasn’t. We were still at a point in the game where playing the “expected value” game was the right play.
Nearly all of Hardens 3s (94%) are contested 3s. He's hitting these around 37%. (I didn't do the exact math, it could be slightly more or less). Incidentally, this isn't too far off his uncontested 3 point shot number of 41%. And it's more or less the same as his long 2 career of 37%. (To be fair, harden is shooting 50% on long 2's this year, but it's 0.7% of his total FGA, which means he's like 3 for 6 or something. Id expect that number to regress (34% last year)) /Thread /video /scoutingwithbryan
No it's not. With the quantity of data we have re league wide success, there is no argument unless we have a statistically elite person. It's like saying I should use a typewriter because it has some benefits. That's not how decisions are made strategically, and it's especially but how decisions are made split second in a game. The OP is out here questioning a man whose stubborn methods have made him a historically elite scorer on one of the most prolific scoring teams in history. We have no offensive problems. We always outperform our scoring talent. We are always one of the best offensive teams. Other teams should and do emulate us. Everyone is moving in our direction, and that's a fact too. Some nights, it doesn't work out. We won't know it doesn't work that night unless we take the layups and 3's. Just because we've missed a lot, doesn't mean the next one is not going in. I'm not discussing this on this board for the rest of my life again. It's over.
There’s a difference between avoiding them for better shots and just passing up wide open shots which is dumb. You don’t have to be so defensive over morey/the system that you don’t acknowledge that
Good. Your argument is silly anyways. The 3>2 approach works over a large sample size and in the regular season where you aren't facing a top 8 team 7 consecutive times where they can easily learn and predict our offensive tendencies. The Rockets fall apart in close playoff games because our offense is so predictable. I trust guys like Kobe, Wade, Durant to score a bucket regardless of where it's from when the team desperately needs the bucket in a close tight game in the 4th because they have so many more ways of scoring the ball than Harden. Harden is a better scorer over a large sample size during the regular season. Those other guys are better scorers given one highly contested possession against an elite defense.
No, but mixing it up more, moving more, playing at a faster pace, not being so reliant on step back 3s, and protecting the ball better. Like he did in the 2015 playoffs.
Yup his 2015 playoffs was by far his most efficient playoff year with the Rockets with 27 ppg on 62% ts. He was more fun to watch back then also He scored from all over and made quicker decisions with the ball. I believe 2015 Harden is more capable of scoring in clutch situations against tight defenses where 3>2 becomes less relevant.
False. There is no way to predict how the next shot will go, so always go with the shot that gets you the most points. Harden needs 0 advice about how to score more efficiently. No one but Wilt and MJ have scored more efficiently at this volume. No one ever. No team outperforms it's offensive talent more. No one but Durant's Warriors has bested Harden for years now. We have wiped the floor with every single other opponent in the playoffs in that span. If you want to win, this is the strategy. If you care about mid-range jumper nostalgia more than success, then yes it's a good idea. Make it your new years resolution. It's in the past, let it go.
It's not dumb. It's literally so ingenious that the rest of the league has gravitated towards this model. The huge majority of best offenses are negatively correlated with mid-range shots. We are not going to be the exception because we do not have the talent to score at insane efficiency just because it's open in mid-range. You must think he'd make like 70% of those. He never has, and he never will. No defender is stupid enough to change how they guard one of the most prolific scorers in NBA history because he made 1 of 2 mid-range jumpers. It's a ridiculous fantasy. Do you get that there's no exaggeration with my description of him as one of the most prolific scorers in NBA history? Do you want to critique Wilt's scoring and act like you could make a significant difference? How about MJ's one comparable season, you want to critique that? Step outside this thought for a second and think about what you are saying in the context of things.
He definitely needs some advice from somewhere because Harden has one of the highest negative deltas between their regular season scoring efficiency and postseason scoring efficiency out of the elite superstar sg group in NBA history. I'm not going to let it go dude. Teams in the playoffs can easily predict and scheme for our offense. It happens time and time again. I trust guys like Durant, Wade, Kobe and Curry to score a bucket in a one possession game late in the fourth because they score in more creative ways. They are better shot makers than Harden. Harden get get higher regular season averages due to a system that lets him dribble the air out of the ball with the highest usage rate in the league along with hunting for foul call rather than just trying to score the bucket on nearly half his possessions.
No, you are a moron. He hits 37% of contested 3's excluding free throw shots. That's 1.11 points. At least another 0.1points from free throws. He would have to hit 60% of open mid range shots to match that. That would be the best mark of his career. The only reason you would do that is if you're feeling lucky. There's no logic there. It's ridiculous.
H2H in the playoffs last year, Harden was more efficient than Durant, and more efficient than Kawhi vs the Warriors. And that included a bs reffing agenda in Game 1, which took some 3s away, and added misses that were obvious fouls. It’s just no true that Harden was inefficient in the playoffs last year. He also destroyed Utah’s gimmick defense for 2-0 lead on two blowouts.
