[Clutchfans] Take the time to appreciate that the Rockets have an all-time great

You have TWO.....the latter one is just declining and older.

 

I think Hakeem played in an era when the league wasn't scoring that much that was why they called it Stagnant or Deadball Era.

And it wasn't common to form superteams, and I guess the average player wasn't costing as much.

You did not have to pay top dollar for role players.

I think many teams had their own identity instead of just Defense, Shoot 3s and ISO Scoring in bunches or Moving the Ball.

 

I deem he is great already but if he wins 1 or preferably 2 or 3 he would be a legend.

Is he stuff for the legends or just great on Offense? You feel me.

 

I feel like you're asking for comments on the piece of writing as a piece, so I'll give an earnest comment. Hope I don't overstep! I do it out of respect for what you do.

I like the piece! I do have some suggestions. The main one: use some sensory images of Harden in addition to statistics. Statistics are for the intellect. Images are feeling, and they are more powerful. You can throw in some images in quick succession; they don't need to be elaborate: "hitting that game-winner over Draymond and Klay, breaking Jamal Murray's ankles and sending him tumbling to the floor. . . ." You do it with Dirk and Wade. If I'm not mistaken, there is not a single highlight play of Harden mentioned in the piece. And the whole point is that this season is worth remembering, so it is pretty important to give us something to remember. I would put them in the "20 years from now" paragraph, which is kind of the climax of the piece, or should be. This is where you show us what we will be remembering 20 years from now: Jamal Murray tumbling to the hardwood, the yellow jerseys of Draymond and Klay as Harden rises up over them.

The other thing I would suggest is to dial back the "I" and basically eliminate the pronoun from this piece. Not because of some rule or anything. It's just that the piece is not about "I" or you: it is very intent on James Harden. With "I" in there, it's kind of like watching a video of James Harden, which cuts to an image of your mouth talking every once in a while. The voice of the author is strong enough in this piece that the "I" is there even if the pronoun is totally removed. It's got personality.

Kind of related to the use of images: don't rely so much on typography, italics and boldface; use the content of the words, not the form. And a little boldface goes a long way.

I hope you don't mind my comments. I devoted some time to them, but maybe I should just take a hike!

 

Is he really one of the "greatest players ever" if only Rockets fans think that way?

Im just saying for how much hate he gets I doubt he gets remembered as one of the greatest players ever by non-Rockets fans.

 

Barkley is an example, got no ring but was respected but only off the air and not with TNT.

 

Lol, I picked up on that too and was about to roll it into the comments. You're too quick with your Jedi moves, @DreamShook

 

all you piece of **** haters, get the hell outta here.

the greatness of Harden is not to be ignored.

if you're just here about championships, go become a Warriors fan. you'll have a great chance to win every year.

 

If you're a fan and not about championships, what are you doing? It's strange to me that folks out there think you can't be super critical while being a fan. Or that if you're a fan that wants championships, you should just bandwagon??

Harden's legacy will always be defined by his playoff performances.

 

I said if you're JUST here about championships. Seems to me, that is the only thing you care about. You don't even care we have a perennial all-star and MVP. We have made 2 conference finals with James Harden, and he revived this deadbeat franchise this regular season so that we can even have a chance this year. ****, we could've been a tanking team this season if it were not for Harden's work.

There's plenty of franchises out there that have waited way longer than us for a roster good enough to even make the playoffs, yet continue to fail, even after they draft what many people consider to be "star" players.

Guess what the Knicks have been doing. Guess how long the Bucks waited. Rebuilding, because their heads aren't even screwed on straight.

Let me give you an metaphor to help you understand. You're a boss, and you receive a superstar employee on your team. You hire a bunch of people to surround him with guys that can do a few things and help take this team to success. He performs magnificently with the very short staff of talent, over-performs on the year compared to the rest of the company, and does enough to capture 40% of the market, but he doesn't beat out the competition. After 6 years of similar results, you decide to fire him, and large portions of the team, to replace them with someone else. The replacement is as promising as can be, but he just graduated college.

Outside looking in, I'd tell you that you don't deserve to be the boss. That's all.

 

This is the relevant point. Is the organization run competently, or not. Whether in the lottery, or out of it, poorly run organizations ultimately suck for a while and well run organizations don't and have the ability to win.

This is a horrible metaphor. Not even close to apples to apples. There can be multiple - thousands, hundreds of thousands - winners in business. In professional sports, there is only one winner. That's not an opinion. That's fact.

Let me give you a much more reality based an example.

In 2014-2015 the Houston Rockets had a real solid team. They made the WCF! The GSW dynasty didn't full exist yet - at least not that we knew of. But the Rockets couldn't get past them. And they ultimately lost, but what a season. Farthest they had been in the playoffs in decades. So what happens the next year?? The team gets even more talent... but stumbles out of the gate. So 11 games in, the fire their coach!!!

SHOCK... HORROR... if this was the situation akin to your analogy above, we'd have to say DM was a horrible GM and didn't deserve to be the boss right?!?! That had to have been a horrible move. After all, they were only 4-7. This year's Rockets were 2-5... and 4-7, too.

No... it was the right move. They got plenty of heat, but we on the board all knew it was the right move.

Cause its not anywhere close to as black and white as your analogy tries to make it out.

Smart fans recognize you can't win every year. Even the GSW will go back to sucking again, eventually.

You certainly didn't see me clamoring for massive change when the Rockets lost to the Thunder, or blew HCA against the Blazers, or could only muster the 1 win against GSW in the WCF, or heck, even after the Dwightmare year. But that's a lot of years to be like, let's keep trying, especially as there are signs throughout that period. Then SAS Game 6. And so on.

Russ is similar to Harden. Rockets fans be like "noooooooooo!! harden is so much more efficient and not a ballhog, etc.". Yes, agreed, Harden is a BETTER version of Russ, no doubt. Absolutely. Not close at this point in time. But still, a perennial all star, MVP, team in playoff hunt every year, has gone to a finals and multiple WCF as a key cog to that team.

Do you think OKC would be better off moving on from Russ?

 

so.... harden still a goat or naw?

 

Again, you nitpick and miss the entire point.

I said 40%, which means if the winner is 51%, the other guys are at max 9%. That 9%, some can consider a winner, but I certainly won't. And now you're saying that's a winner, which is totally opposite of what you want, which is majority marketshare.

You want to rebuke everything I say without even trying to read into what I want to say, of course you're never going to get the point.

This is comparing moves, not a metaphor. And no, firing HC and going with Bickerstaff for a season is not the same as Houston trading away their franchise player. It isn't even in the same ballpark. There has been some coach moves that didn't work, but those all tend to be failed franchises anyway. But trades or losing a player in FA can devastate a franchise, e.g., Harden, Kyrie.

Again, totally different players. Harden has a lot less talent, but took this team to WCF twice and a semi only to lose to eventual champions.

Russ has a lot more talent, and can only take his team to a first round exit post-KD.

You also pointed out style of play, but they play totally different styles. Harden is mostly skill and shooting, Westbrook is not. Westbrook is all bruteforce athleticism, Harden is not.

Also, you only want to move on from Westbrook because they lost Harden and then KD. If they still had one of them, it'd be a different story for me.

Right now, Harden is a top-3 player in the league. Once you have one, you don't trade him away unless you can get a top-1 or top-2 player immediately.

And even then, you have to hesitate to think about salary expectations and other fillers on the trade.

 

I'm not sure how the % is relevant. In professional sports, if you get to 99% of the market, you still lose. Again, this isn't an opinion. It just is what it is.

I'm just making a similar comparison as yours. They may not be on the same level, but if we're going with your random business metaphor (which as noted, doesn't work anyway), the firing of the HC doesn't make sense.

I think this point is one that has to be really considered. All I hear every year after they lose is that Harden/HOU has a lot less talent.

Yet all I hear while we're "in it" is that this team either has a fighting chance or this is "their year". When Harden underperformed against the LAC only to be saved by his teammates miraculous G6 comeback, no one was saying the LAC were more talented. When the Rockets lost against the Spurs, who lost TP and KL to injury, no one was saying "well, the Spurs are more talented". And yes, last year CP3 went out, but the Rockets were up 3-2 and double digit halftime leads. And this year, INDEED, in my view the GSW winning was a 99.99999% given, but in the public's view, the Rockets once again had a real fighting chance. And the second KD went down, it went to, "absolutely, the Rockets should win this". At a minimum, the public perception was clear that we'd get back to Oracle for a Game 7.

So, does Harden have less talent than Russ? I don't know.

What I do know, whether favored or not, we end the season in a very similar way every year. Problems in clutch situations, clutch games with Harden's stats under-performing (in some years meaningfully) his regular season numbers. Just is what it is. This was actually as "decent" a drop as he's had, really, as I believe he ended up 35% from three, which is a monumental improvement from where he had been the last 2 years.

No he's not. This is HOU bias, and MVP results speaking. Regular season MVP results don't make a top 3 player always. Everybody in the NBA would take Steph, Giannis, Kawhi and KD today over Harden. That would put Harden 5th. The jury is out on Lebron now because of age and health, but its a push to me. Then there are a group of players that are younger that are not better than Harden today, but GMs would take over Harden today because of age and the fact there isn't a playoff stink on them yet. Then there are various folks out there that would likely take a few other players here and there because of the playoff shortcomings. Even recognizing those other players don't have years of playoff success either. The obvious candidate here is AD, but some might also prefer Jokic for example.

But beyond that, as I've noted many times, Harden could be #1 in the NBA, and it still doesn't change the end result. MJ didn't win rings by himself. Curry AND KD are on the list above. Etc. Via combination of play style, failing in the clutch repeatedly and regularly

 

Now you're saying the opposite of what you just said when you first read my metaphor. Now nobody is a winner unless you get 100%.

You're proving my point. You live on an extreme, and you want to throw everything away, just to get a potential 100%, and there's not one shred of a guarantee, much less a glimmer of hope, that 100% is in sight once we trade Harden for Zion. It's freaking insane.

I reiterate, if you were a boss, you'd replace a superstar with a college grad, just to hope that he can get you to win. You don't do that unless the superstar leaves on his/her own.

"Random"? It's called a metaphor. In all seriousness, try and talk about it rather than telling me my usage of metaphor is terrible. It's making me think you have no idea what a metaphor is.

In my reply to yours, I told you exactly why comparing HC replacement and a trade are totally different. Again, you can't totally devastate a franchise with a coaching move. If your team doesn't improve after coaching moves are made, it means that roster just can't work. On the other hand, you can trade away one player and kill your entire franchise. There were people who thought the Harden trade was a good one, and now look if they still have the same mindset.

Well, here's just one the thing we can agree on -- there were a lot of delusional fans saying that we were good enough to win the chip this season. Our off-season acquisitions turned out to be terrible, and mid-season we were still dealing with the aftermath of Ryno in Chriss and Knight, which just turned into a Shump. Nice FA signings allowed us to have some good pieces, but they were not nearly good enough head-to-head against GSW.

I knew we were worse than last season. Other fans could not come around to that idea just because we had a lot of forward momentum towards the end of reg season.

I don't think MDA asked Harden to take us home in the 4th quarter, I think Harden was limited by both coaching and GSW's double-teams from putting points up in the clutch. And our differences in opinion there won't change.

You brought this up to compare the help that Harden has vs Westbrook, and I really don't see anything other than people's opinions on GARM posts... That's just weird. What's your point?

I'm not afraid to say I'm biased. Head to head, I'm still picking Harden over Steph or Giannis. The others have an unbelievable roster backing them up to hide all of their weaknesses. Yes, I know Giannis and Steph both have their greatness aspects, but their weaknesses are way too big for me to consider them better than Harden.

Back to the real topic.... You want to trade away top talent for an unproven #1 pick. This means you want to rebuild -- Okay, is it even the right time to consider that?

My answer is no. Harden can improve yet again next year, and Morey can also improve this roster... Not only that, KD leaves and we have no idea what will happen to GSW.