Full Highlights: James Harden's 37 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists vs. Knicks 1/3/2014

glad you're not a basktetball GM homie

 

LOL that quote where he said he tries to get his teammates involved early on and get a feel for the game before he goes out with a score first mentality in the 4th? that's a good and unselfish thing. that's the way a clutch superstar is supposed to play...

 

You seem to pull data from last season, which is irrelevant as every team lineup has changed. That's like saying Lin is going to score 38 again at will against SA or LAL.

If you have been following CF threads you would have noticed the trend in Harden's game, he always seem to have some kind of odd injury, flu or a mosquito bite when he's not having a good game. I really don't have time to number crunch but since it was asked:

He has scored 20 points or less 7 times, 9 points or less 2 times.

The 2 games that he scored less than 9 points were against OKC and BRK:

HOU BRK W (+19) 1 25:53 1 4 .250 0 1 .000 7 7 1.000 1 0 1 7 1 0 1 1 9
HOU @ OKC L (-31) 1 30:03 2 9 .222 0 3 .000 4 5 .800 2 1 3 3 0 1 2 1 8

The 7 games that he scored less than 20 points:

Tm Opp GS MP FG FGA FG% 3P 3PA 3P% FT FTA FT% ORB DRB TRB AST STL BLK TOV PF PTS
HOU @ LAC L (-19) 1 32:48 6 16 .375 0 7 .000 3 5 .600 1 1 2 5 0 0 2 2 15
HOU LAC L (-13) 1 37:35 4 15 .267 1 6 .167 3 3 1.000 1 4 5 5 2 1 3 2 12
HOU DEN W (+11) 1 35:41 5 16 .313 2 6 .333 5 5 1.000 2 3 5 9 1 1 3 5 17
HOU BOS W (+24) 1 31:24 5 8 .625 3 3 1.000 2 2 1.000 0 5 5 5 1 1 7 2 15
HOU PHO L (-9) 1 41:08 3 17 .176 0 10 .000 8 8 1.000 0 4 4 2 1 0 5 4 14
HOU CHI W (+15) 1 35:39 7 13 .538 1 4 .250 4 4 1.000 0 4 4 6 3 0 7 3 19
HOU @ IND L (-33) 1 32:32 3 14 .214 1 5 .200 5 6 .833 0 3 3 2 3 0 5 3 12

When he's not able to make his bread and butter move of penetrating the defense with his flopping drive he'll resort to shooting 3s, which he has been quite terrible at.

In the games that he didn't play, Houston won 4 lost 2.

Remember, he's "the Michael Jordan, the Lebron James, the Paul George" of our team and we're still able to win 4 games without him. It means that he's not as indispensable as we all think he is, we have enough resources to fill his spot.

That said, I think we all need to appreciate the fact that Houston is winning more games than we all expected, but more so we should be grateful for the fact that the rest of the league is sucking so bad as well.

 

coach nick actually did that stuff last year, the worst offenders for beating bads were jrue holiday and dwyane wade, harden was by far the best among SG's, the only 2 people who were better than him were not surprisingly Durant and Lebron (everyone is a bad to lebron )

 

This is the most terrible post I've seen on CF in a while.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wewbtvWj7xU

Do they look like "mosquito bites" to you?

The only bad games he had were games against the Clippers, Thunder, Denver, Phoenix and Indiana. All the other games were blowouts in which he was able to get some extra rest. Yes, Harden had some bad games, but so did everyone else. Dude is the 5th leading scorer and had more 30 point games than anyone not named Love and Durant.

 

the logical conclusion to that statement would be that he actually is injured those games and that's the cause of his poor play rather than he's "faking" an injury because he's playing poorly.

 

Poor Play07 and co, they just got absolutely wrecked by Flamingdts by using actual facts instead of hate.

 

Every Harden and Lin highlight threads must have a few haters. This is getting too predictable.

 

Harden had a great game and scored in the high 30s in back to back games. What would be great on Wednesday would be to see Harden have a game scoring in the 20s, T Jones get back around 20, Lin's perimeter game get back and him scoring in the mid 20s, Dwight's post game and touches back and him scoring over 20 and getting rebounds and blocks and dominating his position. Chandler's had a few so-so games, but he's OK. And maybe the real Cisco will show up, because I hope that's not the real one we've seen much of the season. There's been an imbalance of scoring/dependence on Harden going off and his shots just aren't always going to fall and other members of the team need to pull their weight and make things happen.

 

Cisco is only shooting 1% below his career average. He is an average three point shooter shooting below average. It will only get slightly better.

 

He has a point about the failed ISOs that Harden passes out of. Those don't count as FGAs or TOs.

I just wish the offense was more smoothly ran and we actually had plays.

 

You originally implied that Harden was faking injury or illness to avoid the better defensive teams. Here's the list of teams that he's missed games against this year:

Dallas, Detroit, Atlanta, Memphis, Minnesota and Philadelphia.

So I will ask again: "Which of those teams are the great perimeter defensive teams that he's faking injury to avoid?".

You just listed stats for games that he played this year. What does that have to do with him sitting out games in order to avoid a good defense? Did he miss games against any of the teams that you listed?

Yes, for the teams that he hadn't already played this season I did quote last season's stats...what else am I suppose to use? Just make something up...oh wait that's what you did.

Yes personel has changed on those teams. So in your mind is Dallas,Detroit or Atlanta, Minnesota or Philadelphia now a premier defensive team this season? The fact of the matter is that the games that he missed were against some of the poorer defensive teams in the league.

I see no basis in reality for your statement. Care to explain how he was ducking any of those teams? Maybe stick to the actual statement that I quoted rather than trying to quote stats for games that he did play.

Who are the teams that he's avoiding? I'll make it easy for you to stay on topic, your list of potential answers are Dallas, Detroit, Atlanta, Memphis, Minnesota and Philly. Those are the teams that he's missed games against this year and so those are the only teams that he could be faking injury or illness to avoid.

Are you actually claiming that Harden hasn't had injured feet/ankles this season? He's still gone out and played in each of the games that you sited. If he wasn't really hurt then why would he sit out games against poor defenses? Wouldn't he have sat out the games against the elite defenses? If you do acknowledge that he really was hurt then why would you call it an "odd injury or cold". Either way the logic makes no sense.

Is your big revelation that it's tougher to score against better defensive teams? Does that surprise you? Look at Lebron James this season, he's scored under 20 pts 6 times so far this season. Those games were against Chicago, LAC, ATL, Indiana, Sacramento and the Lakers. Is it a surprise that Chicago, IND and LAC are also 4 of the 7 games that you sited for Harden?

I'll let you in on the secret, it's harder to score on the elite defensive teams. Are you also shocked when we have trouble stopping the elite scorers from getting their points?

Harden's been under 20 pts a grand total of 7 times in 29 games...that's pretty amazing. All scorers will have tougher games against elite defenses and all scorers will occasionally have bad nights. That happens to everyone, but what sets the elite guys apart is that those low scoring nights aren't very frequent (Harden 7/29, Lebron 6/32).

 

1. 1st off I started by saying harden was NICE !!!!!! "Gave my props"

2. then Actually replied to a tweet from a MEDIA person that's a CF posted in the thread saying harden has at least 10points in 4th Q last 5games, "not his stats from the 4th Qs the 35game season" even tho those still were great stats he posted, I checked them out from the link "flamgini" posted &
and realized that he's very efficient in the 4th the season.

3. Do those stats change my view that he's been playing the whole 4th Q recently, has the ball looking for his shot almost every play with the GREEN LIGHT, Howard hasn't really been getting any touches, he's at the free throw line a lot in the 4th NO. Would I like to see a more balanced team attack in the 4th for to have guys ready for playoffs YES, but harden was great and he won the "this" game in the 4th and hit some big shots when we needed them & we got the win.

4. If you notice it's more people want to jump in and give energy to claim someone talking about LIN, or HARDEN hating, than avoiding all that & giving HARDEN props like I did 1st. Instead they want to entertain what other people posted. They can lead by example by just talking about the How great harden was & moving on, but actually no one was in even commenting until people started arguing stirring it up, I guess controversy sales.

 

That's not really a realistic scenario. Jones has scored 20 points 3 times in 32 games this season. Lin has scored in the mid twenties or more twice in 25 games. This season Jones has scored 20 in 9.3% of his games and Lin has scored in the mid twenties in 8% of his games. Neither of those things is a very frequent occurance and then you want them to both happen in the same game along with both Howard and Harden scoring 20? That's pretty long odds of all those things happening on Wednesday.

The much more likely scenario is for Harden to score over 30 (8/30) which has occurred in 26.6% of his games this season.

 

Maybe some people were hoping that the Christmas game wasn't a fluke and that they were actually starting to grow as a team.

 

That Christmas Day game was probably our best of the year so one can certainly hope for a repeat but even if that happened it still wouldn't meet the criteria that bws laid out.

 

Harden also takes a lot of bail out shots, bail out ISOs and 2 for 1 shots for this team. All of these count towards TOs and FGA.

 

The point was that they wouldn't depend on Harden would not have to break 30. Lin doesn't have to score in the mid 20s, but he could score near 20. Lin needs to score a little more, like he was doing in mid November. Jones can get into the mid to high teens or double/doubles like he was getting for a stretch and Dwight high teens to low 20s in scoring. But others on the team should get a larger part of the scoring.

 

This thread is just another of many that makes me really wonder why some people even join this site. As several people have pointed out, there are actual Lin fan sites where the bashing of the rest of the team and glorifying of Lin are the expected norm. Why come here with that garbage?