Harden says he plays too much to maintain defensive focus

"You're going to have some lapses, you're going to have some mistakes. I'm not trying to worry about them."

Yeah, we can see that.

 

Too many excuses. If he regularly played good defense while he was on the court we would be able to win games with him only playing 34-36mpg

 

Sorry, we saw you maintain at least decent defensive focus last season, the cat's out of the bag.

He's playing lazy this year, on both sides of the ball. I don't like hearing him make excuses for it.

 

He has a point. He's carrying the team. Our defensive anchors should be able to hide him on defense such as the likes of Curry are hidden. Keep doing you Harden. Others should all step up around you.

 

He could have gone so many ways with this. He chose the worst way possible.

 

we're not talking about "mistakes" here . . . we are talking about defensive APATHY.

I think Kevin McHale said it best, it's not like you're logging tall timber out there.

 

He shouldn't be the one saying it, but he obviously does play too many minutes.

More KJ please.

 

Someone should turn the question around and ask Harden which NBA player is allowed to stay on the court for that amount of minutes despite showing no effort and playing abysmal defense.

 

Serious Question: If one were wanting to make a defensive lowlight reel for an NBA player... how would they know where to look to find footage? Or is it just sort of a "I DVR the games and mark when I see a defensive error" thing. I know there are lots of clips over on the nba stats page... but are there defensive vids other than just blocks/steals?

 

wasn't that terrible play in the pistons game in the first few minutes?

 

no wonder he takes 8 seconds to walk the ball up to the front court.

screw him.

 

I understand it.

Some guys just don't have a huge gas tank and get tired easier than others. I think that's Harden.

It's extremely difficult to give all you have on both ends for the minutes Harden plays. He plays the entire 1st quarter if I remember correctly. There is no way to give that effort on both ends (plus sprinting in transition) for an entire quarter.

I think that's one of the reasons he used to get his other teammates involved in the first quarter last season. Because he knew he could get some rest by letting them do more work on offense.

 

Sounds like he need less min.

 

Sounds like he's begging for less minutes. And he would be right. He isn't a generational athlete like Jordan or LeBron.

 

AND THIS IS OUR GAWD???

 

Garbage talk just like his "I deserve the MVP" talk

Look, no one expects him to be a lock down defender but at least show some effort and hustle. Just watching guys (lots of scrubs) blow by you play after play is unacceptable. I don't care if you play 10 minutes or 48 minutes, there has got to be effort involved on the defensive end.

This points to a bigger concern.

Harden's lack of focus, effort and just giving up on D has an effect on the entire team. I think players are thinking why should we give our all on D when this guy doesn't care about that end but only about how many offensive stats he is putting up and then he gets all the credit for us winning. Conspiracy or fact?

 

He is turning out to be a joke, and it's on us!