You realize that you continue to make this claim, despite every single story or video published about the matter contradicting you, right? I'm honestly not trying to be a d!ck about it, but you've been stating this as if it were fact for nearly a year now, yet have never offered a shred of evidence to back your claim, apart from vague allusions to you knowing something the rest of us can't possibly know. You're saying the whole "Harden was surprised when MDA suggested he play PG" story—which has been reiterated endlessly by MDA, Morey and Harden all year long—was concocted for what reason? To make Harden not seem like he's making demands to management? To make it seem like MDA's the one in charge, when the truth is that it's Harden? Sorry, but that's a giant of a stretch unless you have something to back it up with. Moving forward... It now seems that there will be some changes to Harden's role, if MDA's comments today mean anything. If they bring in another playmaker to join Harden in the backcourt, that means they'll sacrifice defense to do so because Bev will be relegated to the second unit. There's a delicate line they're going to have to walk to open up the offense without becoming a complete sieve on D.
My solutions: 1.Replace Ariza Lou and Anderson. Lou and Ariza are expiring , that will help get Anderson out the door, i would even add a draft pick, but we cant be paying 18 mill of our salary cap to a one trick pony. Especially if that pony ***** every time he touches the Toyota Center. PG is the ideal Harden sidekick , i would even add Capela to get him. So start dangling these 3 players and see how you can improve. 2.Harden made incredible strides that seem to be forgotten after last night. Keep simplifying want you need him to do on offense with a slight more push to scoring. Specify the sets and plays he mastered or really liked , to help cut down on his TOs. 3.Start playing dekker more at PF. This should be his position in the NBA , he has the smarts and athletic ability not to mention wingspan. Work on the shot and distribution. For his first year in the NBA he played real well. The experience will help him calm down because that was his biggest flaw. He always seemed out of control , not thinking through things just reacting. 4.Popovich exposed Dantonis biggest flaw. In-game adjustments. Iam available for hire if you need someone to man that from the sidelines morey. He needs help there for sure , we were too slow in adjusting to what the spurs were doing and it bit us in the ass. This was a great season really. Improvements all over the board from last year , but we have to keep getting better in alot of different areas.
For all the stick basketballholic gets, he was consistent the entire season. Since we signed Gordon and Anderson and appointed Harden as PG, he's consistently said: 1) we don't have the interior defense or rebounding to compete, 2) we turn the ball over too often to compete, and 3) having only Harden to facilitate does not allow us to compete. So despite his... abrasive nature, he saw the holes in our team clearly and early, and hasn't wavered. Good on him for that.
I'm sorry Harden is done in Houston. Probably Morey too. Even if they stay a year or two more. After watching the travesty last night, Les will want to intervene more and that's not going to end well.
I know what happened. Sorry. Harden wanted this role. We did not acquire another playmaker. MDA went with it. What is told to the public is not always all the truth. In fact, most of the time it's not the entire truth and it is misleading. MDA is on record in interview taking about going back and forth in his mind about how much time Harden would play on the ball versus off the ball. That's a public interview. I believe on espn. Maybe fox. I'm not going to take the time to look it up for you again. I posted about it last year after the interview was conducted and broadcast. Because frankly I don't care whether you believe what I'm saying. I don't have to prove anything to you. And I'm tired of going back and forth with the games. I'm going to post what I want to post of some of the factual information I have. And when I speculate ill say I'm speculating. Take it or leave it. I don't care. Just like I don't care that this entire post is one paragraph and I kinda wrote it this way so that maybe you'll get tired of it like I'm tired of reading guys like you questioning what I'm saying. But here's the facts. MDA has had doubts about Hardens ability to be the full time point guard and only playmaker from the get go. These playoffs only confirmed what he believes that we need another facilitator.
Ummm, Les intervening is a major problem with this organization, major problem. But Harden isn't done here. The one that continues to be on the hot seat, sadly, is Morey. Every time Les has intervened he's made decisions that looked good in the short term but wound up biting us in the hiney in the long term. Signing Lin, firing McHale, forcing us to compete for the playoffs last season instead of going to the lottery and trading Dwight for what ever assets we could get.....I could go on here......The decisions that Les forces Morey and the organization in to all hurt our ability to compete for titles long term. And then Daryl has to attempt to balance out those bad decisions. And Morey takes the blame for all of it. Frankly, I would not be surprised if Morey jumped ship on us if the right job comes open. I'm watching the Cleveland situation. If Orlando poaches David Griffin that's a job I could easily see Morey being interested in and willing to ditch us for. I hope that doesn't happen. That would be a bad sign. I'm actually hoping that Daryl and MDA can right the ship with Les and Harden. And it all starts with them convincing Harden what needs to be done here.
So what needs to be done here? It's real basic. 1. You have to get stops and get the ball back. That means better defense and rebounding. 2. Championship level teams have to be efficient offensively both in transition and half court offense. And I might emphasize....especially half court offense. You cannot simply have an offense that is transition-based. Because when you play the best teams they're gonna be able to score the ball at a more efficient rate than average to poor teams. So if the opponent gets it going offensively you have to be able to keep them from establishing momentum themselves by coming down, setting up the offense and pounding them right back. The general rule is there is less transition basketball in the playoffs. There are several reasons for that. One is because playoff teams turn the ball over less generally speaking. Secondly, there are more game stoppages with tv timeouts that kill momentum. And thirdly when it gets down to the wars there are more shooting fouls and trips to the line while officials gander at instant replays. And finally, the games are closer down the stretch, there's less blowouts, which means more pressure and possessions and turnovers become even more critical. All these factors add up to this. You gotta be efficient in half court basketball to win a championship. While we all know that getting out in transition and getting early great three point looks out of transition offense is a very efficient way to score the ball the problem is what do you do when you can't get into transition because the other team just doesn't turn it over, they execute their offense and consistent get good looks at the hoop against you? Well, you gotta have great defensive resistance in the paint, you gotta make sure you clear the glass and don't give the opponent even more opportunities to score when they miss, and then you gotta come down and get great looks in half court when you can't get into transition without turning the ball over yourself. That's all logical, common sense stuff, that everybody should agree on. Isn't it?
I posted just as much in other threads. I dont agree about a coaching/gm struggle over Harden's playing role. Don't quite agree on MDA being a versatile offensive coach. Agree on everything else though. Ive seen when there's another ballsy No F's Given playmaker on the team like Josh Smith, Harden does adjust a little. I distinctly remember in playoffs last year when Michael Beasley took ball up the court himself and he passed to a CUTTING Harden for a layup, was almost disbelief lol, like where was THAT the whole year. Some of it is psychological other than skill. It has to be a legitimate established guy Harden respects
We had a pretty good half court offense this season and weren't a team that played with as much pace or in transition as you seem to think. We lost to a good Spurs team who simply out- executed us.
This board b****ed and moaned when Pringles was hired not because his offensive system was bad but because we were a bad defensive team already and we knew that wasn't going to change.
Going to get to some of that tomorrow. But I will make this point. We have to better our defense, rebounding, and diversify our playmakng without losing any shooting. You have to shore up the weak area without taking from our strengths and turning our strengths into weaknesses. And shooting has become our strength. So, for instance if we decide to trade Anderson for a player to help us rebound and defend then we have to make sure we've got a replacement to take the three point shots Anderson took. If we decide to trade Ariza for a playmaker we've got to have a plan to acquire another player that can defend and spot up shoot as well as Ariza can. Because you see that's essentially what we did last summer. We dismissed our defensive anchor and top rebounder who is still one of the best defenders and rebounder in the Association, and we replaced his salary cap space with great shooting. We fixed our shooting problems but then we attempted to cheapskate our way by replacing Dwight with Nene. It wasn't enough. Nene balled for us. But he could not play all Dwight's minutes and give us the rebounding and D that Dwight gave us. We robbed Peter to pay Paul. We got better. But we didn't patch the new hole we created properly. So any roster changes have to leave us without another weakness if we expect to compete for a title in 2018.
If we can't match personnel with Cleveland and GS, it really doesn't matter what Harden does or not do because it's all for nothing. We must add elite talent. Get bold.
