Harden was grieving; a candid sad beautiful moment. Reporter had to slid it in the news blurb. tsk tsk.
Besides Chandler, the person on the team who might be taking the news the hardest is in fact Kobe’s original protege. Harden is a player who could be categorized as somewhat of an extroverted introvert. To those he loves and trusts, he’s outgoing, expressive and charismatic. To others, he might seem distant, quiet, reserved. It’s just who he is, and depending on what side of the spectrum you find yourself on, you’ll experience him differently. But Kobe’s death cut Harden deeply. He cried before the Jazz game, as did other players. Everyone grieves differently, so listening to Harden summarize the week up and the ones to come, it was clear to see the pain still on his face, his sarcastic grin non-existent. “A lot of ups and downs,” Harden said. “Obviously, that’s just in being on the road for a week. A lot of emotion. Obviously, we had a tough week, but 2-2 isn’t bad. We want to be better but now we go home and try to finish off these few games.” Speaking of Harden, he just hasn’t looked himself in a while. Part of that is obviously due to the thigh injury he’s been carrying, but honestly, he might be finally succumbing to fatigue and a heavy workload, two things he’s been lauded for during his time in Houston. Against the Blazers, it seemed like he was just going through the motions. He finished with 18 points, but shot just 5-of-18 from the floor, 2-of-8 from three, and turned the ball over six times. There’s a huge, huge caveat here, for those who have their pitchforks out: someone very close to him passed away, less than a week ago. It’s certainly acceptable for you not be in the right state of mind to play, no matter how much you want to. It’s obvious the Rockets wanted to enact some sort of revenge on Portland, given how they were embarrassed at home a few weeks ago. But Harden shouldn’t have played tonight. He just didn’t look right out there, on offense, on defense, and probably not on special teams either. He just didn’t seem motivated. Besides the fact that his body is hurting right now, his heart and mind hurt too, and there should be some room for him to recover from both aspects. Heading back to Houston, Coach D’Antoni understands two things: his team still needs work on defense, and he needs to figure out the best lineup moving forward. The Rockets might have split the trip after the 125-112 loss to Portland, but there needs to be some serious defensive work if this team is going to maintain its position in the Western Conference. Against the Blazers, it seemed like all the talk this team has done about watching game film, communicating and being in sync defensively flew out the window. The mistakes were constant—making the wrong rotation, sending help from the wrong side, trapping at the wrong time, getting destroyed on the glass. Playing on the road isn’t easy, and there are games you can expect to drop. But for a Western Conference trip, against teams you could see in postseason play, things like this shouldn’t be happening. Houston ranked 19th in defensive rating in their games during the week, surrendering an average of 120.8 points a night. “This is one of those games where we’re going to have to watch film, and talk and be honest with each other,” Rivers said. “Call out certain things, and certain guys, things that we have to work on. It’s on everybody, it’s not a cause for concern. It is one thing that we have to clean up, and we will. You have to because the team we play next is a really good team. It doesn’t get easier on us. We’ve got to clean this up, and we have to play better basketball as a whole. The last ten games we haven’t played our best basketball. We’ve had games here and there, the Utah game, plenty of other guys, but as a unit, we just have to be better, more consistent. Start putting this together. On the other end, D’Antoni would like some consistency. Most of that falls on him, as he searches for the right starting lineup. D’Antoni is someone who likes to use the regular season as his canvas, painting different pictures and seeing the ones he likes, and the ones he doesn’t like. Injuries have played a part in delaying that process, but that won’t delay his job for the entire season “It’d be nice,” D’Antoni said on finding lineup consistency. “But to become more consistent you just gotta play better. We went through a period where we just didn’t play very well. It happens, but having them together and being able to go for a while, I think it’ll help.” So far this season, D’Antoni has started McLemore, House, and Gordon at the small forward slot. Against the Blazers, Gordon got the nod. Could it have been to his 50-point outburst against Utah, in some award-giving fashion? Possibly. But D’Antoni has been fascinated with three-guard lineups for a while now and wants to get Gordon some more touches as well as aid in his recovery and spread his minutes out. Rockets coaches want to mirror Gordon’s minutes with the backcourt, almost in a three-guard stagger. At all times, Gordon should share the court with either Westbrook or Harden. “It’s mostly for Eric’s health,” D’Antoni said. “He’s gonna play 30, 32 minutes. If you don’t start him, there are about 6 minutes when you start the game that he’s fresh and he’s not playing, and there are 6 minutes during the second half where he’s fresh and sitting over on the bench. So he actually plays a 36-minute game if you do that. We’ll he’s playing like 32 minutes, playing 12 minutes in a row when he’s getting tired. It’s a better rotation for him.” For what it’s worth, Houston’s most-common used lineup—Harden/Westbrook/House/Tucker/Capela—still posts a defensive rating of 100.9 in 356 minutes together, even though their offensive numbers have taken a hit. Their offensive rating of 108.5 ranks in the bottom four of the 12 lineups that have played at least 300 minutes together around the league. You could chalk up a big part of that to Harden’s shooting slump, but the fact remains that those five together is Houston’s best bet moving forward. In this case, you can bring Gordon and McLemore off the bench, ensuring your shooting doesn’t take a hit. The only task then becomes finding more shots and touches for Gordon in the second unit. He had an off shooting night against Portland—8 points on 2-for-10 shooting—but those shots didn’t come anything like in Utah. He didn’t play the final five minutes of regulation, being subbed out for McLemore. Another solution is continuing with the small-ball experiment. Gordon looked great when Houston downsized—will we see more small-ball lineups? “I thought we got a lot of open shots,” D’Antoni said. “Bench made them but Eric [Gordon] wasn’t on and P.J. Tucker wasn’t on, but I don’t think the small ball hurt us. Because they kind of beat us when we weren’t there.”
I was surprised that Harden hadn't responded about Kobe yet. Harden grew up in LA during Kobe's prime and they played quite a few summer leagues against each other.
He and westbrook are unusually quiet about it, considering they are from LA. My guess is that Harden could be a bit depressed, Nipsy died a while ago and now Kobe he could be kind of unmotivated for any activity. Westbrook on the other hand seems like he is the kind of guy that uses the grief as motivation. Just different ways to tackle the issue.
Rarely does Harden acknowledge opponents in any significant way. https://solecollector.com/news/2015/12/james-harden-wears-adidas-crazy-kobe-1-silver
