Harden isn’t part of the handful of guys who manage to get better in the playoffs. Most would argue he is noticeably worse, I’d argue when you adjust for the defenses faced it’s not nearly as bad as others would have faired in the same situation. I think what makes it more glaring and makes his postseasons seem worse that they really are is that some of his regular seasons are really some of the best ever.
I will say Harden did better last season then the previous one. Harden has a bad habit of relying on refs but improved last season. I think he gets more pressure and effort from opposing teams in playoffs. Also by this logic everybody is a playoff choker, how many star players never make it to the conference finals or finals. There can only be one winner and harden has made it to the WCF. There are tons of stars that never make it anywhere Harden is just fine
is this going to be like that haren video that went viral because of CF and created a false narrative that plagued Harden his entire career?
I don’t think he is a choker, but there have been times where he hasn’t gone all out, guns blazing. He also has not had the talent around him as some other stars, which means he has to do more, which can wear a guy down. We got one season of cp3 at a high level, and it would have probably been enough in a normal year, but it just wasn’t meant to be. James will be bashed no matter what until he gets a ring. Everyone trashed dirk as well, then once he got a ring all those failures were pretty much erased from history. No one cares that he fell short or “choked” many times before. They just respect the run he and his team made and people will look back fondly.
Here's the honest rub: there's fun basketball to watch and then there's championship basketball. The latter is played by a select few players that make the right plays in all facets of the game. It's why San Antonio has struggled post-Duncan. I wish I could go back and see why that guy was such a championship level player. He was just intelligent. Like a taller Draymond. Currently Green and Kawhi are this. It's nutty that the Spurs couldn't make it work with Kawhi. He's just a championship caliber player. He's ruthlessly efficient and a hound on defense. Harden just isn't this. Neither was Paul frankly. Harden is obsessed with being "the man" and micromanaging the game and Paul was basically the same, just in a different way. Westbrook is also like this. I've just watched this over and over and over again and we've gotten the same result in a myriad of different ways. When Durant went down I knew, deep down, the Rockets would screw this up. And knowing that, I can at least say they'd probably have lost to Toronto if they made it past GSW. They just play dumb playoff basketball. They're so talented that they can get past imperfect teams like the Jazz, Twolves or Blazers. But when it gets deep, they've failed again and again. I think that they *can* do it, I'm just not sure that Harden and Westbrook want to do what they need to for it to happen. I.e. Get off the ****ing highlight reels and play great defense, operate within the flow of an actual offense and take efficient shots at a high percentage. If we get the same Harden we've had for the past 6-7 years, we are not going to win any championships. I'm ok with that. WCF/WCSF aren't bad places to find yourself. I am certain that we won't win if they continue to do the same things they've done and I have no reason to believe they'll do otherwise. If anything it's gotten worse because our owner can't stop talking and getting involved.
Here's the honest rub, I stopped reading after that point. Circular reasoning is circular. It made me dizzy.
Harden is not the problem. Bench is getting worse and worse each summer for 3 years. Where is the firepower from bench?
Every other superstar does not raise there game. Curry has lower numbers, Grek Freak imploded last year.
Did you not watch Steph end our season by absolutely embarrassing us in the 4th quarter of Game 5 and Game 6? That’s what I’m talking about. Harden needs those “F*** you I'm winning this game” moments. That’s the final level.
Watched Curry choke against Rap game six. Choked against Cavs. He had better teammates than harden.only reason for his rings
In this binary world of republicans or democrats, you are either a playoff winner or a choker. We as humans can't begin to understand shades of gray... Well, the stupid ones can't at least.
Dude, you're the dipstick whose bringing out some hoary "Championship Basketball" cliche like John Wooden's hearing aid stuck up Chris Broussard's ass. I comes here for intelligent ball talking stuff, or at least self referential meme stupidity, not Kenny and Chuck level **** minus the Carlton jokes. This isn't Arby's.
That could be said about any star though. It didn’t really affect Kawhi and co. The only other all star Kawhi had was Lowry. Harden had Paul.
He used to be (especially and most seen in the first year he was with us against the blazers). Several years show he used to meltdown come playoff time pretty bad. But even the most adamant of Harden haters can't call him a choker anymore. Dude's proven he's a legit superstar now, demonstrably so the last two playoff runs. Despite missing some clutch fts in a few games this year (most notably game 6 against GSW), he balled out hard against the warriors throughout the series, routinely scoring on klay and iggy (durant matched up the best against him), while making the jazz do the most bogus defensive scheme of the year (that they borrowed from the bucks). If only the playoff odds favored us more (if we were in the east, or we didn't get the 4th seed from all those final regular season OT wins), we would have potentially faced the warriors later, and faced the raptors in the finals, which I think we would have had a 60/40 chance against, and Harden would have won finals mvp, silencing the question of this thread altogether because he would have carried us there. But ... Oh well. No one remembers 2nd place.
