Just complete insanity. At this point I'm just hoping he's on a roll similar to this approaching the playoffs. And if he does "come back to earth" hopefully Gordon and CP3 are back to help out.
This is exactly right. It's just like when dream became unstoppable with the dreamshake. Harden is now the greatest player on earth. Better than LeBron, better than all of them. They know it's coming and they still can't stop him. I take back all the negativity I've ever said about him. He has made me a believer. I think this is definitely the year were all going to party on richmond celebrating once again...its been a long, long time.
Right I havent been able to stay up and watch as much of either team as previous years but imo especially if he keeps it up and brings the Rockets to a top2 seed its clearly Harden. Im probably spoiled to say this but I have been very put off by Gs development. Instead of improving his shooting he became even bigger. But what do I know.
A great player gets his team to the finals at least once; usually more than once. Usually they win at least one finals. You're right that he has been to the finals but OKC wasn't "his team." Nor was he the main reason they went to the finals. That was Russell and Durant.
A great player gets his team to the finals at least once; usually more than once. Usually they win at least one finals. You're right that he has been to the finals but OKC wasn't "his team." Nor was he the main reason they went to the finals. That was Russell and Durant. You're getting caught up in a regular season streak. Yes, Harden's playing at a high level, for sure. It doesn't mean he's an all time great, which is what I thought this thread was about. I like to think in terms of the bigger picture. Look at what Harden has done (or not done) in key playoff games, over his career. And, let's see where things are come May and June. Is anybody going to remember this....at that point? Moreover, the Rockets will not go very far in the playoff if Harden has to score 40+. Playoff defenses can shut that down significantly.
A great player gets his team to the finals at least once; usually more than once. Usually they win at least one finals. You're right that he has been to the finals but OKC wasn't "his team." Nor was he the main reason they went to the finals. That was Russell and Durant. You're getting caught up in a regular season streak. Yes, Harden's playing at a high level, for sure. It doesn't mean he's an all time great, which is what I thought this thread was about. I like to think in terms of the bigger picture. Look at what Harden has done (or not done) in key playoff games, over his career. And, let's see where things are come May and June. Is anybody going to remember this....at that point? Moreover, the Rockets will not go very far in the playoff if Harden has to score 40+. Playoff defenses can shut that down significantly.
Believe me, I'd like to see the Rox win a championship again as much as anyone. But I don't think it's inevitable. To me, this looks like MJ on the 86 Bulls. No one could stop him, but his team wasn't very good either. On the Rox, there's Harden and.....who else? This doesn't bode well come playoff time.
So Chris Webber, Steve Nash, Grant Hill, Dominique Wilkins, Pete Maravich, George Gervin, Alex English. etc. weren't great players?
Just heard on Around the Horn that is Jordan were playing today he'd shoot and make more 3's than Harden. This is a professional who is in the NBA HOF, as a researcher and contributor. A guy who doesn't know that Jordan shot about 40 points for his career less than Harden does. These old fuggers must get off on insulting someone better than they could ever be.
I have some further points on all of this but it seems petty to make them in the face of Harden's display last night. I mean I don't care if he never ever plays another damned game or goes to the playoffs or wins a title, as a personal goal, he has absolutely mastered his craft to a point where not a single one of the 7 billion persons on earth could have stopped him last night or any of the last 10 nights, not even the greatest collection of them in existence. That is its own reward. It's inspiring to watch on a human level. So first, I started writing a long reply than gave up, then watching Kenny's bullshit "for his era!" qualifications from last night annoyed me, so here goes. [Prologue] My thesis is that Kenny (and Chuck and Shaq constantly compare modern players to their own contemporaries, and they show a repeated pattern of overvaluing their own generation of players, based on perception, bias and memory , more so than any factual data. Kenny's assumption (and the general back-n-the-dayism of the TNT old schoolers and the same 80's/90's generation that has dominated every TV broadcast of the sport for the last 30 years) is a rebuke of everything we know about human athletic performance over time. In almost every single example we have, as the rate of participation goes up, the pool of talent goes up, the financial incentives for participating goes up – we see human athletic performance increase over time. This is objectively measurable in most individual sports. Usain Bolt would have destroyed Carl Lewis (or even Ben Johnson at his most anabolic) in a 100 meter race. Eliud Kipchoge would leave Alberto Salazar in cardiac arrest after a training run. The strongest men and women are stronger, the fastest are faster. This is also basically considered true in a lot of team sports. Would a prime JJ Watt have been deterred by the 83 Redskins Hogs front line? Of course not, he could have box jumped over all of them. Babe Ruth wouldn’t be able to hit a lot of today’s pitchers. Conversely George Springer would destroy 1920’s pitching, nobody actually believes he wouldn’t (I know there’s a well known qualifier that given access to modernity, the Babe/whoever would have been better, but let's table that for now) There are of course exceptions, but IMO they tend to prove the rule. How many great American boxers are there now, would they have stood a chance against Hagler, Hearns, Leonard? Maybe, but because the participation pool, at least relatively, has shrunk and the relative financial rewards for doing so have also shrunk, it’s questionable. Muhammad Ali was once easily the highest paid athlete in the world by an order of magnitude. Deontay Wilder is not close. So, why would they argue that basketball is some sort of extreme outlier? The obvious reason is that they’re emotionally primed to see their own era as more difficult. It’s fine, that’s human nature, but we should look at the evidence. First, the rules changed a lot over time, there wasn’t one big change that all of a sudden unleashed offenses. Second, a lot of these changes happened before, during, and after the heyday of the TNT back-n-the-day crew, so why are they even qualified to assess their impact from a first person perspective? They can’t even properly disambiguate what changed when. Largely in response to Kenny Smith getting hand-checked to hell by Derek Harper in 1995, the NBA eliminated it all the way to the free throw line in 1995. This enabled players to get the ball up easier, players like Kenny Smith 1981 – Zone defense rules modified 1991- flagrant foul rules implemented 1994- 3 point line shortened to 22, clear path rule, hand checking eliminated in the backcourt to the foul line), clear path rule replaces breakaway rule 1996 – illegal defense rule weakened 1997 – illegal defense weakened further, 3 point line moved back, restricted area added 1999 – hand checking limited even further in the frontcourt, illegal defense weakened more, 14 second shot clock added 2000 - handchecking limited further, one forearm only in the front court 2001 – illegal defense eliminated completely, brief contact allowed as long as you don’t impede, defensive 3 seconds 2004 – more handchecking rules/clarifications, limiting of blocking fouls and defensive 3 seconds So, there’s lots of factors going into the NBA’s rules that affected offense and defense, but as the league cracked down on handchecking, starting in 1994 – instead of things getting easier, the game overall trended the other way into grind it out slugfests all the way until D’Antoni and the pace & space revolution in 2004. It wasn’t a dramatic reversal, rather it was a gradual change and like somebody pointed out, it wasn’t until this decade that leaguewide offensive efficiency started matching the 80’s/early 90’s era. The league probably reached its nadir in either 99 (though that was the 50 game season, so it’s probably an outlier) or 2002. The ironic thing is that neither Kenny nor Charles was still playing by 2002 , despite all of their histrionics about how difficult things were, But, you never hear or see people talking about how difficult it was to deal with Eric Snow or Malik Rose. When handchecking rules were at their theoretically most liberal and the tactic was most employed, in 1993-94, offensive efficiency was the same as it was in 2007. Seems like the Thibodeau “to 2.9” revolution more than canceled out any benefit offenses got. Anyway, though, I’m going to return to my original post – Go back and watch Isiah Thomas in his prime. He would lull defenders to sleep with a hypnotic crossover. He had an elite first step. He could stop and turn on a dime. He did this repeatedly to the elite defenders of his era – Danny Ainge, Dennis Johnson, Maurice Cheeks, John Stockton – whoever. It’s like watching Kyrie Irving drive past guys today. They couldn’t just stick their hand out and stop him when he faced him up. I don’t’ know why anybody thinks this would realistically stop Harden, who has taken this same approach, put decades of refinement into it, and added elite pull-up 30 foot shooting to the package, in a taller, heavier stronger frame. There is no ****ing chance Dan Majerle is stopping him. That’s not at all correct. Today’s players are objectively better at unguarded three point shots as well. Look at the 3 point contest. The 3 point line (save for those 3 years hwne it was shorter) is the same distance, yet over time the winning score is way higher than it used to be. Even if you normalize the rules across eras, Craig Hodges wouldn’t even make it out of the first round, let alone become a 3 time champion. This is a pretty good indicator to me that today’s players are just better at shooting 3’s because unlike the stars of the 80’s and 90’s, they’ve been doing it their whole lives – this is a pretty logical assumption, right? Sure, I also think that modern players would laugh at that defense. Last night Kenny kept shaking his head “ I don’t understand why they didn’t double!” – lol. Of course Kenny would say that because in the illegal defense era, a double team was about as sophisticated as it got – the whole league was man-to-man. The Warriors threw everything they had in terms of schemes and personnel at Harden last night. They used tactics that were not even close to legal in the 80’s and 90’s. They did it with ultra-elite palyers on a dynastic team. They’re intimately familiar with trying to stop Harden, having had to do it dozens of times for the past 5 years. And they couldn’t do it. And in fact they almost never do it. Harden is regularly good to great against them. At best they can hope to somewhat limit his efficiency. And it's just a hope. I think if you time machined the Rockets to play a game against the 1994 Knicks, we’d probably see Michael Carter Williams playing the entire 4th period. The Rockets would have to re-sign Zhou Qi to keep the score under 200. Harden and Paul and Capela would absolutely roast the Knicks with pace and space, though really I'd sit Paul so that we can use him against the Mon-Stars. It would be like th Rockets vs. a bad Grizzlies team. The Rockets would score a ton of points, the Knicks would fall hopelessly behind. No chance at all. No hand check from Derek Harper is going to stop it just like Usain Bolt would waste Leroy Burrell, the Astros would destroy the '27 Yankees, and the Kansas City Chiefs would score 50 points on the 86 Bears. I don’t even want to bother to look it up, cause I’ve spent too long on this already, I’m sure a lot of today’s coaches would argue this. Mike D’Antoni would be a good candidate. He was putting up huge points while coaching the Nuggets in the 90’s despite the supposedly tougher defenses.
and you are getting caught up in the refs messing up with the outcome of the games and having multiple allstars for teammates
You are being dismissive and probably trolling. The Rockets wouldn't get to the playoffs if Harden hasn't gotten them there. Harden is carrying a team of scrubs with all of the help being injured. But he's getting his other teammates involved as well. Because this isn't the playoffs doesn't make Harden's run less historical. Records are for the regular season. The Playoffs are for cementing legacies and highlights that people will remember. But I think it is wrong for Rockets fans to not enjoy this magical time to be a Rockets fan. We are lucky to be able to see such an outstanding run by a talent that stands out among the all-time greats. These numbers will not be able to be achieved every single game of a single 7 game series. Teams have time to prepare and adjust and can focus on only one team for those 7 games. But there will be times where Harden will have the chance to make the difference in the playoffs. Whether or not he does that, doesn't diminish the amazing run that he is currently showing to the league.
