Where does James Harden rate All Time in shooting guards ?

yeah lets compare Kobe vs Harden single handedly carrying their respective teams

1 year post-Shaq Kobe

playing with Odom and Butler 34 wins 11th in the west

1 year pre-Gasol Kobe

playing with Odom 45 wins 7th in west 1st round exit

1 year post-KD/WB Harden

playing with Portions 45 wins (10+ more wins than Kobe who had better supporting cast) 8th in the west

1 year pre-Cp3 Harden

playing with Cp3 55 wins (10+ more wins than Kobe again) 3rd in west 2nd round exit

 

If he wins one ring as the best player on the team, I put him above Wade since wade did the same thing and Harden is a better statistical player.

It would elevate him above Kobe too IMO, Kobe won all his rings as the 2nd best player on the best team in the NBA, but nobody else would think the same unless Harden gets 2 Finals MVPs

He'll have to win 7 rings as the best player on the team to surpass MJ, so 0 chance.

 

this

Harden would have easily won chips with prime Shaq and that tandem could have won upto 7 chips

 

if Harden somehow fallen to 7th and GSW picked BPA then he may have 2 to 3 chips by now

 

Rings shouldn't define a player. But being the best player on a team that wins multiple championships in a row says something about a player's greatness. Here are the only players that have done this:

Bill Russell
Magic Johnson
Michael Jordan
Hakeem Olajuwon
Shaquille O'neal
Kobe Bryant
LeBron James

I dont think you can be the best player on a multi-championship team and still be categorized as "just a chucker".

If you want to remove team success completely out of the picture, how are you deciding which seasons qualify as "better" than the other? I suppose you're using some metric, given the definitive nature of your assessment.

As for Kobe vs Harden -- I'm on board with arguments that Harden has been a better regular season player, by the stats, on average compared to Kobe. But if that's all we're going on, then we're forced to rank David Robinson (perennial IBM award recipient) as a greater player than Hakeem Olajuwon because he routinely put up better regular season numbers.

 

Kobe was only arguably the best player on one championship team, the rest the Lakers had either Shaq or Pau as the best player on the team.....and that one that we'll give Kobe the benefit of the doubt on it was really close between Pau and Kobe.....and they were on the most ridiculously stacked team in the NBA.

 

That last sentence is a prime example of contrarianism.

 

It's not, I just don't overrate him like a lot of people do. If he was on the Bucks for his entire career, he'd be largely forgotten already. The ONLY reason why people pretend he's got a claim on being even a top 15 player is because of a combination of where he played, the fact he played on super stacked teams, and his flashy style. Replace Kobe on those Lakers teams with Wade or Harden and they win every bit as many championships and potentially more as Wade and Harden likely wouldn't have run off Shaq.

 

if we switched harden & kobe during their rockets and lakers years would harden have the same amount of rings as kobe? would kobe been a champion with the rockets now?

 

Harden is 4th at best behind MJ, Kobe, and Wade in that order until he gets some rings...Harden needs some hardware

 

Yes, it is. Kobe's career FG % is .447. Harden's at this point is .443.

How does that make Kobe an inefficient chucker and not Harden?

Plus, you're completely avoiding the defensive side of the equation. Bryant may have been overrated on defense from about 2007 on, but there's no question he was one of the best 2-guard defenders, and even in his later years, he was an above-average defender.

 

yeah harden needs prime pippen, shaq, gasol HOF players first

32 year old cp3 is a good start

 

Well, maybe Harden ran off Howard. And why didn't Shaq stick with Wade longer in Miami? Seems to me you're making highly swiss cheese arguments here.

 

can you break it down to Kobe vs Harden without any HOF players beside them

and Kobe vs harden with any HOF players beside them?

 

Harden is better than both Wade & Kobe but until he wins no one will agree.

 

maybe? even steve nash ran off howard

you're not sure if harden or howard was the issue why they didn't workout?

steve nash & and his own hometown ATL ran off howard

ariza, ego, ryno, mda, cp3, tucker, lmm, melo (unsuccessfully) ran off to join harden

 

Believe me, I don't blame Harden. Or Wade for running off Shaq, if that happened. Shaq was maybe not as much of a PIA to deal with as Kobe, but he wasn't that far behind.

 

I can see shooting percentages and I can say that one person's shooting % is higher than another. You want to get into all those debates about w/ HOF vs. w/o, that's fine.

But I'm not arguing necessarily whether Kobe is better than Harden, or vice versa. I'm arguing about saying that Kobe Bryant is not a top 5, or top 3, shooting guard. That's a nonsensical, ridiculous argument.

 

LOL, James Harden's career eFG% is .521, Kobe's best season ever his eFG% was .504

James Harden's 2nd worst eFG% for a season was .504. That means that every season other than Harden's rookie season he was as efficient, or more efficient than the best Kobe ever was.

How about TS%? Even worse. James Harden's career TS% is .608, Kobe's is .550, Harden's worst season ever (rookie season) his TS was .551

The best season Kobe ever had his TS% was .580, the 2nd worst Harden ever did was .598. Only Harden's rookie season was worse than the best Kobe managed.

I mean there's just no comparing the 2, Harden blows Kobe completely out of the water when it comes to offensive production.

How about overall? Let's look at win shares per 48 minutes.

Harden has 4 seasons better than Kobe's best ever season....and that factors in offense and defense.

Again, there's just no comparing the 2 players, Harden is hands down superior.

 

Harden shoots more 3s and draws more free throws, which makes him a more efficient scorer over the course of a season.

With Kobe Bryant, it was the spectacular shot making that people remember, in addition to being a great defensive player for much of his career (particularly when locked in towards the end of games). He had an ability to get a shot off, seemingly at will, in a way no other player I can recall was able to. And he was the best "tough shot maker" I've ever seen, a useful skill towards the end of a close game.

Does that mean that he gets you more wins over the course of a season, or an increased shot at a championship? That's really hard to gauge, even though some people pretend like the answer is obvious one way or the other. There are too many variables, and in the end it is a team sport and the impact any individual player has on that team's success is necessarily constrained by factors outside of his control. Fans probably overestimate the number of wins superstars get their teams, as a general rule.