Nah, for fans there is nothing on the line though. You could say fans are crow eaters. Meltdowns are pretty common.
Chokes happen more often than you think QUITS happen once in a while But to have a Choke game followed by a QUIT game is the stuff of legends and for the history books. Has it ever been done before?
You're catching a lot of heat but I agree with you. Some of these examples, like Nick the Brick, were choke jobs on key plays. Harden choked all game long. Some guys got abused by a superior opponent, like David Robinson, but they still actually played a good game. And some guys had tough games, like John Starks, but they weren't the franchise player. And most of these choke job examples were in really tight games, not horn-to-horn laughers like this one. For the stakes involved, no example named in this thread begins to compare, I think, with the abortion of a performance Harden produced last night. Not even Vernon Maxwell was this bad when he literally quit on the team.
I can't really think of an individual player choking one game and then not showing up in the next one(especially with it being an elimination game). The closest example I can come up with is the Lakers vs Suns(ironically with D'Antoni also coaching in that series). LA goes up 3-1, loses badly in Game 5, has Game 6 won before Tim Thomas hits a 3-pointer off an offensive rebound sending it to overtime where the Suns win, and then gets destroyed in Game 7 where Kobe mails it in. But that was a heartbreaking loss due to not securing a rebound. It's not like Kobe himself choked Game 6 away and then mentally checked out of Game 7. And recall that it was Kobe who stole Game 4 away from Phoenix(and putting his team up 3-1) with his heroics in the final seconds. Also, let's not forget that the Lakers were severe underdogs going into that first round series. The Rockets and Spurs were fairly evenly matched heading into this series and that was before Parker went down and Kawhi was held out of Game 5's OT and all of Game 6. This is why Harden is gonna get so much sh-t for this all summer and probably all of next season until he (hopefully)redeems himself in the playoffs. An MVP candidate playing so badly one night and then not even making an effort in an elimination game may be unprecedented in modern NBA history.
Like another posted said: a choke job presupposes that one was at least trying. Honestly, it is damn right depressing for me to post crap like this. As a staunch Harden fan, I don't even know exactly where the franchise goes from here. Now, where is that J. ?
Trevor Ariza WCF Game 7. If he makes 3 damn buckets we probably win. I know for a fact Morey blames his shooting for the loss. When Morey says "we should have won" what he's really saying is that Ariza single-handily facked it up. You can't get me TWO BUCKETS MF'er?!?! It's a huge reason why he's gone and Rox don't seem to care imo.
I'm grateful for this one, but: Starks game always resonates with me as a major choke. Definitely not the worst ever, but in context of what could have been, pretty horrible.
