Now you are just stretching it. He doesn't get "Torched" , whenever people call out his D it isn't specifically just his man, its that he gives up after a posession where there is a missed call or he falls down. Tonight you can't really fault him (even though I really have) due to the whole team being tired and him getting in foul trouble early. Your analogy is terrible , he is not approaching K-mart levels of D, because K-mart was completely incapable of playing good D. Having to carry a big offensive load gases you, but he still needs to give more of an effort. You are grossly dramatizing it.
While I agree with a lot of points in this thread, I have to say I think the Rockets aren't close to making the playoffs without Harden. We traded away all of our key players from last year and didn't make it, this was supposed to be a rebuilding year before we got Harden. I do think he should try harden on D, but I can say that about a lot of Rockets players.. Harden gets more criticism because he is the best player.
This isn't even the full story either. My biggest grip with Harden on D is that he doesn't even try to funnel his man on help D. When a player (old man Andre Miller for example) beats you off the dribble Harden just gives up. Another thing he does is he dies when he is screened. He just gives up, doesn't try hard enough to fight around it. Harden's D is bad & gets even worse when foul calls don't go his way. Like he ball watches so much as well. Denver was purposefully taking advantage of his poor defense tonight.
Sort of, he gets criticism from me because I expect him to lead and be the best player, and if he is not going to even TRY on defense, he is open to criticism. Scoring is not enough, you have to play both ends, Harden does not. DD
Defense is one half the game, and Defense wins championships. If the players don't see their Leader put any effort on D, they might do the same thing. All Harden needs to do is work on his D during the offseason.
Defensive xRAPM up to all-star game shows Harden's D is on the same level as KMart. (-0.9/100 possessions) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...Q3MxN29teWJkRXByQ0theUZnM2c&usp=sharing#gid=0 I personally would give him a pass. -0.9 is below average but some really exaggerated his deficiency. When Rockets win, no one will notice his D but once Rockets lose, fans will certainly scrutinize his D. Harden was clearly tired by the 3rd Q. All his miss-shots were all short. He just didnt have his usual lift on his legs. I guess a valid argument would be: Do you want Harden to be less affective on offense, just to spend a little more energy on D?
DEN loss showed how team performs with less than effective Harden playing. We got outplayed. And that we need a superstar big, whether C or PF, to partner with him and Lin. Because none of our bigs could make any headway in the paint, Harden stopped driving into the lane. He was already being doubled at the top, but he tried a few times to drive and drop the ball off to our bigs. Misses or TOs. Smart of him to ease up on the effort late in the 3rd
Harden gets a lot of points on offense as well as give up a lot of points on defense. The team often stuck on score even when Harden did made his beautiful stats. For defense, the whole tem needs to do it. One person is lazy. We end up 4 guarding 5. It' will be a very serious problem when we get to the first round of playoff.
WHERES the logic in this? perhaps DEN loss showed we are better off without harden... see what i mean? 1 no harden we beat clippers 2 harden plays we blownout by DEN
Where's the logic in this? 1. No Harden and we get blown out by the Clippers back in February 2. Harden plays and we he hits a game winner vs. the Spurs We could do this all day....
A definite NO We need every player we have. Even when Delfino is out, it hurts our chances of winning He just needs to learn how to play defense, play team ball, put a bit more effort on the intangibles and we will be ok
Harden is not a good defensive player. But kids, MOST players will sound worse than they are if you scrutinize their every move for every defensive lapse. Harden gets dog piled on for a variety of reasons. Some is deserved, some is scrutiny of a superstar... and some is fans with an agenda, and some is knee-jerk frustration from ignorance. He's not good defensively, and he's worn out from a season of forty minutes a game. I'd like to see him play five fewer minutes and work on conditioning this off season. You'll be amazed by how much better he'll be on defense then. The Rockets are vastly better off, now and in the future, with James Harden. They will ship out Lin, Parsons, or any other player out the door before they let go of him. AND THEY ARE RIGHT to prioritize that way.
I completely agree with you. I will also continue to criticize him if he doesn't figure it out this off season and comes back the same way the next year.
and this is exactly what proves he has no such a great impact as usually percieved...except perhaps by means of placebo or intangibles:grin:
