The Benching of James Harden by the Coach Kevin McHale

It's possible he was trying to send a message to mchale. "Find someone else to do the grunt work for you. Don't make me run around screens and chase reddick around. I'm your premier offensive player. This job is beneath me."

 

Didn't happen this time. Thing is, it was too late by the time they put Garcia and Casspi out. SHould have done this earlier.

 

LOL I am a Marine, so I already know.

 

Agreed

 

I like the fact that McHale benched Harden because Harden just could NOT get it going even after 33 minutes of playing time. I mean even Harden's free throw shooting was off . So far nothing to say about Harden's game except it was an off night.

 

It was a good bench. Harden clearly wasn't himself and his lack of defensive effort was obvious.

Dwight was back to his dominant self in 3Q - if the refs hadn't been awful, and if we had Patrick Beverley, this game would have been closer IMO.

I look forward to getting one back from them this weekend at TC.

 

The number 2 shooting guard in the league was owned by JJ Redick.

That's how you find yourself on the bench.

 

I hope this is not the case because truly great players play great defense and win championships. If Harden can't see this we have a problem.

Jordan
Hakeem
Kobe
Lebron
Duncan
Wade

Missing Beverly was a problem, we would have seen a lot more Bev and Lin together and Harden at the three but it's really not an excuse for Harden's lack of effort.

 

mcahle when with the bench. Harden was suxing, no defense and only iso one and done,

 

I agree. Parsons even with bad shooting games still seem give good effort. Now he lost dudley a couple of times, but he still managed to atleast run out and jump at the guy. Tonight, harden didnt look like he was ready to play. This wouldve been a great game to dump it to dwight, but the foul trouble took him out of the game.

 

Hey that happened when he was on the floor with a red HOT Redick.

 

About yesterdays game, Redick said the following:

"A lot of times I just come out with energy and that energy is not matched by the guy guarding me,"

That's why Harden's ass was on the bench. He needs to actually care about his defense. Plenty of fire power on this team, he doesn't need to be an only offense guy. At 6'5'' 220 and athletic, no excuse for not shutting down J.J. Redick.

Griffin added

"Guy can shoot the basketball. It's unbelievable. The best part of playing with him is he never stops moving. That's how he gets his shots; he really works for them."

Harden had no interested in keeping up with him. In college Redick would have 1 bad game out of 20 and that's because he would play a future NBA defender who would easily shut him down.

If Harden doesn't improve his defense the Rockets will need a lot of luck to win a championship.

O yeah, its just one game. False alarm!

Lin sucks on defense too, should be interesting to see Beverly on defense against the Clippers.

 

I don't think his play had much to do with it. We have a back to back tonight, and while we got within 10 pts...we never really made a run.

It's clear that we have to get Beverley back. Our depth at PG/SG is paper thin without him, and he is by far our best 1v1 perimeter defender. I think he would've set a tone for us last night so long as the refs didnt have him out of the game by the 2nd quarter.

The west just has too many quality PGs to not have a quality defensive option....

Curry
CP3
Nash
Calderon
Conley
Jrue
Parker
Lillard
Lawson
Rubio
Westbrook

 

I disagree. Something is wrong with Harden either that ankle is bothering him or he was in a shooters slump (Kevin Love had one last night too 0/7 behind the arc). I thought it was strange when he missed both free throws.

 

Impressive decision. It's not like Rockets were going to go 82-0. That said, I would rather have McHale benched Harden immediately in the first quarter and give Harden time to work with the assistant coaches to figure out how to improve his defense versus the Clippers sets, before the Clippers rattled off 42, and then brought Harden back to see if he could help bring the Rockets back into it.

 

I was angry the entire night. Just a bad game by the Rockets. It's not all on Harden. And I'm not so sure if it was all Harden's fault on those cuts by Redick because defense is a team game. It's the same way that Lin gets blamed when the other PG scores off a pick and roll and the defensive big doesn't step out. I actually thought that Harden was unselfish at points in the game offensively and generally made good decisions on offense. It doesn't bother me when shots go in, but it does bother me when players make bad decisions and do not play team ball. Wide open dunks were missed, which happens and for which I don't blame the players. The refs were horrible. A big positive though was Casspi.

 

BTW, at least one person caught the whole "assassination of Jesse James" thing...

 

Don't know what his issue is.

But I sincerely hope it isn't his ankle. Harden's defense and offense looked the worse last season after his ankle injury which he never fully recovered from.

 

One of the most difficult things to do in basketball is guard a guy who moves a lot through picks. You HAVE to get help from your teammates on screens. I'm not excusing Harden's effort last night, but a lot of you are on here making it sound like it was 1on1 iso ball and Redick was just taking him to the rack over and over getting layups. Clips bigs set good screens for him and CP3 kept the ball moving. Tough cover for anyone. So give the clips a lil credit last night, they had a good game plan and knocked down shots from all over the place.

Its the NBA, everyone is good. There will be games like this, it's basketball. On Sat it could be the total opposite between the same teams. I'm glad he sat Harden. Send a message to one of your best players that he needs to pick it up.

 

I'm a huge Harden fan, but his defense was nonexistent last night. For whatever reason. Also, every three that he shot appeared to be short and his form had no follow through. Looked like a lazy version of that AI quick release jumper. But all in all, everyone is entitled to a bad game or a slump. I'm not at all worried. And I don't see why anyone else should be either. It was just one game on the West Coast against a good team.