So recently I've been seeing a lot of articles that refer to James as a legit go-to closer. Apparently he ranks in the top 3 in the league in points in the clutch? As a Rockets fan who's witnessed way too many games slip away in the clutch, lots of it probably due in part to Harden isolation, is this a change of the tide? Or am I just missing something...
The Rockets have let teams back in the game in the 4th quarters but have only lost 3 games after leading going into the 4th. Harden is a big reason for that.
Games slip away because you can't win every game. Trying to blame it on "Harden's isolation" is fairly silly.
Here are his stats in clutchtimes if you really wanna know. http://stats.nba.com/playerStats.ht...dtype=clutch&MeasureType=Base&PerMode=PerGame I'm a bit lazy to check all the stats out. So you go ahead and check them for yourself or someone else do it for you. Cheers
They've lost what, 3 games when they went into the 4th quarter with a lead? I know one was at Dallas... can't think of the other 2. Yes, this team does have a propensity to lose leads. That's not all on Harden. He still remains this team's best offensive option in crunch time. He's really the only guy out there who has the ability to create his own shot, he's a great FT shooter, and he can hit an open 3 (although his % this year is not great... but not all of those 3's were open, or necessarily in the flow of the offense).
Sick of this nonsense about 'Harden-iso' blah blah. The fact of the matter is that Harden is our most talented scorer, he's a legit triple threat, can get to the line, bucket, shoot the ball and basically get his own shot at any time. People obviously aren't even watching games where we're down by 30-44 or whatever and then Harden just wills us back into it. He's in his second year as a starter and he's still ironing out things offensively. You NEED players that you can just give them the ball and let them go to work. That imo is what distinguishes a star from a superstar, someone who has that built in ability to take their man 1 one 1.
Clutchfans the only place you can be a top 2 4th quarter scorer on a team in the 3 seed but still not be clutch
I guess they need to find something new to complain about now that Harden's defense has improved to an acceptable level.
what are you showing? I know you can filter the stats and such on nba.com, but what are you filtering?
C'mon guys, don't be too hard on the OP. I'm also wondering how our guys are doing in clutchtimes, but I'm too lazy right now to look it up.
Come clutch time, the ball should be trusted in the hands of Durant, Melo, LBJ, Irving, Lillard (yee), and yes, most definitely, James Harden.
That's the top 3 players in the NBA in points per game within the last 5 minutes of a game that's within 5 points, which is what NBA.com's stats section defines as "Clutch time".
It also disproves the theory that he just jacks up ISO 3s at the end of games, since he takes less than Lebron or Kyrie do.
