Harden has already reached his ceiling. He is very skillful, but he lacks the height and explosive speed of Kobe and Lebron. I think if he gets another partner in the backcourt, it will take time for him to adjust, but he will continue to get better. It's really too bad that Lin couldn't adjust playing with him. At times, they showed promise together in Harden's 1st year in Houston. A better PG than Lin, who can adjust playing with Harden will make us much stronger, and ease the pressure off Howard too.
I still can't decide whether it is Harden's game or the system that we rely so much on him on offense. Can Harden coexist with a play making PG? Or should we just surround him with better shooters and continue to let him create?
discussing the floor isnt that meaningful imo. ceiling,,, an sg version of lebron? you mean multiple finals, a couple of rings and multiple mvps? i highly doubt it. to me, lebron is a whole notch above harden, in both gift and mentality. its not even close.
And Harden's performance last night was much, much, MUCH worse than each of those you referenced. What is your point?
You don't think with Harden's talent, he cant achieve those things? There were games LeBron didnt show up in. Underachieved, etc. In my opinion, Harden's downfalls are mental. If he can correct those, he could have LeBron success.
My point is that individual terrible games are no more a good indicator of a player's future than individual amazing games. It's about body of work and, to this point in his career, there are far, far more reasons to be bullish about Harden's future than reasons to be bearish.
His next area is experience, he needs the mindset to force himself through adversity that only comes with it
no, i certainly dont and never have. gift-wise, lebron is like shaq or chamberlain, a freak of nature. achievement-wise,,, you really believe that,,, say we give harden 6-8 more yrs, he can get to finals multiple times and win a couple, win mvp 4 times, be in all-nba 1st team 7 more times, etc? hard for me to believe that. i agree with you, harden's downfall is primarily mental. i've said that all along. and mental issues are a lot tougher to solve than to improve skills.
The mental part is really giving him the confidence he can handle all kinds of defenses teams place on him. Coaching. We shouldn't expect Harden to solve it all himself. But that's what we are doing.
LeBron James, 2-18, 10 TO vs. Boston 2006 was worse, or as bad, though frankly it doesn't matter much. When you suck and get a 0.0 or worse game score, you just plain suck. Most great players have some stinkers in the playoffs. It's a function of being in the playoffs, punbro in haha-larity.
I don't know about ceiling and floor, but Harden was hugely disappointing last night. Shots will be missed, players have off nights even in big games, I get that. But his body language, his complete lack of urgency when the Rockets were still (barely) within striking distance, stood out to me. I can't understand being as tired as these guys are after 82+ games, but I think I can say I would give it 100% of what I had in games. Harden didn't.
Actually, shouldn't it be the other way around? Harden should learn to adjust his game to play with real, ball-dominant PGs. He must learn that his stamina won't last without turning over a lot of his ball handling duties to a PG. He can dominate the ball all he wants sometime but not all the time. Also he has to give up going to night clubs especially during the playoffs. He can do anything he wants during the summer.
I think Harden hits up drinks at clubs whenever it's a big pressure game hence his performances. He was ready to give up since game 6 in the Clipper's series....
