James harden = 12 minutes of bad defense on video for an entire season. Wade = 12 in 3 Finals games

And did Beverley carry his weight offensively...? Did Howard play like a star on the offensive end on a consistent basis...? Has Asik learned to catch yet...? What's the play like at the 4 position on the offensive end...? Do the Rockets have a consistent point guard on the offensive end besides Harden who's the shooting guard...? With all of those question marks the Rockets were still amongst the top scoring teams in the NBA. Do you think that had something to do with Harden...???

And Sampson said on the MT show in a recent interview that he believes Harden should play less minutes. Maybe Harden would play better defense if he played 31-33 minutes a game like Howard and Beverley and had a lil less responsibility on offense instead of playing 38 minutes a game having to score and set up teammates on the offensive end. You're right, you have to look at things in context.

 

Harden is just a two year starter and a young player. You have to give basketball players time. This is not the NFL. It took Dream 8-10 years to get his game together before he could lead a team to a championship.

Stop acting like you know it all kid and you might learn something.

In another 1 or 2 years if Harden doesn't have his 5h1t together _ then you can complain. All your doing now is senseless bytchn.

 

BTW if you don't know... Wade is 32 with multiple knee injuries... harden is 24 with no major injuries so far...

 

The Wade highlight are both bad offense and defense. He can still put out good performances but he is so close to being done.

If I'm LeBron and the Heat still want to build around Wade, Bosh and himself, I would leave immediately. LeBron has to do every possible thing for them to win a basketball game, it's almost sickening. He's going to need to become better than Jordan to beat the Spurs.

Another argument as to why he should come to Houston. Let James and to a lesser extent Howard carry the load of the regular season, as they have both proven they can do pretty well. Then, LeBron can turn it on during the playoffs because that's were his legacy will grow or diminish. LeBron needs to be in top form in playoff season, not struggling to get homecourt in a weak east.

 

on Hakeem's 2nd year in the NBA he already reached the finals...

it did not took hakeem 8-10 years to hone his game... he was already a monster defender soon as he wore a rockets jersey averaging 3-4 blocks a game... he was also a monster offensively averaging 22-24 points a game. shooting close to 60% fgs. it took him 10 years to win a championship because after sampson went down the team took the next 8 years to recover...
the only thing that he learned to improve on was to trust his teammates more...

 

Do you mean Harden"s eFG% or his opponents eFG%?

Hardens eFG% is 53.6%

Hardens opponent has an eFG% of 47.8%

 

Who else was on Dream's team in his 2nd year and who was the coach...??? That may have something to do with it.

And you're just looking at shooting percentages... Some of the older fans around here who actually watched Dream over his career will tell you Dream's offensive game was different when the Rockets won a championship from when he 1st came in the league.

Young stars on young teams with inexperienced head coaches usually don't win in the NBA. You can debate history all you want but that's how it is.

 

NOTE: my previous post had a typo for Lance Stephenson's opponent's eFG% . It should have been 45.1% .

Sorry,but if Harden's defense is as non-existent as is being painted here then the results have to show up somewhere. If they don't then why are what are we getting upset about?

Yes he is on the floor with Howard and Beverley quite a bit of the time, just as Lance Stephenson is on the floor much of the time with Paul George and Roy Hibbert. Yes there are cross matchups.

Just to be clear, the opponent's eFG% that I posted is not just the opposing team's % by position. It's the opposing team by position while Harden is on the floor. While Harden is on the floor opposing SGs have an eFG% of 47.8%, opposing SFs have and eFG% of 42.5% and opposing PGs have an eFG% of 31.8%.

What I posted was the worst case (from Harden's perspective) and I attributed the 47.8% eFG% all to Harden. If you want to argue cross matchups then his opponents eFG% will go down not up since we are doing much better at those positions while Harden is on the floor. If you're going to blame Harden for everything then the 47.8% number is the best that you can do as the other two are much better and that number is right in line with most every other 2 guard in the NBA.

I understand that there's a ton of talk and posts about how we're getting killed at the wing positions and that it's all because of Harden, but if he's playing no defense as claimed then it has to show up somewhere.

Take a look at the eFG% of the opponents while Harden is on the floor...47.8% for SG, 42.5% for SF and 31.8% for PG. Which of those do you attribute to Harden? Are you identifying any of those as one of the biggest problems that we have?

If you're looking to fix the Rockets then you need to find a way that we aren't getting out performed at the PF and PG spot. That's where we're losing the battle.

Did you watch the playoffs and come away thinking that we lost because we couldn't defend Matthews or Batum? We held both of those guys below their season pts/game average and they both shot a worse FG% in the playoffs.

When we lost the first two games at home, what did you identify as the primary problem with our defense? Was it LeMarcus Aldridge, who averaged 44.5 pts/game on 59.3% shooting? If so, what did you think that we should have done differently? Did you somehow attribute Aldridge's production to a lack of defense by Harden?

In the regular season our two worst performing positions were PF and PG. Guess what happened in the playoffs? Same thing... we got beat at PF and PG.

You want Harden to give more effort on every play, fine. You want to fix the Rockets? Then ranting about defense for a wing position is way off base. That's not where we're getting beat on a nightly basis.

Do we give up some big games from opponents wing players? Yes, but so does every other team in the league. There's a whole lot of really good offensive wing players in the league. People here went nuts when PJ Tucker scored 18pts against us, but I didn't hear anything when he scored 18 vs the Clippers or 22 vs OKC.

I'm making an assumption, but I think that the majority of the posters here think that we're getting killed by Harden's man on a nightly basis and that simply isn't true. When Harden is on the floor the opponents PG, SF and SG all have an eFG% at or below the level of the rest of the league.

I'll save several people the time required to type the "So you think Harden is a great defender? LOL" post. That's not what I'm saying. You don't have to be great or historically bad, there is some middle ground.

Even if you believe that Harden is out of shape, doesn't care, doesn't know how to play defense, not very athletic, whatever...the fact remains that we don't do a bad job against the opposing wing players.

On a nightly basis, Harden and Howard win their matchup by big margins and Parson's holds his own. It's the PG and PF spot where we are losing the matchup on a nightly basis and that's where we need to fix the problems.

So, if you think that perimeter defense on the wing is our biggest problem then you're incorrect. On the other hand, if you don't think that and instead chose to rant constantly about something that isn't that high up our list of problems then you're not focusing on the main issues.

If you think that Harden's defense is really causing that much damage then show me where. I know you've latched to adjusted Plus/Minus because it's the only thing that backs your claims but that's a stat created by ESPN and it ranks Lebron James as the 171st best defender in the league. I don't think you want to take that stat as your be-all-end-all stat.

Personally, I'd suggest we identify our biggest problems and address those issues first. I don't think that some of the posters here understand what really is a problem and what isn't a problem. Seems to be alot of stuff that gets stated and repeated and blown completely out of proportion. There's certainly room for improvement in lots of areas but unless we address the major issues first we will just be wasting our time.

 

90+% of the time Harden plays defense could be put into a video. At least Wade's knees are an excuse.

 

its the perimeter defence as a whole. Lin gets blown by, Harden is incredibly apathetic and flatfooted and Parsons has taken a huge step back since his rookie season.

You can't expect Dwight to clean up everything when we give up penetration so easily

 

Lmao. That's definitely lazy defense on Wade. But Harden's laziness is on another level. Half those clips weren't even points given up. The difference is Harden literally let's guys go right past him and gets beat backdoor multiple possessions in a game.

 

What a terrible thread. This board has reallt declined with homerism and stupidity.

 

I'll give a break to Wade on some of those plays, but Harden still have some horrible lazy defense.

 

Wade trying to be Harden's new fan I guess?

Even the Heat are following the Rockets and getting torched.

The Harden way.

:grin:

 

What's the most reference point on this board since the end of the playoffs? It's easily Harden's defense. It's way overblown.

Fact is that wing players aren't our biggest problem. Look at the numbers. Either Dwight is cleaning up everything and still taking care of his own man or those guys aren't hurting us. Either way that's not our biggest issue and it's the "goto" complaint of a large portion of this board.

We're overmatched at two positions and that's our biggest problem and Harden has nothing to do with it.

Do you think that our defense allowing penetration was the primary reason that we lost to Portland? If not, then what was the primary reason that we lost?

We pretty much lost the series in the first two games and we lost those games because we couldn't even slow down LMA. Portland set him out on the wing where he could catch and shoot before a double could get to him and there wasn't much that we could do about it. He was allowed to play free safety on defense and not even bother to guard our PF while helping to clog the lane. IMO that's why we lost and that's what we need to address this off season.

Howard is going to be near the basket so his man will be in the paint, that's a given. If we allow teams to ignore our PF and drop a 2nd big man into the paint then we won't be able to drive the ball to the basket. That strategy worked for OKC and Portland repeated it with similar success. Unless we make a team pay for playing that type of defense then it will likely work for the team that we play next year too.

 

Watching the defense of Dwayne Wade and James Harden makes me feel so tired. It's like James has concrete shoes on out there.

 

In case anyone didn't know, the video now has 1 million views and made it to Morey

 

That video was so unfair to Harden.... I think one can make a 12 minute video of "bad defense" of just about any player in the league, who has played a lot of minutes.

 

I think this was just part 1 of a 100 part series OP. Find the rest.

 

There are 82 4th quarters in a season, it'd be a long video.