from all the above essay this stands out the most Two different things and a complete and utter big misunderstanding. Development vs how an already developed player is. Developmet for Kawhi has already happened and is still happening but right now as is he is top 3 player and the best defender in the league. You want to claim that if he joined the rockets he wouldn't be an elite defender who would cover for others because he wouldn't be in the spurs system? He would immediately lose all his skills his shooting everything. oK Whatever. You can keep with your delusions that Harden's lack of defence and concistency in effort doesn't matter and doesn't affect the team defence. That his horrendous transition defence doesnt' cost points. That his lack of playing off the ball doesn't matter because oh Lawson got his shot... It's impossible to communicate with such a homeristic view who thinks that Kawhi would magically lose his skills if he joined the Rockets and would not be able to make the other players better without Pop.
oh ofcourse the HOF troll shows his ugly head by making one more post without any content. LMAO. Look at the poll little troll. See who wins and who gets owned. Player only fans like yourself.
I wouldn't! We've seen what Harden is capable of and he's still vary young! He needs to grow his ass up real freaking quick, but he's still our guy!
Wait. You realize that Kawhi didn't come into the league as a shooter? Right? It's not a skill he had, it developed thanks to a will yes but also a coach. You can't master something without the help of a teacher. Actually, I just said that Kawhi would STILL be an elite defender because that's his skillset, it's why he was drafted lol. I've said over and over again, a great defender can't shine on a bad defensive team. He can't cover for teammates when he's out of position to cover for them in the first place. That play was an example of that. DWIGHT was out of position to cover for a dunk. You understand now? As great a defender Dwight is, he's often out of position to even defend the paint. I think it's more of a delusion to think that Kawhi on his own would fix team defensive issues personally. Lose what skills? He wouldn't lose his skills, I've never said he would. I've said he'd be out of position to even showcase his skills. I mean Bev is a good one on one defender so tell me why at times he was defending Draymond Green in the GSW game? You know why? Because the warriors switched him onto the mismatch and the Rockets as they do happily accepted. Teams get whatever match ups they want against the Rockets. Kawhi isn't changing that because that's a coaching issue. You can continue to say i'm being a homer (Look at my sig, it's a dig at HARDEN) but I'm just telling you that coaching has always been a major issue for this team.
Also I think you need to know what a homer actually is. A homer defends the team no matter what. A homer would say "We get in at 8 and we can still beat the Warriors!" I have no delusions about the Rockets and how much they suck, I guess I'm just a homer because I won't blame Harden for coaching issues, GM issues, and when other players make mistakes.
Here we go again. This year is 2016. Saying what Kawhi was when he was drafted is HOW exactly related to this discussion? If anything you make the opposite point. A player who developed so much and is still improving and still extremely young is a good positive sign for his further development. So how exactly is Kawhi's development IN PREVIOUS YEARS has to do with this year? Are we comparing Harden two years ago to Kawhi? Because then I would pick Harden over Kawhi. Someone like Bev is the starting pg of this team precisely because of Harden. Because Harden REQUIRES a 3+D pg with very low usage next to him, but guess what? Elite 3+D pg are impossible to find. In fact I know of only a single one who is almost elite at both categories and doesn't requires the ball . (who is not available). If Harden wasn't so deficient in his defence then the team could have their choice between much better skilled pg..and not be the end of the world when they missed on Lowry (one player). Let me tell you what would happen if this team had Kawhi as he is this year. First of all Lawson would be able to playmake with the ball in his hands . Is Lawson not good enough-because let's say his addiction issues has affected him, which btw is my belief- ? No problem because all the other pgs in the league would be a great fit here. No need to desperately look for the elusive 3+D pg. We can have an elite playmaker. Dwight wouldn't have to be out of position so much to contest shots because of the perimeter penetration. Our defence would be much better because of much less breakdowns, of having someone actually defending in transition who can shutdown the best of the best wing players in the league like Lebron and PG3 and Durant. Ariza wouldn't have to play that much, because instead of him the other wing could be just average or even just bellow average defensively like for example one Fournier. Harden demands the roster to have some specific type of players next to him. Players like Beverly and Ariza. Both of them are very hard to find. If Kawhi was here Bev wouldn't even smell from far away the starting pg job. You are wrong if you think that I blame only Harden for the bad defence. But he is the most horrendous of them all. I however blame his limitations in the need to have roleplayers with the characteristics of Bev to be the starters.
The thread is about Kawhi vs. Harden, obviously the Rockets have built their gameplan completely around Harden, even defensively all the switches we do is because Harden is lazy and wants to camp the paint for easy steals. If we switched Harden for Kawhi hypothetically, we'd also have to change our entire gameplan to revolve around Kawhi and play the way Kawhi wants to play since that's what we're doing with Harden. Kawhi became who he is because he is obviously very intelligent, takes his job seriously and has an incredible will to improve. I'm pretty sure he'd still have his will to improve if he was drafted by the Rockets and I'm pretty sure he'd become close to what he is today. I'm also pretty sure his stats here would be even more amazing because we tend to have 1 player carry the load.
I'm going to just make this post based on this video, to show that defensive issues are more then just Harden. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xHx4SmEZFM8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> 0:41 Spoiler Alright lets see... Beverly fills the lane just in case Curry blows right past Harden. Brewer...who knows WTF he's doing. He comes over as if he's going to double but as you will see he ends up doing nothing at all. As you can see Brewer is guarding no one for this moment. Dwight comes in to fill the paint and replace Beverly (But doesn't actually end up doing that...) and Harden for the moment is trying to guard Curry. Now realize, Brewer NOR Beverly has picked up Barnes who is a deadly shooter as we know. Alright you may think "But Jay, Brewer is going to rotate over right? At this moment you have 3 players guarding NO ONE. Now to Brewer's credit it's unlikely Curry is going to pass across three players to Barnes who is cutting any ways At least Ariza is on his man too. So far you can say this is decent defense, if Dwight just falls back into the paint...but then Harden gets beat bu Curry which is no shameful thing and Dwight for some reason had stopped at the FT line as if he was worried about Bogut getting the ball and hitting a trail three. Easy layup, Harden got beat but not one other player covered for him despite two other players being in the paint... 0:47 Spoiler This doesn't start off so bad, Green is bringing the ball up. Smith is stride for stride with him and the break as been stopped. Alright, Green stopped as I mentioned the break has been stopped. What is Beverly doing here again? He's given Curry room enough to set up a table and have lunch. Any ways, Klay is going to cut in on Harden and make a somewhat tough jumper. Harden was just beat, wasn't a lack of effort as the only way he could have stopped Klay would have been to bump him off his spot and that would have been a foul. As such Dwight should have moved in closer to prevent the floater but things move fast and that floater is deadly right there. Just great offense from the warriors. The next play is a fast break, started because Harden decided to throw it through a crowded break. Lawson is the only guy that runs back... 1:02 Spoiler Alright so Curry is bringing the ball up and Green is going to set a pick. Should be pretty easy to defend. You can't give Curry an inch of space or it's an open shot for him. Harden is in good position right here, not to close on Klay so that he can be cut on but not too far that he can't contest a shot. Ariza has to decide on if he's guarding Green here or if he's getting ready to help out should Lawson get picked. Green sets a moving pick that is usually never called and Lawson is eliminated out of the play. Ariza never did commit either way, Curry has enough room to do a backflip to get his shot off. Still, the moving pick should have been called. 1:16 Spoiler Well here we go, Lawson goes behind Green here and as he realizes that Curry is about to get an open shot he goes to cover him. Well...dam. Ariza realizes that Curry can't get any slither of space and rotates to him, problem is that now Lawson is guarding Green. It doesn't matter well it does, but it doesn't because Curry drains a contested shot. Although had Curry decided to post green that would have been an option for another easy score. 1:23 Spoiler For some reason Lawson is guarding Curry. This gets EVERYONE out of position. As you can see the players are in the paint guarding no one for a moment. Their alarms are up that Lawson needs help as their alarms were up that Harden needed help when he was on Curry. Harden gets caught watching the ball, which is his biggest issue on defense (Not getting beat man to man) and Curry gets an open shot. Next play is a fast break, no one picks up the ball and Warriors get an and 1 on Capela. Harden is no longer in the game now to be blamed for this. 2:05 Spoiler Well here we go, a pick play. You know what's going to happen here? The warriors get the switch. Lawson gets picked out of guarding Curry. Now Capela is guarding Curry, which means Curry gets whatever he wants. He wants a three and gets it. Honestly you could do this all day with any number of games and if you do you'd come to find out that it isn't just Harden giving up penetration. The team has screwed up defensive principles in all. Kawhi isn't fixing the principles of the team. Not on defense. On offense he'd be asked to do what every other player does. ISO and try to create shots for himself. In fact as a team they are 2nd in the league in Isolation plays. But they've been doing this since the Lowry years. It's the McHale/Morey offense of drive and kick. They all take turns doing that. Drive it in, kick it out to a shooter if you don't have a layup. It's why Dwight and DMO struggle for post touches because it's not in the team's gameplan to actually do that. They do it to appease those guys, if it works they still don't milk it.
There still would be penetration though because the opposing offense gets whatever matchups they want. They would just exploit every player around Kawhi. On the plays I put up and in a lot of that game, not much of that is actually them going at Harden to support the idea that he's the reason for penetration. A lot of it is players not committing to a purpose (Do you double this guy or not? Are we switching here or not) and being late because of that. Players looked constantly confused on defense. I'd excuse it except that even smart defenders like Ariza get caught in the madness. Not even Battier could save those guys. This is what some people are not getting. Morey got Harden to do JUST THIS. He acquired Harden because of his insistence of layups and 3s and FTs over every thing else. Harden is the Moreyball player. Harden wasn't pegged as a superstar when he came to the Rockets. He had to prove it. He wasn't a MVP candidate coming here, he had to prove it. But the drive and kick mentality of this team has been here BEFORE Harden because it's what Morey believes in. That's why he gets players like Parsons. It's a smart idea but the problem is we have one guy that can do it. One. One guy. Lawson can't drive and kick because he's no threat to score in the paint any ways. Lawson's game is the fastbreak and working with athletic bigs that he can lob it to like Faried. This team as constructed is broken. Replace Kawhi with Harden and it'd still be broken.
It's impossible to say how Kawhi would be on the Rockets and Harden on the Spurs. But it seems HIGHLY likely, if anythign, that Harden would be even better, and Kawhi would be worse. LMA was a career 107-109 defensive rating type guy. He started getting a bit better in Portland his last few years - basically by adding Robin Lopez - but is a 98 Drtg guy with the Spurs. Boris Diaw was consistently DRtg around 109 before the Spurs. With the Spurs, its been 105 or lower every year. It's 100 this year. Cory Joseph's DRtg has gone meaningfully up since leaving the Spurs. The Spurs have a stacked team, the best coach ever, an amazing system, and humble superstars and role players who just create that winning culture. Yes, the culture emanates from the top, and Harden being at the top is part of the problem. BUT... if you're comparing Harden, who you know, IS at the top of his team, on a team with none of the rest of what the Spurs have, to Kawhi, who has never been or been asked to be the leader and voice for his team, who was drafted into a defensive juggernaut of a system to begin with, etc... Well, it's a bit unfair of a comparison. If I want to make a fair comparison, I can only hypothetically ask this: Harden + Spurs Harden + Rockets Kawhi + Spurs Kawhi + Rockets The combo I'd take, with all else being equal, would be Harden + Spurs 10 times out of 10. But Kawhi + Spurs would come in second 10 times out of 10.
HARD WORK... Now that's a talent you can't teach and can make up for most of Kawhi's weaknesses. Harden won't be a good fit for the Spurs system. He'll be out of the rotation before you know it since Pop doesn't give a damn if you don't play any defense.
<blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned data-instgrm-version="6" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:658px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:8px;"> <div style=" background:#F8F8F8; line-height:0; margin-top:40px; padding:50.0% 0; text-align:center; width:100%;"> <div style=" background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAAGFBMVEUiIiI9PT0eHh4gIB4hIBkcHBwcHBwcHBydr+JQAAAACHRSTlMABA4YHyQsM5jtaMwAAADfSURBVDjL7ZVBEgMhCAQBAf//42xcNbpAqakcM0ftUmFAAIBE81IqBJdS3lS6zs3bIpB9WED3YYXFPmHRfT8sgyrCP1x8uEUxLMzNWElFOYCV6mHWWwMzdPEKHlhLw7NWJqkHc4uIZphavDzA2JPzUDsBZziNae2S6owH8xPmX8G7zzgKEOPUoYHvGz1TBCxMkd3kwNVbU0gKHkx+iZILf77IofhrY1nYFnB/lQPb79drWOyJVa/DAvg9B/rLB4cC+Nqgdz/TvBbBnr6GBReqn/nRmDgaQEej7WhonozjF+Y2I/fZou/qAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); display:block; height:44px; margin:0 auto -44px; position:relative; top:-22px; width:44px;"></div></div> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BBu8_FPH_kj/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">Final seconds, down 2, who would you rather have take the last shot: you or Steph Curry?</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A video posted by SportsCenter (@sportscenter) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2016-02-13T16:45:36+00:00">Feb 13, 2016 at 8:45am PST</time></p></div></blockquote> <script async defer src="//platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js"></script>
The best hypothetical question I see coming out of this thread would be: what would Spurs get out of Harden?
im gonna vote no on trading our best player for a slightly worse player who plays the same position as one of our other two good players.
Kawhi Leonard. I wonder sometimes if people on this forum actually watch basketball or have brains. Offense is just as good as Harden and defense is best in the NBA. There's 3 players I'd take right now over Kawhi Leonard. Lebron Curry Durant thats it.
I also believe Kawhi can score given more shots but Harden is more versatile offensively I think Kawhi will outdo Harden one day, maybe even this season or next season Defensively I do not even want to enter the conversation with Haren
I don't watch Kawhi a lot. How great is he at creating his own shot? Does he always draw a double team? Can he be an alpha on the offensive end? That is how I used to measure superstars. Now, I wonder if the league has gone another direction. If you look at last year's free agency, Monta Ellis and Lou Williams - two guys who can generate their own offense - were lowballed. Meanwhile, 3&D roleplayers like Wesley Matthews and Danny Green got much, much bigger contracts. Perhaps the league does not value creating offense as much as I always have. I saw one post that said Harden's weaknesses require having a PG like Beverley. I disagree. Harden's strengths dictate that. Harden is one of the MOST ELITE players at generating offense in the league. A coach would be stupid to take the ball out of his hands for most any other player. We see that this year. Lawson was great at generating offense previously. Problem is Harden is still exponentially better. A coach can't justify taking the ball out of Harden's hands. I didn't watch OKC that much when Harden was there, but I have repeatedly seen Scott Brooks quoted as saying HARDEN was their best playmaker - that's with freaking Westbrook and Durant also on the team. Scott Brooks had absolutely no motivation to say that, so I have no reason to not believe him. There just aren't many players a coach would prefer to have the ball than Harden - I don't care about traditional position roles.
