Per our friend @The Cat ... He nailed it. Harden has to play like an MVP or we are just a team with bad rebounding, bad defense and some good shooters. Harden is the difference maker. Right now he's playing like a high turnove no defense of Ricky Rubio. He has fallen in love with the 3pointer and thinks he's steph curry suddenly, jacking 3s out of rythym on pull ups, etc. He needs to figure it out because he has to be the best player on the court for us if we are going to win. He can do it. He's good enough. Just needs to do it.
Just to follow up with @The Cat to make sure his point is fully represented (which I also agree with)
too bad Harden doesn't listen to outside noise so doubt he changes his game. It's completely up to D'atoni to tell him.
Is Ben Harden hater now? Seriously, some people were calling out Harden way back in January, and the overwhelming response on this board was negative. Turns out, they were right.
Well, Harden always goes through these stretches. Some of us call a spade a spade. Everyone else tells us we're "haters." This is just a fact of cf.
I would like to see him be more aggressive in the 4th quarters to close out games. I hate seeing him walk the ball across the court when his team is down 12 pts in the 4th. I can tolerate his lack of defensive intensity but the offensive intensity needs to be there every single night. I don't blame him entirely for tonight's loss, though. Anderson, Gordon, Ariza were all horrible. Beverley was playing hard but didn't have his shot tonight. Lou was the only dude who was making shots but the Pacers were exposing him pretty bad on the defensive end. McMillan out coached MDA tonight as well, he was able to force his style on us and MDA couldn't find any adjustment to it.
Yes, one thing that rarely gets talked about. Harden has a huge shooting discrepancy between spot-up 3s and pull-up 3s. He absolutely sucks at the latter. How can Morey not know this - or too afraid to bring it up to Harden - is beyond me.
I agree Harden needs to be better, but i feel like guys like Gordon and Ariza need to be more better than they are right now than Harden needs to be better than he is right now.. if that makes sense. Like I believe we'd be in a better position right now if Gordon and Ariza both got better than they have been and Harden stays relatively the same. Like think about it. Gordon, he's taking 9 a game and making 32% of them. Ariza has been attempting six 3s a game and shooting at a 25% rate. That's awful. But, yeah I agree with Ben still. Harden needs to play better. No excuses. He has a lot of holes in his game that can be EASILY fixed. Pull up 3s? Stop. You're a spot up shooter, James. Full-court passes? Stop, James. That's how you get like 3 of your 6 turn overs a game. I hate when players continue to do things that can easily be fixed. Also, for some reason our defense these past two games has just been... yuck.
Harden had 2 TO's tonight . His command of our offense has steadily improved , but it's clear he's wearing down a bit . I'd like to get his mins down and give him a few games off over these next 20 . He's got to be in top form for us to have any shot.
