Is Harden seriously the NO 1 SG? All i know is if it were Kobe & Wade, they be picking Matthew apart. APART. Maybe it's coaching. Maybe he needs to expand his game. But what i am afraid of is dude doesn't have heart. And only time can tell.
I don't know if was because Harden was tired or if he did not care any more, but towards the end of the game he seemed out of it.
Jeeps... you guys. Sometimes. The poor kid played 21 minutes out of a possible 53. And his plus minus is 0. So let's say you are so pissed at him and scrub him out from the game entirely.... ie. not count any minutes with him in it.... It makes NO difference to the score. NONE whatsoever. You play the remaining 32 minutes without him and you're still down the frigging 3 points. I know Lin is the scapegoat for this loss and all but enough is enough. Who is to blame then, I hear you ask? EVERYONE. But if I had to finger someone most to blame, I'd point it at McHale for his stupid 8 player rotation. A fatigued player is a sub-optimum player. And if any of you guys play any sport at all, you'd know this is true, more so especially at this level.
Using Lin's +\- in a single game is seriously flawed logic. You can't just erase those minutes from the game. It would make more since to speculate what the +\- would have been with a different player playing in his place. Of course, it's not possible to do. But, you taking a +\- of 0 and thinking that means he didn't affect the outcome of the game is incredibly small brained.
Well. We can approach it the other way then. With him NOT in the game for the other 32 minutes, we went -3. So in these 32 minutes, we are removing the Lin effect from the game. And still, we make no progress. Note than I am not saying that Lin is blameless here, but the whole thing of blaming it solely on him is, in your words, incredibly small brained. I personally think that the game would have been affected if we'd rested Harden and Parsons a bit more by way of a 9th man in the rotation. As others have noted here, Harden seemed wasted at the end and I've said before here, Harden is the best player we have. He plays well, we win. He plays badly, we lose.
I do believe there is some tension between Howard and Harden. They don't appear to be on the same page and it did appear that Harden was pouting when they were going down to Dwight more there in the 4th.
Harden is the star, but he didn't play like one in this series. Dwight, Lillard and Aldridge are playing like stars, and that's the main reason we are behind. The games are still close is becuase overall our role players played better than Blazer's.
He quit on defense the entire series. You could have made an entire youtube video JUST from Harden's no-defense defense. It's like his defensive philosophy is, "I bet you can't make that lay up again..." If nothing else, this series should put to rest the idea that Harden was "saving up" his defensive effort for the play offs.
He didnt quit he just keeps trying to play hero ball when we have open players who can make better shots.
Going into next season, the Rockets new approach with Harden should be two simple words: Earn It. They can't make him earn the money, but they can make him earn the shots.
We need a coach that comes up with a better game plan, a coach that gets up on Harens face and pushes him to try on Defense, bring over one of the Van Gundy Brothers.
It's hard to blame Harden for three reasons: 1) Who do you think the Blazers game planned for? Who do you think the entire team watched tape of? They planned for Harden. They realize the rest of the guys just shoot threes and drive. If you stop Harden then you stop the Rockets offense because the ball goes through him so much. 2) When he gets the ball you see their entire team stop and pay attention to him. They begin to sag off their man and just watch what he does. The second he passes they rotate, the second he drives they react. 3) He is not the one making the costly mistakes. Sure, he is shooting terribly, but at the end of the games we are right there. We could have taken HCA back to Houston today especially if not for 1 huge mistake.
Do the other All Stars use that as an excuse? "I'm a max player, but please, they're game planning for me!". You think Gasol, Howard, Lebron, Melo, LMA or Kobe would use that as an excuse? If you're a role player, that's a legit excuse. If you're a MAX player, the reason you ARE a max player is the other team game plans for you and you score ANYWAY. Who is the guy calling for the ISO's and clear outs? Oh wait, that's HARDEN. What a crock. Harden gave up at LEAST 20 points. After his first 2 blow bys I started counting points that he was scored on... I gave up counting after he hit 20 points in the first half. If you don't count being a lay up coach as "costly mistakes" you need your head examined. Harden not only shot terribly in games 1-3, our defense wouldn't have been much worse if we had a traffic cone on the floor. If we can hold our Role players to a standard, than our MAX player should certainly be held to a HIGHER standard.
