It's silly to make Harden the victim solely by claiming he has to create so much for his team. He utterly failed and was totally ineffective off the ball, he looked like he was in his rookie season. He was actually a net negative to the team off the ball when we tried to get him off it early in the season. That was and is his failure, a shameful one for a player of his stature. Harden carries a heavy offensive load, and he's one of the best at it. He better be because he is possibly the worst player in the league when he doesn't have the ball. I'm not exaggerating. If Harden didn't have the ball in his hands, he wouldn't make an NBA roster. You can't say the same about Curry, Durant, Westbrook, Lebron, etc. What would James Harden do on a team if he didn't have the ball? Is he going to get open? Set picks? Play defense? Cut to the basket? Provide leadership? Jump for loose balls? He's not going to get your Draymond-like or Divac-like assists where he spots things in an instant and gets you an easy bucket. He would be a Ryan Bowen without the energy and willingness to help teammates. It just means we have to design the team with 3 & D players at the 1, 3 and 4 spot and all over the bench. Garbage men at the 5 just to clean up the boards and set picks. Let's see if that will work in today's NBA, right? Riiiight. Harden is an all-world offensive player, but he has to improve in other areas if we are going to be allowed to build a team that can win today and tomorrow's NBA. What Harden needs in order to be succesful is exactly what Lebron left behind because he knew it wouldn't work. Same with Dwight actually. I can't remember the last time a team in the NBA Finals had a worse defensive player than Harden starting. Are we good enough to be the first to overcome that? I wish we were. I really do. I hope we get Durant or a couple of elite catch and shoot guys. We need a Chris Bosh type player at the 4, and a Mike Conley at the 1. That's no small feat. Or Harden can work on his defensive focus, his fitness and movement off the ball. That would save a lot of money, a lot of time, and bring us closer to being a complete team.
I agree 100%, but it's too simplistic to pin this all on Harden. We have ZERO scheme, which means when anyone doesn't have the ball they basically stand and watch the ball. So whilst Harden is responsible for being lethargic off ball, this is also a failure of our supposed scheme, lack of talented role players and our coaching staff (or lack of).
Alley oop was bad... then tried to blame it on Dwight.. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://cdn.streamable.com/video/mp4-mobile/720q.mp4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Won't work. Surround him with the best 3&D players in the league and it still won't work. Because the best 3&D players CANNOT turn the opponent over enough to offset all Hardens turnovers. The reason why we have acquired and play players like Bev, Ariza, and Brewer around Harden is because they are defensive turnover hawks. Each of those players creates extra possessions and shots by stealing the basketball from the opponent and drawing offensive fouls from the opponent. They are some of the best in the business at possession/shot differential. But they can't even make up for all Hardens turnovers. Additionally Hardens excessive turnovers leave our defense in an unwinnable position. We are in transition defense as much if not more than the worst teams in the Association. Being in transition defense so much is s recipe for total failure. The ONLY solution for Harden and our team to become a true championship contender is for us to sceptre a truly great playmaker/creator that: 1. Takes care of the basketball 2. Creates wide-open looks for Harden and Dwight at a phenomenal rate. 3. Plays great defense and turns the opponent over and tilts the transition game significantly in our favor by having us in transition offense far more than we are in transition defense.
Did you even read the post you were replying to? Poster clearly implied Harden cannot and/or is unwilling to play off the ball and you reply advocating getting someone who would basically push Harden off the ball.
I mean...yes, he needs to play good offense to offset his defense, no doubt, but he also needs to play offense like that to offset the uselessness of about 4 or 5 of his teammates on any given night.
I'm not making the same argument as DD. I think Harden has elite pg skills and I'm ok with high turnover rate on high usage. But sometimes it's too high, like this year. Easily career highs in all turnover metrics. Not close. Also the kind of turnovers that lead to automatic 2s. Those are absolute killers. See the nylon calculus article on first page as to how damaging these are. These feed into his low ortg (for him) and bad plus minus numbers for the year. I think it stems from him being out of shape still and a step slow. Yes he played better second half but still 4 assists and 5 turnovers is not typical MVP Harden.
Of course I read it. NEWSFLASH: Unless and until Harden is willing to accept a primary playmaker and he himself agree to be the secondary playmaker we will not win a championship. Harden CAN play off the ball and he WILL BE AN EVEN MORE EFFICIENT DEVASTATING OFFENSIVE FORCE if he does move off the ball and accept a great playmaker feeding him the basketball. On the other hand if Harden does not accept a great primary playmaker next to him, his efficiency will wane over time and he will finally overwork himself into a serious injury over the next couple seasons that will sap his stamina over the long haul. Very simply we are not going to win a championship with Harden as the primarily playmaker. This team will constantly disappoint us in the playoffs if Morey continues to build it out with Harden as the primary playmaker. Harden is not a good enough playmaker/defender for it to work. This team needs to be built out with a primarily playmaker who feeds Harden (and Howard and the others) great wide - open looks that emphasize what Harden is the best at, scoring the ball. Have.I.made.myself.perfectly.clear?
Please, we got to stop with this. I didn't pin everything on Harden. We can't just say that everytime someone is critical of Harden. Harden came into this season told by the coaching staff and a set of buoyed role players that he's going to play off the ball a little bit. There was a tear in everyone's eye. It's finally happening. What happened afterwards is that Harden was so atrocious off the ball that it became like him on the defensive side, 4 on 5. You are right, we don't have the role players to deal with that. Lawson was not himself, but he was moving the ball. You know what would have helped? The offensive juggernaut himself moving off the ball, setting the pick in the pick n roll, cutting to the basket at the right time, etc. That would have helped a lot. Instead he would wander around the guy with the ball hoping he'd give up and pass it back, allowing his defender to sag and help others. Come on, I am flat out saying to you what we all know: Harden is top 3 in the universe at scoring. If you watched the games early in the season, you must admit it was frightening. I don't know about you but I simply panicked and said let's give him the f'ing ball back. I don't know if he had ever been in that situation from the looks of it. On defense, no discussion. He is among the worst NBA players in the league on the defensive side, we're all largely accepting that mediocrity is the best we can dream of for him. I'll let you in on a secret. The salary cap will never ever allow you to have what you're asking for. Never. Unless we strike gold and get a star bigger than Harden, one max FA is not going to do it either. This specific stuff is all on Harden, but that doesn't mean the season is entirely on Harden. It's fine. IMO it's worth having an ultra talented penetrator at $15m, that's a crazy good asset. Would never trade him, he's too good a piece, but he's no Lebron, and it saddens me deeply to say he's not even a Curry. Harden has clearly dropped out of that tier this season, and this team is based on the promise of him being first tier. Curry might suck at defense, but his teammates see him try hard, and that helps them stay 100. Curry moves off the ball and gets open. He also can create points by himself. Hey, Harden doesn't want to do that, sucks for us. But this is a business and a competition, Harden gets to do that and we have to deal with it for the money and contract in play. The team's record is not on Harden alone. Brewer has sucked. Coaching has been same as always - inconsequential. Lawson bombed. D-Mo has essentially not played. Jones and Smith regressed. However, Harden's problems are more magnified because they should be. That's a fixed piece. Role players can be dealt all the time. When your star player whom you want to keep forever has such massive flaws in this game which you have to hide with more than 4 other players, it's a huge red flag. It's something the team should be talking about at the owner-gm level. Everything you do from this point on is based on Harden's inability or unwillingness (whatever you want to call it) to two HUGE chunks of an NBA player's job. The magnitude of: if Harden stays in Houston (as we want), 1 of 5 players in the starting line-up will leak points like crazy to an opposing wing man for the next 10 years, every single night without exception. On the offensive side, 1 of 5 starters will be able to contribute nothing unless he maintains highest usage rate in the league. These are things worth mentioning that don't necessarily make this all about Harden's current season, but for God's sake we are allowed to be critical of a guy with huge holes in his game which we had hoped going into a critical season we would not need to cover for so expensively and heavily.
I mean, don't know what to say cause these are your assumptions/opinions. At the base, I disagree Harden can't be the primary playmaker for us to win a championship. I think it would work if we got Kevin Durant, or Anthony Davis maybe. I agree it makes things more difficult and I agree that Harden CAN play off the ball and play mediocre defense if he wanted to. He just believes those are role player things IMO. Thibodeau would make him play defense for 1 or 2 years without a ring, and then done. He wouldn't get him to play off the ball, in fact I would say Thibodeau would increase his usage. As far as catch and shoot guys, I know that if we surround Howard and Harden with 4-5 excellent 3&D players we will win. My point was it's ridiculous to expect a team to have 4-5 excellent 3&D players, we can barely afford 2-3 after paying Howard and Harden.
This is a bit revisionist, I think. Or at best only partially true. If you'll recall, Ty Lawson was the reason Harden was going to be able to play off the ball this year. Harden himself was happy about that. Before Lawson, Harden was our only playmaker. Everyone acknowledged this, and that's why we were all happy to have Ty come on board. But of course Lawson has been hot garbage, for whatever reason. At this point, it's no one's fault but his own. So now we have Harden back as our one and only playmaker.
I know all this already and you can keep preaching it but it's a mute point until Harden accepts that role but something tells me that there are very few players in the NBA that would force Harden to play off the ball more. It's his ego and lack of maturity to accept that.
The incredible thing is, there's still a thread asking how to build a team around Harden.. ESPN had a video on [Broussard's top 5 players to build your team around] Harden was not on anyone's list. Harden is who Harden is and he's not going to change. It's up to Les and Morey to decide what they want to do. T_Man
Oh well since you cited a video you saw featuring Chris Broussard - lets just **** it downn, case closed, multiple sauces and all that.
