Chron- James Harden bringing Rockets together after last season's disharmony

Last year had a couple of "leaders" who thought differently on the way the team should play. If one of those leaders admittedly gives up because his way wasn't the favorite, there was no way the team could have turned the corner.

I'm optimistic about this year. I think Harden steps up and owns his role this year.

All in all, this offseason has been extremely boring.

 

I just hope he doesn't settle.

 

Were gonna turn a corner, together

 

Totally agree.

 

Harden= harden

 

I'm ready!

 

Defense or Nah? His defensive stance in all those exhibition games has me worried. Feet too close and he contest the shot too late. He needs somebody to fix that and MDA is the last person on earth to fix it.

 

dude we know who the harden haters are they are obssesed with him, and are trying to destroy his career via social media. They live mostly in the bay so they love curry as well, and have a website dedicated to their scrub hero

 

The most leadership I've ever seen from Harden, so far this summer.

Keep it up!

 

Worried about him being exhausted. Fatigue is a scary thing.

Everything sounds great though. Let's not lose sight of the fact that, although one leader was not on board last year, we have one less leader. And players are made leaders because of how well they play basketball.

Cautiously excited for this season. Signs point to a great building block.

 

I'd prefer cycles of JJ Watt supplements for Ryan Anderson, Eric Gordon, DMo, and Nene rather than worrying about defensive sets. If healthy this team could be very solid....but....anyhow good work from Harden. Hope he can put everything together this year and get a MVP.

 

Boat references:

Harden - "Everybody in the same boat."
D'Antoni - "full boat"
Morey - DNP yet
Les - DNP yet

 

Agree that Harden seems to be displaying more leadership than he has in previous seasons.
Exciting stuff!

 

I wouldn't say I "hate" this kind of articles. But I get what you say. It's fluff stuff. Harden had promised a lot of things in past preseasons. We'll see how it goes this time.

Those "positive" people can flame our cynicism. We've been fooled too many times by this kind of talk (not just Harden). I'll cheer when I see real changes in the season. For now, I'll join Iverson's tune, "We talkin bout practice?"

 

We have less talent, so they really need to play as a team. My biggest concern is that the team hasn't had to rebound and play defense for a few seasons now, relying on Dwight for everything, and that's something they need to relearn instead of being lazy.

 

Ok, Mr. Clutch :grin:

 

Spoiler

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Tbh they played better defense and rebounded the ball better 2 years ago when they played 41 games without Dwight.

Sure when Dwight came back that year he helped a ton but those 41 games without him were special. Harden was playing great and had all those fringe NBA level guys buying in and contributing big time for us.(Tarik Black, kostas papa, Joey Dorsey, Isaiah Cannan, raw dmo, old washed up jet, released josh smith, brewer) that was the core around harden and Ariza for those 41 games and they went 28-13 in that stretch.

All those guys contributed and it was because of hardens leadership and play on the court. The guys were having so much fun that year watching harden go and lead them the way, I hope that's what we see this year.

He's done it before we shouldn't act like this is new. He came in 2 years ago when everyone wrote us off after losing parsons and failing to land Chris bosh. Dwight went down for half the year and harden still leads us to a 2 seed.

We have more talent and imo equal defensive personnel as that year. There's no reason why they can't finish in the top 12 as long as harden buys in and commits to that end to lead the rest of the guys.

 

My sentiments exactly.