LeBron has an entire career of playing elite defense. He has precedent to give him the benefit of the doubt in a injury riddled season at the age of thirty ****ing five.
All of a sudden with a better team Lebron plays defense and is a great leader again. funny how that happens.
Harden and Melo are not even on the same planet scoring wise. Harden is much better than he will ever be, playmaking and scoring wise. All romanticism and fluff. Thats all the rest of this is. If you wanna trade Harden dude, just say so.
I said Harden is a superior Melo. Their leadership stlyes are very similar. Teammates of Melo and Harden are not going to respond well to them barking at them for missing a defensive assignment or not putting effort on transition d because they don't walk the talk in terms of defensive hustle. When Jordan or Kobe barked about not putting in hustle on defense, teammates responded better because they know those two walk the talk.
I said last year lol what about last year?? LMAO. You are always asking people to ignore anything that disproves your point.. again, NO THANKS.
And that is irellevent. I'm referring to their respective careers. LeBron at 35 in a injury riddled season didn't play elite defense. whoopty ****ing doo. LeBron has an entire career of playing elite defense.
Again...all fluff, no substance. And here's a little secret Kobe wasnt as good of a leader as you seem to believe.
Kobe was a dick but in the right ways. He pushed teammates to their limits in practice sessions and he lead by example on defense for most of his career. Yes, later in his career his defensive effort did wayne. The thing about Harden is he doesn't even show the most basic characteristics of a leader with his on court hustle or lack there of. Again, I've watched basketball long enough to never see a guard just stand on one spot of the floor so often as Harden. I've never seen a proffesional NBA guard just hardly ever care about transition defense and never fight through screens in halfcourt sets as much as Harden. A large part of why we have a switch scheme defense even to our own detriment in the past two seasons even when we didn't have the personal to implement a switch scheme defense is precisely to hide Harden.
Kobe was really just a dick a lot of the times. Yea he had his moments, no doubt. But his leadership style ended up to where no one wanted to play with him. Over exaggerating a lot here We had a switch scheme because that was the best way to combat the Warriros, did we have switch scheme when Mchale was here?
The adage, winning cures everything certainly applies to Beard. Go get that ring Beard! Other than prime LeBron, there is no player in the league who could keep this roster in contention, and live rent free in the Cupcakes' heads.
Our switch scheme made sense in 2017-2018 with the right personnel. It carried over to seasons where we didn't because it to mask Harden guarding the perimeter and fighting through screens. Kobe having his moments is a momentous understatement. If teammates didn't want to play with Kobe, how did he get 5 rings? 8 seasons of all NBA first team defense... "Had his moments". And yes, I know his last two were carried by his reputation. So whoopty f****** doo he had 6 he truly deserved. 6 time all NBA defensive first team... Had his moments. Dear ****ing lord.
We've had it since before then. And how do you know? You really make stuff up based off your eye test. Good roster management. I donnno any marquee FAs that went to go play with him. Im talking about leadership. No one is arguing that Harden was a better defender. Again talking about leadership....you really just need to get this romanticized crap out of your head, you dont respect what Harden brings to the table and you only talk about his flaws. At BEST, there are 2 other players in the league right now you can say are better or equal. You just dont like him so you can never come across as anything but bias.
He's probably just working off a massive holiday bender and will find his legs soon. Then we can all go back to talking about the important thing- the MVP.
Healthy Durant is better. LeBron is better. Giannis is arguably better. His lack of outside shooting ability really hurts him. Curry is arguably better. The national media really hypes up Kawhi and generally rates him over Harden but I don't see it. Harden is a top 5 player. But of the top 5 he just has the most odd quirks and issues. He's a tremendously skilled player on offense though even there he seems to work on a select aspect of scoring and tends to ignore other parts that other superstar guards have. He's a below average finisher than your cream of the crop guards. He has hardly any post up game or at least hardly ever attempts it and he has no off ball scoring instincts that other superstar shooting guards had. He's the best ball handling sg in the history of the game and has the most crafty techniques to show the refs he's getting fouled. His handles can be so tight that I wish he dominated the ball more often like prime CP3 where he constantly danced around with the ball always moving around the mid range area trying to probe the defense and force them to make a mistake while his teammates move off ball in sync with CP3. Harden also now resorts to not attacking on the pick and instead waits for the switches or the trap. I wish he attacked the pick more often. I think it would cause less stagnation on offense when we go on massive droughts.
