This is the post I was waiting for. He can get pretty much any shot he wants. The drive is higher percentage and better possibility of getting fouled and also getting injured. He needs to work with CP3 this summer and really make his 15 footer automatic. Cp3 does this very well and impacts team momentum. A couple of made buckets and everyone starts to hit them.
Harden has to improve on his conditioning. He has to sacrifice this lifestyle that he lives off the court(Strip clubs). He is not that much of a runner like a Steph, Russ, or Lebron. I think he is scared to get crossed. Thats one reason why he doesn't give maximum effort on defense. If everybody else can give that effort that you need on defense to win he can too. Its no excuse, especially when you are the MVP.
He played the least minutes of his Rockets career this season. I don’t want to hear the energy excuse. He’s not 33. Are were gonna treat Harden like a 36 year old Tim Duncan now?
I'm with you here - and as a guy who has played a lot of basketball in my life I can tell you that it is not just a little but significantly harder to maintain peak intensity when guys start pulling on you and bodying you up - like the difference between running a mile on a flat track and running a mile up a mountain. That means when the refs swallow the whistle it has a REAL impact on the effectiveness of guys who get in the paint like Harden & Lebron(who is only able to persevere because he has absurd genetic advantages AND a fanatical approach to maximizing his fitness)...and while we are on the subject - we ALL KNOW that the game is called differently in the playoffs but why? What purpose does it serve? What other sport changes the rules when the competition gets the best? This is absurd and the league needs to acknowledge and fix the problem one way or the other. ....all that being said - Harden definitely gets frustrated when he doesn't get calls and he lets it get into his head. His aggressiveness changes when he is in that mode - he seems to wait for the foul to come to try to exaggerate it for the refs rather than read and react on the defender. Hopefully he learns to get over that....that being said CP3 has definitely calmed James down and helped him in crunch times - it's just harder for him to do that when CP is in street clothes on the bench.
