And McHale did the right thing. Contrary to what many Lin fans think, McHale holds his players accountable, and Harden served to be on the bench.
Your shot is off, cool. Your defense is off too, wait. You can't drive to the basket either?? FUUUUUUUUUUUU
He's been our best player most of our games last year and this season. Cut him some slack. He will learn.
lazy ass defense and lazy overall. short on all of his shots. cant be drinking during the season mr harden
This is what I'm afraid of. If it was just a matter of shots not falling and getting annoyed, it's one thing. We all have bad games. But I'm hoping it's not a matter of health.
i do and will continue to "cut harden slack" on the defensive end. but, seriously.. he gave us nothing tonight. we were playing 4 on 5 when the clips had the ball.
Like I said in game thread, whatever his problem was, Harden really let the team down. Star player bringing that kind of effort has bad effect on the rest of team. Dwight foul trouble took him out of game early as well. A lot of people are joking about Harden partying too much but if its true that's concerning because these are the types of results you get. I hope nights like this go a long way in humbling Harden.
That's what I think it was, with the knee and ankle at Utah, I think that there were maybe some lingering effects. It did look like he tried to up his intensity the second half though. There were a lot of things wrong with his game tonight. It looked like he got like 5 inches of vert on a putback in the first quarter, just seemed off.
He will learn? He knows what his mistakes are, but he still doesn't fix them. He has had an entire year to learn.
Some people refer to this as "weak minded". You can't let the opposing player get into your head. Howard does the same thing. In the Utah game in the first quarter Howard just gave up a couple of times on defense. McHale will get on them. Harden especially is still young. Things will get better.
I would be ok with Harden if he was just a bad defender. What absolutely makes me crazy is the laziness he displays in all ways on the other side of the ball. He has no toughness, no willingness to hustle back. He loves to sit back on his end on turnovers, or missed shots. He CONSTANTLY is adrift in nowhere land just roaming around and losing his defensive responsibility. He never really challenges a shot. On a switch under the hoop, instead of fouling a guy going up, he actually backs up and away. End of a quarter, he launches a bad three with 9 seconds left, and promptly walks down the sideline while his man hustles down the other and and hits a 3 to end the quarter. Second quarter he completely loses Reddick who drives by him, and he actually peels back off of Reddick, and immediately turns to blame someone else. Just watch him anytime he has a turnover and the other team hustles the other way. He NEVER chases the play. Its rule number one in playing TEAM ball, hustle back always. I said this before, Harden is a top 5 player offensively only. He isn't a top 20 player in the League because he doesn't even try on the defensive side. Lebron, Durant, Westbrook, Kobe (yes he is an over rated defender now, but he puts effort in most times and in crunch time), Rose, Wade, Williams etc etc at least put effort in on D.
