Harden needs help. Night in and out triple double output to win must have had a toll. I agree we need to run some plays not involving him heavily. But, that's not his fault. It has been shown he is willing to give up the ball to take a backseat. He is a team player, but we need more star players to help him out to be a real CONTENDER.
When has this been shown? I hope you're not talking about his OKC days b/c those are irrelevant. If anything, the Dwight situation showed that Harden is unwilling to take a backseat. Additionally, there's a big difference between giving up the ball and being a team player. Curry is a team player. When he doesn't have the ball, he runs around setting screens and trying to get open. What does Harden do?
That's not true. Other than Ariza, there nobody better at defending Durant on our roster. And Harden may actually be better defensively on Durant than Ariza is now.
Not only does Durant move without the ball (which Harden has trouble guarding), but Durant also has an 8 inch height advantage plus far superior length. If we gameplanned for Harden to guard Durant, the likeliest result would be that he'd pout and then quit.
What are you talking about? Howard was on the decline and nevertheless Harden was still willing to feed him on the post.
That's complete bullshit. Dwight became disgruntled because we wanted to limit his offense in the post.
Dwight's post game was a known quantity when we originally pursued him so that isn't a justified excuse. In any case, look at the big picture. Do you think other stars will want to sign with us when they see us exile Dwight for his post game yet allow Harden to keep chucking his low percentage step-back 3s?
Who cares? It's not like Harden has the physical tools to stop Durant. You really need to let this go. There's no way you can convince anyone that Harden can guard Durant. You're talking about one of the worst defenders in the league against one of the best offensive players in NBA history. Just drop it.
Looking at the CAVS Series I have to wonder: [Barring any major changes or injuries] If Harden fight every minute or every game Do you think the Rockets would take the Warriors? Spurs Lost. Do you think they would have taken the series if Kwahi was not injured? I think they get game 1 . . . maybe push it to 6. I think their advantage is near perfect offensive and defensive discipline. they simply does not have the talent to have finished off that series. So. That said. The Rockets do not have the Discipline of the SPurs nor the Talent of the Cavs. I am a Harden fan but the Cavs have the better James. Esp in the playoffs. Anderson disappears more completely than Love. Beverly is a wolverine but Kyrie's offense is better than Bev's defense. In order for the Rockets to have a shot They simply will need more CONSISTENT talent. They need more discipline esp on Offense Lou, Ego and Anderson have to be UBER CONSISTENT! they points have to be able to be pencilled in every night esp the playoffs 4 Off nights by any combination of 2 of them means elimination Rocket River
Say, wha'? DH12's disgruntlement had nada to do with anything beyond his diminished athleticism and untoward attitude. And FA destination? Aww, Dwight was unhappy so eff the Rox? In your crazed dreams mebbe. No. where. else.
You're 100% wrong about why Dwight was unhappy. It's well documented. Google is your friend. Do you honestly think star free agents will want to sign with Houston if they're going to be considered a second-class star behind Harden? Use some common sense.
I don't think there's much doubt that Harden lost faith in Dwight, but then he wasn't the only one, anyone who watched him play lost faith in him. His post game earlier on was good to above average due to his athleticism, as it decreased, it dropped to the point where giving him a post possession was simply a wasted possession. Most players when they deteriorate try to maximise what they have left to do their best to win, but not Dwight, at no point did it dawn on him that perhaps since his post game had gotten so bad that he shouldn't do it, so Harden made a choice, that needed to be made, that anyone who cares more than nothing about winning would need to make. Dwight is one of those guys so far into a delusion, that for him to be happy, everyone else needs to suspend reality and make themselves unhappy.
First of all, the whole narrative that you've been pushing all season that Harden is secretly controlling the front office and making demands is nothing short of tinfoil hat material. I don't recall Harden being buddies with Ryan Anderson or Eric Gordon before this season, nor did they play with him in the "hood" or AAU circuit. -- Those were Morey moves all the way, same with Lou Williams. This team was built specifically with analytics in mind and built around Morey ball, from the top down. I'm sure Harden has some input in some of these decisions but he's not the one calling the shots, dude. Secondly, asking Harden to play off the ball is sort of like asking Kobe Bryant to become a great ball distributor. It's not going to happen because that's not a strength of those players. To play off the ball as a guard requires a lot of quickness to move around screens and while Harden does have deceptive speed he lacks lateral quickness to become a Ray Allen or Klay Thompson type player. Harden is like a pitcher who can only throw 90 mph fastball but because of its deceptive motion and location it's still hard to track for the hitter so it's an effective pitch. Harden uses deceptive motion and changing of speed to get free from defenders and his big body to keep defenders at bay. He's not an off the ball type player and he never will be so if that's something you think needs to happen for the Rockets to win a title then I guess you're going to end up disappointed. For better or worse, Harden is the PG of this team now and he will be running the offense when he's on the floor. I'm sure he tried to recruit Durant but when you have an opportunity to win free championships with a juggernaut like Golden State then no sales pitch is going to convince you to sign with the Rockets. But, that's hardly Harden's fault, either. Let's face the facts, no team is beating Golden State in the next 2-3 years assuming they stay healthy. I've learned to accept this and move on and I will enjoy watching Rockets basketball in the regular season again next year. Our team will improve, last year was the first season most of these guys were together so the chemistry will improve and I think it's possible that we win 60 games next season. Will we be good enough to beat GS? Probably not, but that's just something we have to accept I think.
Wow. Accepting also-ran status. Wow. I don't think I'd want you for a teammate. I can see your man just blowing by you every possession for dunks. What a defeatist attitude. Harden can't play off the ball, eh? Lacks lateral quickness so he can't play off the ball. Wow. Can't move around screens when he's off the ball. Wow. But, but when he's on the ball he can go around picks. Curry can play off the ball because he's quick. Lebron can play off the ball because he's LeBron. Kawhi can play off the ball. KD can play off the ball. Chris Paul can play off the ball. Gordon Haywood and Paul George can play off the ball. Devin Booker can play off the ball. McBuckets can play off the ball. Portzingis can play off the ball. Raymond Felton can play off the ball. Manu can play off the ball. Dirk can play off the ball. Oh, and that lightning-bolt bastion of lateral quickness and speed, Kyle Korver, he can play off the ball. Shoot, 40-year-old Vince Carter can play off the ball. And all the other dudes that are big, slow, and bulky can play off the ball but can't play on the ball because, you know, they're not quick enough to play on the ball. But our poo' widdle James can't pway off da bawl, he has to pway on da bawl. (Spoken in the whiniest, wimpiest, most loser crybaby voice ever.) Gimmeabreak with that nonsense. You should be asking yourself if James can really play effectively on the ball. We went 19-1 against losing teams, 36-26 against teams that were .500 or better, and 14-17 against the top 10 defenses in the Association. That should tell you something about what's missing here. Oh, and, you know, we constantly run our shooting guard off all those blasted screens. That's our offense, you know. Not spot-ups so our point guard can throw to spots on the court. We run a motion offense where the shooting guard is constantly running off screens. Because we have this dynamic point guard that never turns the ball over and he can find guys on the move in such a special way. Laughable. Harden is a career 40% off-the-ball shooter from three. He's a career 30% shooter when he's on the ball and pulls up from three. And he just obliterated the turnover record. Oh, and we just got done watching (again) a playoff defense turn him into a spinning top with multiple of those laterally quick defenders eating his lunch up top. And you wanna accept that? Your happy to watch this another two or three years? And then it'll be different somehow. Like Harden is going to become less turnover prone and a better pull up shooter in two or three years. And he's going to be quicker at the point so he can split those doubles out high and burn those defenses that force him to take bad shots and turn the ball over now? Non-sensical. You know what's going to change in two or three seasons? The Bucks are going to become monsters by then. The Jazz will be better. The Wolves will be breathing down our neck. The Spurs are going to be better. And the Warriors are still going to be together. Wake up man. This is the reality of today's NBA. We have to attack that reality and build a team capable of beating those guys. If we're not going to do that, then we might as well trade James now! And lastly, this is not Morey ball just because Morey signed a couple shooters. This is Harden ball. How soon you have forgotten the coaching hire controversy last summer. Mirey wanted JVG or Frank Vogel. Les and James wanted MDA. James win out. That was public. And yes, James wanted Ryan and Gordon. And James wanted full run this show. He was asked to bring the ball up by MDA because the understanding was already there that he would be running the show. I didn't say it was a secret and I didn't say Harden was making demands. What I said was they run everything by Harden. The organization has already admitted that. The only things that are really covert are things like trades that we had lined up that we didn't execute because Harden didn't want the trade. (There's been several.) But everything else is right there staring at you. The coaching hire. The lack of playmaking on the roster behind James. James approving of acquisitions. James wanting guys gone. The constant purging of playmakers/distributors and players that either take touches like Lin, Parsons, Thornton, or complain about lack of touches like Dwight and replacing all those guys with one-dimensional offensive players that just spot-up shoot or finish on the pick-and-roll, creating a team that has steadily become more Harden-centric. And you can't see that with the naked eye or even read it from the Chronicle. Tinfoil? Naw. It's dunce cap for you. What a loser post dude. One of your all-time worst.
Disagree. Post games aren't based on athleticism. They're based on skill and finesse. Why do you think old Jordan/Kobe relied on their post game so much? Unfortunately for Dwight, despite his athleticism, he was too mechanical and had poor touch with the ball. His post game didn't regress as he lost his athleticism. He simply didn't have a good post game to begin with, and as the Rockets went away from Dwight's post game, he became disgruntled.
