I'm relaxed. I stay relaxed. I can be relaxed and still critique my team. The objective is to win a championship. I critique my team and post about it here as the subject warrants. But it's all in the light of becoming a champion. And that's all done while I'm relaxed.
A player that handles the ball so much that it is expected they will turn it over a half dozen times.........is handling the ball to much and is being relied upon too much.
No one's saying Harden can't do no wrong, you're making a strawman argument here who said Harden doesn't make dumb passes? The problem here is the lazy analysis of yeah Harden has 5 TOs its gonna prevent Rockets from having success in the playoffs. What about the rest of the 4 guys who have career low tos because Harden does all the ball handling? That's why its dumb to single out Harden's TOs as record breaking when as a whole the Rox are just average in turnovers. In fact Holic's "analysis" is even worse as he just looks at flat tos per game without using assist/to ratios or even basic pace comparisons. Harden, MJ, Hakeem, Shaq are all very different players in different teams against different opponents yet he compares all of them just based on their tos and says because of that Rox won't get any success in the playoffs. You might as well say since Harden's beard is 40% longer than any other championship player he won't win a ring. If you ask Harden what part of his game he needs to clean up, he's gonna say defense. And nobody will say turnovers if you ask them what they regret in the playoffs they will focus on botched plays or missed shots. Rox average 1.1 pts per possession so 5 tos are like 6 pts max? You think Harden will regret 6 pts over missed 3s or lousy D? LOL!
How many assists does he create per turnover? Thats whats missing in your analysis, you only look at tos without considering the value the Rox get per Harden possession. The Memphis game Rox spanked Gruzz ass with Harden getting 5 tos. How did that happen if Harden's TOs are so game breaking? Oh yeah because Harden has 11 assists to show for his TOs. Thats a/to of more than 2 in terms of value. And these assists are 3 pters so its more than 6 pts of value for every to Harden makes. What you're doing is dragging the team in the wrong direction with the BS u keep saying. It's like looking at the MJ Bulls and telling MJ hey you miss 5 shots a game why don't you stop shooting? That's literally what you're doing, the league assist leader should stop making plays for the team wtf?
Nah. There's probably just 3 people arguing against curry shooting whatever he wants. They just make multiple accounts and talk VERY loudly. Think of it like this. The same people thought Harden wasn't even capable of dribbling the ball up the court without another pg. He now is the assists leader in the NBA. until there's any sort of proof that hardens turnovers aren't directly related to usage, it really is just a group of sour fans with piss poor knowledge doing equally piss poor eye tests.
Honestly there aren't even any apologists here, people are just saying guys like Holic are focusing on the wrong things. TOs should be priority number 8 on Harden's list, behind defense, rebounds, assists and priority 1-5 Rox 3 pt shooting. Harden can limit his TOs to exactly zero by moving off the ball, how will that help the Rockets win any game when nobody is setting up the rest of the guys for wide open corner 3s? After the game do the Rockets pull up their boxscore numbers and tell their opponent Hey Dude Harden has 0 turnovers this game so we win? WTF. Just do the math, Harden leads the league in wide open assisted 3s in the NBA by a mile, if that was so easy to do then other players would come close to his wide open assisted 3 numbers. They aren't close, so that means Harden's the only one who can do that at a level above other players, meaning if you replace him with any other player in the league, the production will be less. How much less? Let's say with all the lazy passes and dumb plays Harden makes he gets 5 tos a game. But he also averages 11 assists a night, and the Rox take approximately half of their possessions as 3s so 5.5 of those assists are 3s. So 5.5 X 2 pts + 5.5 X 3 pts = 11 pts+16.5 pts = 27.5 generated pts on average. If we assume Harden turns the ball over 5 times a night and the Rox score 1.1 pts per possession so 27.5 pts - 5.5 pts = 22 net pts or Harden produces a profit of 4 pts for every turnover he makes. What does moving Harden off the ball do? It will reduce his usage which will then be used by another player who will generate less than 4 pts per turnover he makes. So what if that guy gets only 3 tos compared to Harden's 5, when he only generates 2 pts per to compared to Harden's 4 it will still result in a loss in production, which is what you expect when you take playmaking off the hands of the best playmaker in the league and then give it to someone else. Of course Harden can definitely lessens his tos, he is only human he is not perfect he can totally improve his play. He can also improve his shooting, defense, rebounding and hustle on the court, I don't see anybody complaining about his 3 pt shooting though and saying it will prevent the Rox from winning a ring.
Great post. One thing that bothers me is those full court passes that result in TOs a few times a game. I think those can be eliminated. Other than those, I don't really mind.
Before tonight's game James has racked up 57 bad pass turnovers through 62 games. So even if we said that every single bad pass turnover he has had this season was those full court passes it wouldn't even be 1 per game. The annoyance over that full court pass and the vastly overblown number of times people think it results in a turnover has become pretty commonplace around here when it's not even close to being accurate.
I'm always uncomfortable with his ISO in the last few minutes, not because of the ISO itself, but his turnover.
"Nobody will say turnovers if you ask them what they regret in the playoffs"? Really? Let's not talk about "nobody" here but specifically Harden. Harden had 38 pts, 10 rebs, and 9 assists in gm 2 of the WCF finals against the Warriors (and only 2 TO). One of those TO was at the end of the game. You think Harden thinks about any of his missed shots in that game or the TO at the end game? Granted this wasn't one of his sloppy TO but a TO nonetheless. GM 5 same series he shot 2 of 11 from the field. Do you think he has regrets about any of those missed shots OR the TWELVE TO's he had? Harden himself said the TO's were "unacceptable". Harden's deficiencies on D are more about effort (you don't clean that up). Turning the ball over making sloppy/careless passes is something you can clean up. Also, yes Harden handles the ball more and thus with that comes TO. The only thing that I'm focusing in on here is his careless/sloppy TO's that he NEEDS to clean up. Nash who handled the ball just as much as Harden in this same system with D'Antoni had the following assist TO ratio: 11.5 3.3 10.5 3.5 11.6 3.8 11.1 3.6 Harden is currently at 11.3 5.8 He gets rid of the 2-3 stupid TO a game he's now where Nash was. I understand that this is Harden's first yr in this system, and hopefully it will improve moving forward. "That's why it's dumb to single out Harden's TOs". I'm certainly not doing this. It certainly isn't stupid to single out Harden's sloppy/careless TO's however.
You aren't Harden, how do you know how he thinks and what he will regret? How do you know how NBA players think when ur not even an NBA player? Ur right it was unacceptable he had 12 tos that gsw game. So what? He gets 12 tos every night? Harden averages 5 tos a game, just 2 more than guys like Curry or Lebron who play on stacked teams with players who can create their own offense. And he makes yp for those with 11 assists. The singling part wasn't about your post it was about Holic saying Harden's tos are gonna prevent the Rockets from winning a ring. You can hate on Harden having bad passes all you want, just as you can hate on him for not shooting 100%. The point of tbe article is showing how people are wrong when they think Harden turns it over too much.
harden is twice the scorer nash is and he also has twice the defensive focus from opposing teams as nash had
Low key call-out thread in disguise!? I won't go quietly into the night!!! @Pen15clubber is about to have a turnover problem when I turn him over and go straight prison style on him!
It is not a severe problem if it is not getting inside his head. He will have to deliver and limit mistakes in the postseason.
