Is it just me or does Robertson beat Harden to every spot on the court ON BOTH sides of the ball? It's been a glaring problem on defense for multiple seasons(allowing back door cuts, ball watching etc) but now NBA defenses are starting figure out that James Harden is one of the laziest off the ball guards to ever play the game. There's an easy way to take advantage of this. Press and shadow Harden. Watch how he responds. He refuses to run and break free from his defender. This results in the team wasting 10-15 seconds trying to dump the ball off to him while he's in this mini post move where he just stands there and pushes away his defender 4 ft beyond the 3 pt line. Game 4, I've never seen it ThIS bad to the point where he has to be injured. Something was off tonight. It was definitely more than usual.
He's moving too east and west, allowing Roberson to hound him. This is even before the injury. It would be smart to allow someone else to bring the ball up and play off the ball. In addition, I'm usually critical and praises Harden but he literally gave up tonight and almost gave the game away. Here's hoping he comes back and does something special in game 5.
Um, didn't you notice that he didn't bring the ball up court as often as usual. Bum ankle after rolling it the last game. No one made excuses, he went out and played the game. The Rockets won, maybe not a blowout, but looking forward to Tuesday game.
I thought it was strange that he wasn't bulldozing his way to the rack as much as Game 3. Thank the lord for Big Dick Gordon and Sweet Playoff Lou Williams
Every time Harden has an off game people think there's some existential crisis involved with it. He was injured and had an off shooting game. He's still averaging like 30/8/8 this series with great efficiency against an alleged "Harden stopper" in Roberson. He's fine.
Ehh.. try running the entire team offense for 45 mins a game. He cant be busting his ass on both ends the entire game given the load he carries. Bring the ball up against the press, set the offense, fight through 2-3 picks while having the ball, drive to the basket... ..and you want him to run around fighting through picks off the ball as well? ...and run around chasing guys on defense too? You have to pick your spots. Get a legitimate second star on this team and then we can talk about what else Harden needs to do.
There's definitely some strangeness to it. I never would have guessed that a guy who likes to play so methodically (some would say slow) could up numbers like this
This crap was all in the game thread. Hurt ankle, can't run, still played, still won, haters still hating.
Still the MVP and better than Westbrook. Sure he had a tendency to ball watch and take possessions off on D for years, but he's been miles better the past two years especially this one. Today was not Hardens best day but he's it's not a referendum of his legacy of his career in the NBA. Hopefully he has his normal otherworldly great game on Tuesday and you guys knee jerk back and forget you ever posted in this thread.
