He's done alright, but I feel those first couple games were outliers. Teams were still adjusting to him. Take those games out of the equation, and he's averaged 20.3 points, 3.9 assists, 3.6 rebounds, 1.5 steals, and 3.9 turnovers per 36 minutes, a 52.2 TS%, with mediocre (at best) defense. To me, that's not really all-star level play on a purely (boxscore) statistical level. He is easily our most important offensive player, though.
Taking out the Jazz game, its 20.7 points, 3.8 assists, 3.6 rebounds, 1.6 steals, and 3.9 turnovers per 36 minutes, 52.7 TS%.
Are you arguing that he isn't someone you can build around? I haven't been able to watch the games so I have only box scores and knee jerk reactions to judge by...
Honestly, you gotta give Patterson some credit. He actually rebounded last night. Plus, T.Jones hasn't played enough to be in front of Patterson.
Thanks. Looks like Harden still has work to do, though I think his assists numbers understate his playmaking. We have pretty horrible finishers in the starting line-up.
I can't say that after only watching a handful of games myself. Morey says that he thinks Harden has a chance of being a top 10 player. From what I've seen, he isn't close to that yet. Maybe top 20, but he would be on the bubble I think. He looks to be at about the same level as a healthy Eric Gordon (who is good, but probably a borderline all-star). That's just an early assessment, and I'm hoping he'll grow more comfortable as a number 1 option and improve. We need better players around him.
You think its a coincidence his 2 best games (by far) happened to be the first 2 games of the season? Please.
I don't understand why'd you take out those first two games? Because teams haven't adjusted to him? Well can we take out the two games after those two games and say that he played bad because he was trying to learn a new role and new offense? Can we also take out those games because he rolled his ankle on the 3rd game and was playing partially injured? In fact he was playing well until he rolled his ankle so could it be that? I'd just take it all together. All of it combined will tell us the kind of player Harden is. It's not fair to toss out his best games and call them outliers, I mean he just dropped a super efficient 28 on a more than solid defensive team.
Harden played over 30 minutes a game for 66+ games last season. Don't think the NBA needed an "adjustment period" to figure his game out.
This. Harden still needs to become a 2-way player before he can be considered one of the best in the game. But, at 23, he is already an elite offensive talent.
At this point he's basically Gilbert Arenas, but if his OKC days are any indication he can be a willing playmaker, instead of just a gunner which he is right now. He is still used to being the number 1 guy, and he has a poor supporting cast running a poor system. I'm still highly optimistic he can continue to develop into the franchise superstar we want, but hes not close to that at the moment. Rome wasn't built in a day.
No I don't like that at all. Taking out the two best games is silly even if they were his first two. Scouting reports were written on Harden a long time ago. If you want to make that assumption, I will counter and say since he is the only real offensive threat on the floor he will only get better when he add more talent.
Being a two-way player is just another way of saying "the team has lotsof offensive talent beside me." Harden will shape up his defense as soon as the Rockets actually have a second and third legit option in the half court.
