there's only two games jordan shot under 50% this season. one was vs the kings, guess who the other team is?
Care to explain how you reach that conclusion? Harden's strongest game is still the drive, his stepbacks are effective and powerful because the defense sacks in to get rid of his drives. To him, if defense tries to sack in when he drives, he steps back and make them pay. But so long he is still able to get to the basket, that's his bread and butter. Stepbacks should be used as a compliment to his games. His drive efficiency is way over 50%.
I want to see Dirk's stats in his prime. The dude was the king of step back shooter. He is still deadly. He's just too old to be able to do that a lot now. The key to being able to shoot the step back is the threat of driving. If you are great at driving the basket, you will always have that step back shot open. Harden is a master of that and it is pretty much impossible to guard one on one.
Once he polishes up his post game and the one legged turn around fade he lifted from Dirk, he's going to rise up to a whole new level.
52% is a little inefficient considering you don't usually get fouled on stepbacks. 1.04 pps isn't incredibly impressive. However...I do think it has to demoralize his opponents when they get juked out of their shoes.
hate double posting but since i can't edit...the shot chart shows 16/28 made 3pt stepbacks, or 57%, so his 3 pointer stepbacks are even more deadly than his 2pt ones. Adding the 3pointers into the mix gives him 1.19 pps on stepbacks...which is way way better.
Hey OP love the thread, great job. Harden is a beast with this beautiful step back jumper. I'm glad he added this to his arsenal, makes even harder for anybody to guard him one on one.
Anybody else get the sense James just loves one-upping his defenders? Like in-your-face gotcha!! Tucker and Butler falling to the ground kind of thing
Should be the other way around if you don't want hardens body to break down early 3 pointers, paint, then midrange
In a game, Harden first tries his 3 pt shooting to see if he's on. If he's not (or even if he's on in order to keep his defender guessing), he's gonna drive. He does his occasional posting up of his defender once or twice in a half. In between, he sets up his teammates with gorgeous crosscourt passes and pinpoint pocket passes. When we really need points, the team sets him up with a high screen from our 4/5 to get him running downhill to the rim like a kamikaze drive.
Love when spaghetti beard gets in a groove & turns defenders into noodles. Will be cheering for him to get 50 vs Portland. Welcome to Carcosa, $*%_#'s!
How accurate is this? Shots taken seem way way too low for a lot of these players. But Harden has mastered the shot, which is arguably the toughest shot there is.
