(A) I love that. (B) Kobe certainly didn't want for confidence at any time throughout his career, did he? (C) with those two things said . . . I'm going to give Kobe Bryant, Rookie-Fresh-Out-of-High-School, a pass on the "greatest choke in NBA history" claim that OP has advanced. Honestly I think Harden's brain farts last night were worse. Those were failures of carelessness and sloppiness, whereas Kobe's errors were failures of execution. I think there's a big difference between the two. Still don't think Harden's is the "greatest choke in history" though. That's just . . . bizarre.
He had a 33 point triple double on 60% true shooting percentage, an efficiency which if extended for a whole career would make him better than Lebron, Shaq, or Jordan at scoring points. Also we literally just saw the league MVP go 4-for-18 in a quarter to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory like three weeks ago, so nice job on the goldfish memory. Your thread is bad and you should feel bad.
Maybe not biggest choke ever by a single player. Yet if it were game 7 you could argue it. Lets see what happens.
Christ it wasn't even a finals game or even a conference finals game or even an elimination game. There are much worse games out there. You seemed to have missed a lot in your 30 years of watching.
that was far worse than what he did last night...that was 1 of the most inexplicable games I had ever seen
Nick Anderson's free throws in the '95 Finals still gets my vote. He never ever recovered from that for the rest of his career. Last night's debacle in the 4th qtr and OT probably wouldn't crack the top 50 (yes, fifty) list of "worst choke jobs ever". Frustration is obviously understandable, but people need to settle down a bit. Most people (myself included) felt from the start that this series would go 6 or 7 games.
Some of you are arguing like it wasn't a choke at all. It was a pretty big doozie folks. Quite a choke. Maybe not biggest ever given that it wasn't elimination but still a pretty huge flounder.
Maybe my hesitation to use the word "choke" stems from the fact that the series isn't over. It was Game 5, not Game 7. The Rockets could still win this series. And in order to do so, Harden will have to play well. So either he redeems himself by Sunday or he'll be hearing about this performance(whether you call it choke or any other term) for a very long time.
OMG!!! YES!!! I'd love if we could like this more than 1x!!! This ruined his career and FT average, 4 in a row, hahah, Nick the Brick Anderson!!
Nobody is disputing that, but to say that it's the worst of all time is just stupid. This wasn't even the worst choke of these playoffs, Westbrook's game 2 was worse.
What's the difference between a choke and a bad game? Granted everyone was tired, but has anyone played more minutes than Harden? He was desperate to win and tried an easier path and it didn't pan out. Choke is such a lazy term.
To me the only way Harden can redeem himself is if he is key to leading this team out of this series some kind of way. If not, he deserves the criticism and the narratives stuck on him.
It was just a ver unimpressive performance when we needed much more from our best player. He floundered badly and it was disturbing. Defend him all you want, everybody knows he's a great player. However, he played like absolute trash at the end of that game and gave the game to the spurs. Just him not knowing that Manu was right there on the last shot was disturbing. The guy sometimes plays like garbage in crunch time with his BS turnovers and pull up three insanity. Of course everyone knows Harden is why we are here. Who the f doesn't know that. Unfortunately he isn't the most trustworthy player with the ball in his hands late in tight, crucial situations. This is all very obvious. Needs to be fixed. Either one of these teams gets swept by GS. Us because we play stupid, careless basketball.
