Posters here have such thin skins when it comes to Harden. Yes, I do see it. Both love hollywood lights. Both love partying and dating celebrities. Both are PERCEIVED by the media and non-Rocket fans as playoff duds. Both are known for being below average defenders. Both are not known as off-season gym rats(you can tell in body fat% compared to other gym rat superstars). Both are amazingly skilled players. I think I and some other posters benefit from not living in the Houston area where there is a bubble. We know how Harden is perceived by the general NBA fan base and media and it isn't that positive and no it has not much to do with him being in Houston. NBA fans couldn't give two ****s he plays for the Rockets. They would think of him as a mentally weak player regardless of what team he plays for. The Houston Rockets are not the Los Angeles Lakers where there are only polar opposite opinions of the franchise(either love them or hate them).
Hates Harden but wants to give DMO the max...........You must have been one of those guys that likes the Martin and Lin regime. P.S. Stop making threads. You are garbaging things up.
Houston fans will eventually join the thinking of the rest of the NBA after a few max contracts are wasted on him.
Harden is better than Melo on many levels, but he has a waaaaaaaaayzzz to go in terms of leadership. I will say that they have comparable effort on the defensive end.
Yep, never hear of Harden doing any balling during the off season Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Again spot on. That probably explains all of those losing seasons for Harden and so few playoff appearances for his teams.
Balling and improving cardiovascular health and lowering body fat% are two entirely different things. Ironically, having a full training camp during the off-season with Team USA propelled Harden from being a top 10 player to a top 2 MVP candidate. This offseason, nothing compelled him to maintain fitness. A proam tournament isn't going to maintain or improve conditioning levels for the next season. I'm sorry that I speak objective realities. When I say that NBA fans who aren't Rocket fans generally have a negative opinion of him and think he is mentally weak, it's not me who holds that opinion but the NBA fanbase. I'm sorry, but that is the cold hard truth. Whether he deserves that reputation is purely subjective, but him holding that reputation by the fans outside Houston is an objective statement.
I agree with the sentiment that his ankle must be worse than people are letting on. He just looks off. His moves don't look as explosive or crafty as usual and every time he makes a drive it looks like it has zero chance. Harden also historically just doesn't start seasons very well. Without speculating on how the offseason affects or doesn't affect this, other than his very first two games as a Rocket, his shooting percentage in November is always lower than it is for the season. Harden and Lawson also just don't look comfortable together. It looks to me like they are taking turns, and moving off the ball is something that neither is doing very well. I still think they'll eventually figure it out, but for now it looks like we underestimated how long it would take for two offensive alphas, who never even had clear betas last season, to gel. All these things combined make Harden seem very ineffective so far this year. Hopefully he turns it around in a hurry. I'm not optimistic about tonight, but hopefully soon...
Your comment was that he was not known as an "off-season gym rat". I just wanted to highlight the fallacy of that argument. Summer leagues are EXACTLY what basketball gym rats do. Far from it. The biggest flaw is that you suggest your personal observation is accurately reflective of the entire NBA fan base. Even you have to admit that's laughable. There is a large base of fans who aren't inherently Rockets fans but are fans of James Harden. That much should be obvious, unless you believe his career accolades so far are a product of overwhelming Houston love throughout the league and sponsors like Adidas and Taco Bell are investing nine figure amounts just to market to Rockets fans. While Harden obviously has his share of garrulous detractors, it is foolish to think that the noisiest group automatically represents the largest group.
You do realize that's a major and glaring similarity? Neither player is a great leader either. Harden is better due to his playmaking ability though.
Fans have a general negative opinion of him. Players voted him their MVP. Gee, I wonder which group probably knows basketball better.
If you really examine the situation, we are all hating on James way too much considering who he has as a coach. It's not fair to do so.
Only you are not speaking objective realities. You THINK that Harden hasn't had a reason to keep fit, you keep stating that his body fat % is too high (btw some people have a higher body fat % and are SUPER FIT) or that he hasn't been working on his conditioning - this is not fact, this is your OPINION! Fact is, you know nothing about Harden's off-season. What we do know is that Harden was injured during the summer and couldn't play basketball there for a while. We do know that he injured himself the first game of pre-season. These are legit reasons why Harden may seem a bit slow at times - game speed is different to practices and if you can't exercise for a while it may slow you down a bit. We also know that he participated in basketball tournaments this summer (presumably before his ankles) and that he arranged a mini training camp for the Rockets in LA (I believe). We do know from couple of instagram posts that he was also doing cardio workouts - some with the team. This is very likely only a fraction of the things Harden was doing this summer. Nothing here to indicate he is being lazy during the summer months. Honestly, I much rather go by what players/organisation say about Harden, since they get to see him workout on a daily basis. And by all accounts, Harden is a workhorse, who works out before and after practices. Statements from players about Harden's work ethic (coming from different players mind you) are more objective than YOUR opinion. You don't improve every season in the league without putting in the work.
