I dont' want two hardens in the same team unless I can go ahead a trade one. Harden no.1 couldn't coexist with Harden no.2 and the defence would be godawful.
I honestly don't have a problem with this, Harden's 50 pts were extremely efficient tonight so I'd rather he take the shot than somebody else take it. The Rox right now are a mess, until they get some sort of chemistry together we're gonna have to rely on raw talent to win games, and that means heavy lifting from Harden and Howard.
This statement seems logical until you remember that he played on the Olympics with Steph Curry and Klay Thompson. Won a gold medal. Oh **** wait who else did he play with? Ahhh yes Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. They made it to the finals. So by my count Harden has played on the same team as two MVP's and you think that Harden could not co exist with someone who has the same level of talent he does? really?
Harden does shoulders some of the blame. He turned the ball over 9 times and missed 4 crunch time freethrows that could have costed us this game. Brewer needs to be glued to the bench and traded when the trade deadline approaches. Dude has regressed big time on both ends of the court. I am lobbying for the Rockets to trade Harden. I just want him to play better defense and stop turning the damn ball over so much. He leads the NBA in turnovers and SF that is not good period.
he deserves some blame in a sense that his effort was not good enough to blow out Philly and he made some mistakes down the stretch. if you leave it at that, i think pretty much everyone agrees. but at the same time, you cannot deny that he was def a net positive force on this game. contributed much more for this team than what he took away, and some people just gloss over that fact and almost seem to imply that if it weren't for Harden, we could have blown them out, which is ridiculous and borders on Hater mentality, imo. btw, Westbrook leads the league in turnovers not Harden.
Anyone blaming Harden can go to hell. The team was down by 5 to the Sixers before he bailed us out. He did that passing thing against the Grizzlies when they doubled and our scrubs failed to take advantage. There are no Draymond Green's, Andre Iguodala's or Klay Thompson's on this team unfortunately. High TO's are a part and parcel of the game for a ball dominant player. LeBron, Steph & Westbrook also turn the ball over at the high rate. It usually means the player is being aggressive & trying to get his teammates involved. The Harden bashing has gone too far.
Yes. Steph Curry and Klay Thompson don't play the same way as he does, and while in OKC he had MUCH MUCH MUCH lower usage and came off the bench. (plus back then he seemed to be better defender). Lets forget for a moment that Harden is a Rocket and imagine we are a GM trying to make a team and we can't trade after we pick. Would you prefer two current James Harden? Two current LBJ? Two current Durants? Two current Paul Georges? Two current Kawhis? I would take all before Harden and that doesn't have to do with Harden per se but he wouldn't be able to coexist with himself at all. (I would die before picking two Westbrooks tho.).
if harden would have ran a play, he'd probably have turned it over. so in this case, he gets the benefit of the benefit.
reminds me of Westbrook of last season. haters loved to bash Westbrook for all the ball hogging and taking too many shots, but it was clear that if it weren't for him doing that, OKC would stand no chance competing for the last 8th spot, and even his teammates acknowledged it. i mean, besides Harden who is hot right now? who can he trust at the last minute? brewer? ariza? howard? bev? terry? thorton? if there is a single player who is on a roll other than Harden, i would be the first guy barking at him to share the ball. but i just can't to that as it stands today.
if I'm not mistaken, we were trailing by 6 or 7 points when Harden set out in the 4th Q, and when he finally came back we were able to win the game, and some people here complain that his effort was not good enough to blow out the team that we were losing to without him. is this a joke? I'm sensing a lot of LOFs, MOF and even DOFs here have sour grapes against Harden and the Rockets team in general.
Man the guy just can't win with many posters on this board. It's pretty pathetic. We DONT win if James Harden doesn't ball out. Not a chance. He's avg 41 points a damn game in out wins. But let's just focus on crap like he ices our Howard and Ariza.
Malakas you are a good poster but this post is speculative at best. LeBron James is the greatest player of this century. Of course no one wants two Harden's over him. Perhaps between two Durant's we could get enough minutes between them to always have one on the court?? That's how often he's been injured. People are also getting too carried away with Paul George's start to the year. The dude is a beast and is a top 10 player, but he's started the year on a tear, let's revisit in two months. He is not a natural creator like Harden and doesn't have the ball control of LeBron. Kawhi is perhaps the most overrated player in the league. He is an amazing defender, but how many 30 point games has he had in his career. How many of his field goals are assisted/unassisted? Go look it up, you will be surprised. Leonard is not a franchise player. He is a very very good second option (Pippen esque). It's also key to note you conveniently selected perhaps 4 of the top 10-15 defenders in the league nice try. A more appropriate comparison would have been Russell Westbrook, because despite putting up video game numbers, he's not the player Harden is, and his defense is overrated.
I agree, except for the star player who has the most minutes. +/- is actually *not* a worthless stat to Harden who played 40 minutes. The reason it is not a worthless stat to the star player (vs the role players with less minutes) is because the stat mathematically converges on the real final score pt differential the more minutes of the 48 that you play. (That is, if you play the whole game, your +/- is the final score). So, if you play like 40 or more minutes and your +/- significantly deviates from the final pt spread, then that's worth noting. Harden played all but 8 minutes of the game. His +/- was +13, which means in the 8 minutes that he didn't play, the team got beat by 11 pts. That's is interesting to say the least. Not worthless information.
No, stats don't lie. The stats are what the stats are. The improper interpretation of statistics or cherry-picked statistics can give a misleading impression of reality.
i totally forgot to mention that +/- can be a very informative measure even for a single game, if a player clocks in over 35+ minutes and he's the main guy (meaning that he's the one actually carrying the most of the workload for the team). so basically, when Harden was on the court 40 out of 48 minutes, we beat the Philly by 13 points, and when he sat out for 8 minutes we got beat by 11 points. yeah, but somehow Harden cost us more than 50 points according to Yung-T, lol. pretty much destroys some of the haters' argument here.
