Harden says he plays too much to maintain defensive focus

Actually he has a point. I play in a weekly game. I'm not a good scorer, so I focus on playing good defense, especially in transition. Sometimes that means I take little mental or physical breaks while on offense, so I can preserve energy for the next defensive possession. Harden does the opposite. It's human nature. Some guys can transcend this tradeoff, but it's pretty hard.

 

And Hakeem was FASTING for 30 days...

DAMN James...

T_Man

 

No, it's the other way around. Westbrook's 34.5 mpg is less tiring than Harden's 40mpg. The league star offensive players play at 3-7 mpg less than Harden, thus they are fresher. Plus, not much reason to play Harden at 40 mpg, playing against bench players. And Harden himself played 3 mpg less last year.

Not sure why my comment that playing Harden significantly less minutes will help him give more defensive effort, and we have the opportunity to do so when the opposing stars sit, is such a hard concept for you to accept.

I'm left thinking you don't care to discuss anything other than Harden is not giving enough effort. Proposed solutions means we are excusing Harden. You want him to still play 40 mpg it seems

sigh

 

So now you making up excuses for his poor @$$ defense...

wow...

T_Man

 

Just a stupid response.

Not about the minutes, but about the "Can't give it all on both ends of the court for that many minutes." Heck, not many can. All we ask is you play average, for the love of everything even just below average defense...just something.

You can't make people say "Wait, he's playing some defense this year!" last year, then this year complain that it's too much. He's just flat out lazy on the defensive side of the ball and this is just another excuse. It's what ticked me off with McGrady. You see flashes of solid D, and you wonder "Why can't he do this more often." Because they pick and choose when to play D, and you're not going to win anything playing that style of basketball and your dang sure not going to get the respect in the locker room.

 

Seems pretty legit

 

These guys are trained athletes getting paid millions. After the blazers series it was kind of like when people said Harden could play D, and he showed he could last season.

 

if i have misread your arguments or misunderstood your logic, and have thus caused you to "sigh", then my apologies.

to me this isnt about minutes. or minutes is not the main issue at hand, to say the least. and i've made it perfectly clear in my several posts here in this same thread.

i think both you and i have said what we wanted to say on this topic. so let's move on.

 

Come on now Will... I love you man... But...

There's a difference between playing a weekly game with your boys then doing it on a professional basis..

When you play this game on a professional level and you want to be considered a superstar you have to lead on both ends of the court...

Hell Reggie Miller played better D than Harden....

Even Lloyd played better D than harden and if you went to the games you could hear Lloyd hollering "HELP HELP HELP" all night long...

T_Man

 

And all of the stars play between 33-37 mpg. Does that mean they suck vs previous eras? Or does it mean that the new NBA is realizing the game has a new sweet-spot for mpg for the stars.

And he played 37 mpg. Hence, he should return to 37 mpg or less.

Again, I'm not making excuses. I said in like my first post that two things need to happen: 1) Harden needs to play to exhaustion when on the court, and 2) Coach needs to sit him to maximize it, and the player-tracking analytics in the league has that at between 33-37 mpg now, vs previous years.

 

I think he has a point too.

I also think our fanbase (AS ALWAYS) is busting out the pitchforks way too soon on James. James is #1 in the league in MPG and the distant runner-ups behind him basically play a solid 3 minutes (+/-) less than him. The other 2 top scorers in the league (Curry & Westbrook) play 5 minutes less than James. It's utterly ridiculous with what we had last year, what we retained for this year, and with what we added that our team can't afford to play James less minutes this year instead of more. He's playing 3 minutes more every game so far this year compared to last. McDaniels....Thornton....Brewer,Terry, Ty.... it's truly ridiculous the disparity of what should be on paper and what isn't on the court. And Harden's terrible shooting percentage / low efficiency isn't helping his minutes either. It would be funny to go back to all those minutes distribution predictions everyone did before the season started and compare it to now. I bet most all of us had Harden 32-35 mpg.

 

In the 1993-94 regular season Hakeem posted a player efficiency rating of 25.3

Harden's player efficieny rating thus far - 25.3

 

If he doesn't have the ball in his hands all the time, he can save quite some energy as well. Obviously, he doesn't like to play off ball, and save energy that way. Instead, he'd rather sacrifice defense.

His point is absolutely valid, but he chose that way, and McHale supported that, as well as made same choice.

But when your offensive efficiency is low, your offense alone can't make it up for your lacking of interest in defense, you are not helping the team.

 

Maybe James should stop staying out til 6 AM at the club? Might help with his energy.

There's a wealth of data on how sleep disruption affects all kinds of things including mental focus, energy, mood (depression)... and it only takes one or two nights to throw you off for a month. Imagine partying like a rock star every other day like Harden?

 

When you're paid $15 million to play a game, you can let us know if you are still of the same opinion

I'm kidding, I do the same when I play ball, as do most people who do pick-up or rec league stuff. But when this is your livelihood, you have to maintain focus.

 

Trust your teammates more and do your homework during the summer and you will have more energy for defense.

Its easy to live with the results when you are paid max millions of dollars while we fans have to endure your aloofness and subpar record.

 

Thanks for sending this clip, Harden is talking about it's hard to stay focus of 40min of play, but bruh that was 4 minutes into the game when that happened.

And if he really think it's tiring to play and be efficient 40min, shouldn't he pass the ball a little bit more instead of dribble, dribble dribble shoot then next possession dribbler dribble shoot?

I was a huge Harden fan but this season has been tough for any Rockets fan especially after the season he had last year and campaigning himself the MVP and best player talk. Don't be all talk with leadership this and that when you can't stay focus for 10min on defense.

NOOOO EXCUSES!!!!

 

Haven't read this thread, and just read the quote.

Man, I'm going to slap him.

 

When players sign a contract, they should sign separate contracts for defense and offense. LeBron would definitely get both maxes. Would Harden?