It certainly looks that way. The signs are all there, and we've seen it happen many times before. To be more specific, Harden is playing like he thinks the Rockets are lucky to have him. He's playing like a guy who's already thinking about bolting to the Lakers.
Harden got fouled plenty, refs wherent calling it so he just stopped and focused on going off from 3, like half his layups where like unncalled and 1's if I remember correctly. Denver got double the FT attempts as well. Harden played very well with refs not calling anything for him. 24 points, 5 for 9 from 3, shot almost 50%, 6 assist only 2 turnovers. I'm happy with his performance.
On the offensive end, yes, he played fairly well considering the refs weren't calling much our way. Defensively, he was a no show once again, outside of a couple steals.
Steals are LAZY defense, that is playing in the passing lanes and leaving your man all alone, both he and Brewer do that all game and even though we get a few steals the overall affect is a net negative. DD
People need to accept Harden for what he is, an isolation player. If you want him in "attack mode", you are going to see him at the top of the key running his pick and rolls, endlessly. If you want him to be play off the ball, there is no "attack mode". He simply is not a slasher / cutter who is going to wrack up easy buckets using screens.
Charles Barkley says a lot of dumb stuff but one thing he says that I completely agree on is whoever gets the most easy buckets and has the easiest time scoring will win. We gave up soooooo many points in the paint yesterday and In most other games as well. Why wouldn't Harden want to sometimes be the slasher to the rim to get easy baskets? It's an easy way to get points...
Why not add things to his game though? All the good players do it. Lebron with his post game... Cousins with the 3 ball just some examples. If he was willing to slash more with Lawson feeding him the ball for example he could get a lot of easy baskets or a lot of hockey assist to Howard.
Yep, that is fine, but what about defense, can't he at least TRY on that end? I Mean for **** sake, is this what our expectations have sunken to? That we accept half assed effort by our star players? Hell no.... DD
so in your eyes now harden is just an iso player and nothing else? then what's all this "exceptional talent" hype? i believe you once said rockets fans dont deserve him, iirc. what's that about lol.
I don't disagree, but offense is not what I'd worry about with Harden. He's elite in that area. Defense is his concern. And as for the off-ball stuff, you have to have an actual coach with an actual offensive system to see those kind of results on a consistent basis. If you have watched Harden over the course of his career and don't think he's an exceptional talent at the game of basketball, then you don't know basketball.
Harden would be a fantastic 6th man on a championship-caliber team. Has anyone looked into putting him in that role?
