No worries. We're all mad about this season and getting emotional. I agree Harden was better than 99% of the league last year but that's not the case this year
I simply don't agree that it's because teams are defending him differently. There are many times he's one on one and he can't get by his man and turns it over. This happened in yesterday's game. He holds the ball too long and shoots a bad 3 or passes it at the last second because he is a step slower this year and can't penetrate as easily. And I should have used traditional instead of volume. Most stats that people are now using to defend him are traditional except for ts%. And as for ts% its back down to .589 which is still very good but it's his worst since his rookie year. When we traded for Harden people thought it was a dumb trade because he "only averaged 15 ppg" but by advanced metrics he was great. The tables have turned I guess. Doesn't matter to me if the other stats are estimates. They are good advanced stats and across most of them Harden is quite a bit worse than last year. I mean if just one or two stats were off, OK, but it's across most of them. ORtg, drtg, regular plus minus, real plus minus,adjusted plus minus, eWins, win shares, tov%, vorp, free throw rate, ts%. They are all down. Also on turnovers, bref keeps track of bad passes and lost ball turnovers. And Harden is easily going to set career highs in those. Does this mean he sucks? No one is arguing that. But if LeBron or Curry became borderline all stars instead of MVP candidates their teams would probably struggle too
Definitely. 100% correct. He's looked a step slower this season and he's struggled to blow by defenders. He did that with ease last season. He's tried to counter that by shooting more jumpers but he's not getting the seperation off his step backs or hesitation moves that he has, which had led to reduced % across the board thus far. I still believe there's more to this than we know, he seriously looks like someone who carried an injury early in the season and is struggling to play himself into the condition he was in last season. This would explain the slower footwork and handles, the strugfled to beat men off the dribble, reduced driving and more jumpers, the large drop off in dunks etc. Just my two cents. I think he's running into some form now and he's been great for two months (aside from yesterday), but I am positive he comes back a different beast next season.
You can certainly believe what you like but Harden is scoring more points per drive this season than he did last year. That doesn't happen if you've lost a step. He's still driving 9.2 times per game. And you also shouldn't have refered to the things you quoted as "Advanced Stats". Those aren't advanced stats. In fact, most of them aren't even stats, they are estimates. If people thought we were dumb for acquiring him because he averaged 16.8 (not 15) pts on just over 10 shots per game, then that was because they didn't know much about basketball. It had nothing to do with advanced stats. Again, believe whatever you like but they are projections based on estimates. So, then you believe that Ariza is a worse defender than Harden? Do you believe that when Dwight went for 30/16 vs ATL that he was really a -20 that night? Likewise if you want to believe DRPM then Harden is a better defender than Middleton,Holiday, Teague, DeRozan,Irving, Beal, Waiters, Collinson,Reddick, Lillard , Lavine,Rose and Wiggins so I guess he's not that much of a problem on defense after all. I much prefer actual statistics over a calculated estimate. Why use an estimate over facts? That's seems rather odd. You can certainly keep believing your estimate that Harden turns over the ball 15.7% of the time but wouldn't it be much more accurate to use the actual number of 12.6. If Harden's assist/TO ratio was 2:1 then nobody should complain, right? So, how far off is he from that? If he had 1 fewer TO per game then his ast/to ratio would be 2.09. So the difference is 1 turnover per game. With everything that we've done badly this year, that's a major issue? The difference between a AST/TO ratio of 2 vs 1.5 just isn't that much. Harden isn't a border line all star. He's still one of the top players in the league.
He may be driving as much but he's not getting to the rim. He's taking 23% of his shots within 3 ft versus 31% last year and 29% for his career. That is easily the lowest of his career. And no I'm not throwing out a bunch of stats that I used previously just because they make Harden look bad this year. Everyone like talking about his ortg and efficiency and win shares to pump up his MVP case (and that included me). Now people just want to talk about counting stats per game. It's interesting to see where he ranks. Last year he was right there with Curry, LeBron and Kawhi. He's at least one tier below them this year
Let me ask you this if our record was 5 games different 32-20 (Nugs 3x, nets 2x) would you still feel the same way? Yes we would be still not playing at last years pace but not far off. I agree there's times I think harden is not able to take his guy off the dribble or not pulling off the step back jumper like last year, but that was more in the beginning of the year. Recently I have felt he's been playing more like lay year. I do think his playmaking is better this season than last but overall I wouod say he had longer stretches of elite play plus he made all the big plays down the stretch last year. Still with every thing current I still don't think there is more than maybe 6 players playing better than him this season. I don't know how you feel on the situation but I think it's just crazy that anyone would want to trade him because of 52 games. We're still over .500 were still in the playoffs. Yes it's not what we all thought coming into the season. With that said there's no way anyone can realistically tell me that were better off over the next 4-5 years trading Harden right now. The odds of getting a player better than him is slim to none. If harden was 30 maybe I would understand but he's 26. I read one poster in another thread or maybe this one say that we had a better year with Lowry and dragic? I say to that hold on how many playoffs wins did they achieve? How many playoff appearances did they have? I don't need to say why this is stupid talk because you already know this. Let's just wait and see what happens. For all we know slim chances or not the team could come on strong after Allstar and upset a team or two in the playoffs. If all that happens do we still looks at hardens miscues in November/December the same as now?
Trading him I feel is unlikely. We would need an MVP player in return because that's Hardens ceiling even if he's not reaching it this year. It doesn't make sense to trade Harden for a borderline all star because what if Harden becomes MVP caliber again? Only other way is if Les and Morey make a decision to blow it up and rebuild. If we won five more games it would depend on how we did it. We've had some very unimpressive wins like yesterday and some very embarrassing losses
Kawhi was not on their level last year not even close. Harden curry and westbrook were all better than LeBron last year from a statistical standpoint. Harden is still top 3 in win shares and 6th in PER he's slightly down from last year but still very very effective. His ts% is so close to being above 60 which is the gold standard for effecincy which harden has been at the last 4 seasons.
The biggest difference to me in looking at stats imo is that last year when Harden was on the court we were somthing crazy like 17 points better with him on the court than off and the offense was avg like 109 or 117 points per 100 possesions which was like golden state warriors offense good. Last year was prob one of the top 20 best offensive seasons ever in NBA history. Imo the way this season is playing out and curry's this year, shows even more that harden really was The mvp last year.
What are the theories for his poor play (incl. defense) in comparison to last year? Do y'all think its laziness? Or he feels like he's proved himself already? Personally, that just doesn't make sense to me. That much shouldn't change in really just 4-5 months. In fact, he seems to be getting along with Howard pretty well too. Idgi.
Fair enough on Kawhi. my point is that Harden was arguably the best player in the league last year. This year no one realistically has him in any conversation for the MVP. He isn't close at all. All of those guys mentioned have improved their game except LeBron because he's older. He's still putting up good box score stats (even if they are some of the worst of his personal career) but his plus minus isn't good and I think a lot of us are concerned about how he's playing (not seeming to care, out of shape, less explosive, bad turnover prone)
I guess I was trying to get at something outside the 3-4 theories that, imo, are very surface level and shouldn't affect the mind that much. In fact, my low key reasoning was he's almost bitter for being given so much flak, esp. considering that he did carry us last year. And that bitterness may pervade his overall play. But I guess we wont really know, maybe Morey doesn't even know.
Plus minus is the dumbest stat to source an opinion. That's completely team related and the Rockets are just bad this year. Harden needs to work on his conditioning this offseason. Thats his main problem. Also, Kawahi Leonard is a great player but in the Spurs system he is 1a-1d any given night. That system doesn't allow much defensive focus individually. Leonard reminds me of a rich man's Grant Hill after his surgeries.
But he was #2 in MVP voting and the players choice MVP. He got flak but he got credit too. Today is awful Harden for the second game in a row. 6 tos in the first half but if you dig deep enough and ignore enough stats you can find some stat that sayz he's not turnover prone
We know bro. No ones saying your opinion is invalid, but you should probably post it in the James Frauden thread
