James Harden should have been named Play of the week!

People on this board shoe are Rockets fans (I think?) won't even give harden credit for his stellar play the last 25 games.

What makes you think the outside media will? When a guy has 40/14/5 numbers that haven't been done in over 30 years but they just point out a defensive play that didn't matter because the team won. You know he's going to get no recognition.

The media doesn't want the public to know that Harden is putting up Jordan and LeBron numbers at an effecient number. You better believe if he played in a lakers jersey or New York, he would be the best player in the league but just needs more help.

harden has to play like this in order for us to win games, And I'm fine with it because if he doesn't were not getting to the playoffs.

 

True this.
I was mocked for posting in another thread "Harden takes 26 FGAs" with responses like "Great facts"
I've yet to receive an apology. Since Feb 23 he has put up FGAs of 30,26,25,16,24,26,20,26.
His PPG is awesome and any team would love to have the number 2 scorer of the league in their roster, but the team he leads is an 8th seed.
On the other hand Leonard averages(for the week) a double double on a winning team.
Why Harden isn't even a nominee is stupid and bias against him, but he isn't the player of the week.

 

If turnovers, and bad D are not in the consideration, then he could win.

 

So you watched the game yet you didn't know that Ariza was the one guarding Butler? How's that possible? If you did know, then why would you even mention Butler's offensive stats as they had no relation to Harden.

You also didn't realize that once Butler picked up his 4th foul about a minute and half into the 2nd half that he stopped guarding Harden? Are you sure you watched the game?

Here's video of all of Butler's baskets. You'll see that Ariza was guarding him on al but one transition basket.

http://stats.nba.com/game/#!/0021500927/

Due to foul trouble, Butler only ended up defending Harden on 8 of his 26 shot attempts. Harden was 2-8 on those attempts. Of his misses, Harden missed 3 open 3 pointers, he missed a postup hook from point blank range and he missed a floater in the lane after he'd already gone by Butler. He also missed another perimeter shot when Butler switched back over to him right before fouling out.

NBA.COM isn't showing the individual link but here's the game link. You can go look at all 26 of Harden's FGA. You'll see that Butler wasn't even guarding Harden on 18 of his FGA . On the 8 attempts where Butler was responsible for Harden you'll also see that Harden just missed open shots. It had very little to do with Butler.

http://stats.nba.com/game/#!/0021500927/

I do find it funny that Harden can have a monster game and you'll usually be quick to point out that he had 5 turnovers . Now you're praising Butler's great game and neglect to mention his 5 turnovers.

If you think that Butler scoring on Ariza and Harden missing some open shots equates to Harden getting abused then ok but your case would be much more convincing if you at least knew what actually happened in the game.

 

So Harden was 2-8 when Butler guarded him, but they were jump shots so Butler's D doesn't count. Interesting logic. Nevermind that Harden is too fat this year to drive by a good defender like Butler (or Kawhi, another guy who abused him badly in the past couple weeks) so he's settling for jumpers (career high 3pt rate at a career low 2pt %).

I know what happened in the game, Butler was clearly the better player, which is sad because Harden was much better than him last year.

Better ts%, better defense, fewer turnovers, better +/-, much better net rtg.

You claim you watched the game, and that Harden had a monster game, yet he was 10-26 with 9 turnovers and didn't play a lick of defense. There's no way you can have a game like that and the one in Milwaukee and be player of the week

 

In the games since Feb 23 that you cited, Harden has a TS% of 60.4%. That's elite efficiency. Why in the world would you complain about how many shots he takes when he's being that efficient? If he's at 60+TS% then he can take every shot as far as I care.

 

You claimed you watched the Milwaukee game and saw him get "abused by Middleton"

First off, neither team played much defense in that sloppy up tempo mess. Second, one of the miracles of the modern age is that you can go back and watch all of MIddleton's scoring plays.

Of the 7 made baskets he had, I charted exactly 2 that were with Harden guarding him stratight up.

One was early in the game, Middleton drove right by Harden into the lane - clearly his fault.

The second was another drive in the second half, he drove into the paint, got bumped by Harden, tossed up kind of a prayer of a runner and it went in.

The other 5 were either plays where somebody else had him, or Harden had him and switched with anohter defender. Some of those were probably Harden's fault (one was a mess of transition defense off a Harden TO) to some degree, some of them Harden was not even remotely involved in the play by design.

I didn't bother to chart all of his shooting fouls.

I don't actually blame you for taking his opposing number, looking at the box score (he had like 30) and claiming "abuse!" but using these things as proxies isn't always correct.

 

Hardens TS% is good, but it's 23rd in the league.

Obviously some of that is guys who don't take tons of shots, but guys like Curry, Kawhi, and Durant have decently higher ts% than him.

If his calling card is ts% because he doesn't play any defense and turns it over a ton, he needs to be better than 23rd

 

Unfortunately Mr. Clutch has degraded into nothing more than a talking narrative at this point.

And narratives aren't interested in a search for truth, but rather molding truth.

Best to just put him on ignore and move on.

 

Your narrative that it's all the role players fault and that Harden is as good as last year is crap.

 

Your interpretations of my positions are about as dumb as your narratives.

The bottom line is that you don't like Harden, so you will make up whatever you want, to act like a douche.

 

Allegedly I don't like Harden, yet last year I said he could be the second best SG ever and the second best Rocket ever if he kept playing at that level.

Earlier you called DD "basketball r****ded" which is offensive but accurate.

Unfortunately it's also accurate of you. You never provide any data or analysis, at least aelliot and SF although I disagree with their conclusions. All you ever offer is "good lord" and "narrative." Just put that in your signature and stop posting

 

Some of yall really don't know basketball just by reading some of the comments on here and other forums some of yall just really don't know nothing and just bea king dumb comments lol

 

Posting data at this point is irrelevant because the same trolls say the same things regardless of the data.

I commend Aelliot for his diligence and I have tremendous respect for his postings, but conversations with you and your ilk don't require data, they require a constant reminder that you are the Bigtexx of the GARM, and that you are not interested in understanding, you are interested in pushing a position you have developed based on your emotions, which is embarrassingly incorrect.

To attempt to argue against your position, at this point, implies I respect your opinion and thought process, but just disagree with your conclusion.

I do not. Countless times you have been shown information, that is indisputable, and contradicts whatever nonsense you happen to be posting on that day. Do you mold your opinions? Do you absorb the information and use it develop a more informed opinion? Nope. You ignore it and go back just repeat the same garbage the next day.

 

It's not that they were jumpshots, it's that they were open jumpshots. Butler was late in his rotation back to Harden. Are you saying that Harden missing an open 3 pointer should be credited to Butler's defense? Even though he wasn't contesting the shot?

Ok, you watched the game and you know what happened. I'll ask again, then why did you even bring up Butlers offense? Why did you mention Harden going 10-26 when Butler was guarding him on only 30% of his shots?

Based on Sam Fisher's post, it looks like you did the same thing for the Milwaukee game.

The way that I see it there's 3 possibilities :

1) you didn't watch the game and made assumptions based on box score
2) you watched the game but you didn't pay attention enough to see what was going on.
3) you watched and you understood everything but you choose to be purposely misleading.

Which is it?

Do you realize that 36pts on 26 shots is a TS% of 56%? You're acting like that's terrible. Do you know how many player in the league have a TS% better than that?

If Harden didn't play any defense then obviously his man must have had a big game. Who was that?

 

Once again I'm confused as to if you just don't understand stats or if you're purposely being misleading.

Harden 23rd in TS%? Come on. That's if you don't filter out the players that play or shoot very little. Every statistical category has minimum requirements to qualify. Harden is #5 in the league in TS%.

If someone asked you who was the best 3 point shooter in the league, would you answer Nerls Noel since he's currently shooting 100%?

 

Right now I am watching aelliott's game. high percentage!

 

I like how you conveniently spark up a non-sequitur argument with someone else instead of addressing the fact that aelliott and SamFisher absolutely destroyed your previous talking point.

In case you "missed it":

The agenda you're pushing is a joke, and it's getting tired. You add nothing to this board. In the words of the great GrEgOnOmIcS, stop posting.

 

What does this even mean? Mix in a comma...

 

Mr. Clutch is legitimately embarrassing.