This right here. Harden is exactly the type of player who would be irked from having a hockey assist rather than an assist that shows up on his stat totals for the game. He wants to be the man who is a direct cause of his teammates' scoring.
no hingsidht. I was against Dwight signing in the first place, and knew Ariza and Beverly's defense was overrated even way back then. These are not optimal players to have on your starting roster, and clearly we could do better. Period.
right. you clearly should be on the Houston Rockets staff then since you saw everything before anyone else in the world. submit your app asap
So what's more likely? Our WCF players pretty much ALL declined this year... or everybody got fed up playing for the glory of a narcissistic ass and stopped putting forth the effort?
I think the rational answer is it's a combination of both. Will this team perform better with better offensive talent around Harden? Obviously yes. However, is there a limit on how successful a team that has a system that caters to Harden's strengths? Is that limit below the current elite of the NBA(Warriors and Spurs)?
I think Dwight is the most glaring example... but I think it goes beyond that... there is no team feel with these guys... call it chemistry, respect or whatever... it just isn't there... Remember when James got here? He, Lin and Parsons had that whole pregame routine.... that was fun teambuilding.... Now you have Harden pushing off a congratulatory DMo after a clutch bucket... These guys are the picture of dysfunction.... Morey built a team based on analytics... without considering coaching and chemistry among the players... and the house of cards fell in... Now people want to use analytics to argue the greatness of James Harden... People need to look beyond the numbers to see what is wrong with this team...
It does work to some extent, but only when those 3&D guys are hitting their #s, like last year. When they lose that -- for whatever reason -- things fall apart rapidly. <BR>
