The ball does not move perfectly well with Harden. The better teams close him down and limit his efficiency, force more bad shots, and then they run it down our throat because we are 4 flat from all those isos I just showed you. Just because Harden is a monster and can simply dominate the lottery teams enough for us to post good overall offensive scoring numbers doesn't mean he's not a ball-stopper and this offense is fine. It's not. It's killing our defense.
You argument doesn't make sense. Every team and every player suffers decline in offensive efficiency when facing teams with great defense. It doesn't have anything to do with the lack of ball movement per se, it's just common sense : The stronger the opponent's defense, the less efficient our offense. What you have to prove is that our drop in offensive efficiency when facing top defensive teams is actually larger than the average, and then you also have to prove that is caused by our lack of ball movement. You did nothing of the sort, and only provided a single data that anyone can infer anything from.
oakdogg, this is most certainly about our defense. I've started the case multiple times. Offense affects defense. Our defense sucks with these metrics. 1. 29th in defensive rebounding. 2. 27th in defensive field goal percentage at the rim. (65.5%, only MIN, LAL, SAC worse) 3. 25th in transition defense. (gave up more fast break points than everybody but SAC, DAL, PHI, LAL, PHO). 4. 29th in opponent steals. (the worst turnover you can commit because ball is live.) Our defensive issues all point right back to a one-dimensional offense that leaves our defense strung out in transition and when not in transition they are cheating in an attempt to create defensive turnovers to make up for all the turnovers the offense is committing. This is all about fixing the defense with a ball movement multi-dimensional offense that maintains floor balance, cuts down on turnovers, and continues to score effectively with Harden without all the bad stuff that kills our defense and subsequently kills winning and makes us so easy to disect by winning teams.
At this point you don't have an argument. Name the 5 biggest ball-stoppers in the NBA. I'm not going to waste any more thought on you unless I see your list.
Our offense do worse against top defensive teams? 1. San Antonio Spurs on avg 99.0 Drtg our Ortg against them was 101.0 + 2.0 2. Atlanta Hawks on avg 101.4 Drtg our Ortg against them was 106.3 + 4.9 3. Indiana Pacers on avg 102.9 Drtg our Ortg against them was 102.7 -0.2 4. Boston Celtics on avg 103.6 Drtg out Ortg against them was 98.1 - 5.5 5. L.A. Clippers on avg 103.8 Drtg our Ortg against them was 113.7 + 9.9 6. Golden State Warriors on avg 103.8 Drtg our Ortg against them was 104.9 + 1.1 7. Utah Jazz on avg 103.9 Drtg our Ortg against them was 106.6 + 2.7 8. Charlotte Hornets on avg 104.3 Drtg our Ortg against them was 109.4 + 5.1 9. Miami Heat on avg 104.4 Drtg our Ortg against them was 103.6 - 0.8 10. Cleveland Cavaliers on avg 104.5 Drtg our Ortg against them was 96.9 - 7.6 11. Toronto Raptors on avg 105.2 Drtg our Ortg against them was 115.6 + 10.4 12. Detroit Pistons on avg 105.5 Drtg our Ortg against them was 109.9 + 4.4 13. Oklahoma City Thunder on avg 105.6 Drtg our Ortg against them was 108.2 +2.6 Against top defensive teams in the league, our offense outperformed their average defensive rating 9 times. In 2 of 4 cases where we fared worse than the average, the difference was extremely minuscule (-0.2 against Pacers and -0.8 against the Heat) Your hypothesis has been completely disproven.
Nonsense. Our offensive rating for the season was 108.3. Against playoff teams it was 106.9. Against lottery teams it was 110.
I didn't read the whole thread, but Harden's beard is pointing out the same flaw in your argument I pointed out a month or two ago in a different thread. If you're going to keep harping on how much worse Harden is against the best teams, you have to show that the dip is a lot worse than other elite backcourt players experience. Because it's just common sense there will be a dip.
I can't really conclude from the first three that offense is a cause. #4 makes sense, but it'd be nice if we considered 1) How many points that is translating to - that means how many points the difference between us and the average translates to. 2) That our offense design is what leads to those turnovers. Like some definitive evidence that ball movement offense eliminates these turnovers and ISO offenses perpetuate it. I've been of the mindset for a couple years that we'd get a better return from Harden focusing on improving on his turnovers as opposed to learning to play off the ball, which could marginalize his talents. I don't have examples of players doing this, but it just seems like there's a good number of turnovers Harden could eliminate with better focus - not necessarily requiring a change in offense.
There is no one more focused on the offensive end than Harden. Your 'better focus' should work for him defensively but on the offensive end is akin to McHale constantly saying "play harder". The way to lower Hardens turnovers and make him more efficient is to add a distributor/creator who is much more efficient at that task than Harden is so Harden can conCentrale on scoring the ball and playing defense like a shooting guard is supposed to do.
If you cannot see how our offense affects our defense by putting them in transition with man disadvantage after me talking about it several times then I probably can't explain anything else to you. If you can't see that our offense affects our defense and puts us in man disadvantage in transition way too often after watching this team play the entire season then I'd say you don't know what you're watching well enough to know what the issues even are with this team.
I'm just saying you support your argument that our ISO offense causes all our defensive problems by posting our bad defensive stats. That's not evidence. That's just evidence our defense sucks. There can be other reasons for that. After all, in 2015, we ran the same offense with Harden having the same usage and had a pretty good defense. How does that fit your theory?
Seems like you are advocating swapping the root of pretty much all our offense (today's Harden) for a poor man's Rip Hamilton (what you want Harden to be). Harden's best gift is creating off the dribble. This reminds me of the late 80's & early 90's when Ivan Lendl was the #1 tennis player in the world with a powerful groundstroke game. He gets convinced he needs to become a serve-and-volley player to win Wimbledon, and he succeeds........at becoming an average serve-and-volley player. He never got as far at Wimbledon with his new approach as he did before. I think everyone underrates how hard it is to just totally change your game. It takes your whole life to be one of the best at one thing, and people think one summer can make you just as good at something else? It doesn't make common sense. Who are some bball players who made a transition so seamlessly like this? Reggie Miller ever chip in as a point guard?
