Jason Terry says Kawhi Leonard and Klay Thompson are B-side players compared to James Harden.

B-side is a bad analogy because sometimes the B-side of a 45 is better than the hit song.

I see Harden as a Tier One player and Klay as a Tier 2 - a good piece to complete a championship team but definitely not the Alpha Dog.

 

Sometimes when Thompson gets into that 10 to 20 shots in a row streak while Harden drowns in misery and failure, you wonder why these kinds of suggestions even surmise themselves.

 

Glad he's not on our team anymore, Terry just loves to talk and a little too much of it..

 

key word.. STREAK.. klay is a very streaky player, has never been consistent. his per might go above 20 now that he has kd on his team, but i doubt it. just dont have that many tools in his game

 

Without Klay Thompson the Warriors wouldn't even be in the finals

 

curry
iggy
durant
green
pachulia

with McGee, McCaw, West,Livingston, clark

spurs still dont beat them. Curry and durant are both really smart alpha players.

 

Klay I agree but Kawahi is a stud.He might be the best or after Lebron the best two way player ine league.Is Harden better player then Kawahi probably but that does not equate to him being an B side player.

 

Exactly. "She's Always in my Hair" might not have been better than "Raspberry Beret", but it should have been on the album, and could have been a single. "Pink Cadillac" was a B-side to "Dancing in the Dark", for God's sake!

Back in the Sixties, lots of singles were released as A-side B-side. Play the first side, it's usually the big hit, then flip it to play the B side.

Now that I think of it, "Maggie May" was the B side of "Reason to Believe".

WAIT....what was this thread about, again? Oh, yeah. Harden's better than those other dudes. Klay is a lights-out shooter, no doubt, but when you have teammates like that, it certainly helps.

 

That's a pretty unfair question Harden is definitely one of the league's superstars but I'd rather have Klay Thompson than a host of other guys making max money starting with Chandler Parsons, Westbrick, John Wall, Lilliard, Bradley Beal etc.

The guy has a pretty rare skillset in that he's an elite shooter but also isn't a defensive sieve. Asking him to be a first pick is just a strawman argument, there's a wide space between 1st pick and "can't hold Harden's jockstrap".

I'm a big fan of Thompson, he's super efficient and he enables the other players by being such a great shooter. He's also drama-free in terms of fit, you don't need to account for anything regarding chemistry or style of play, he can fit in with a post-dominating big man like Shaq, a playmaking wing like Harden or something in between like Lebron no issues at all. All those also apply to Kawhi. They may not be offense superstars but those guys are stars in their own right and while I like that Jet is giving mad props to Harden, he's off his rocker if he thinks Kawhi and Klay count as a "supporting cast".

 

Thompson over westbrook or John wall? Others I agree with but damn.

 

But when does Curry show up? Haven't seen anything these past few playoffs.. take Klay off that team & put him next to Harden they'd rip those p**** boys to shreds

 

For someone who's so streaky he's managed to accumulate a career 42% 3 pt shooting. That's like the opposite of streaky. He's one of the most consistent shooters in the league night in and night out.

 

WB can't shoot straight and couldn't bring his team to the playoffs even with another good player in Ibaka beside him. John Wall's not bad but he's also not at superstar level. He plays in a weak conference which inflates his stats, look at DHoward's stats before he moved West he was like a 20-20 every 3rd night or Jrue Holiday who was an allstar in the East but turned out to be average in the West. .

I'd rather have a guy like Thompson who's an A class 2nd option on your team than an inferior 1st option. Chuckers are like a dime a dozen, what you need are guys who can shoot straight and Thompson has the added benefit of being an above average defender. He's way more valuable if you care more about winning games than flashy individual performances.

 

lol Jr smith = streaky.

Klay is not that. Outside of his teammate he's the best shooter in the league hands down. If you can't even see that then I don't know what to tell ya.

 

Just cut it out. In some nights Thompson is better than Harden on a consistent basis too, especially in the Play Offs. He's better than any other player on the Rockets roster and in all cases and can go toe to toe with Harden if given the chance.

 

So the Warriors have three players better than the Rockets best player in Durant, Curry, and Klay....and they have Draymond Green another All-Star...and they have the finals MVP in 2015, Andre Iguadala. Interesting. Wasn't the clout around Adam Silver about how much he would improve parity in the NBA? Not to mention the 2017 NBA Free Agency will be the worst in NBA History.

 

What was Adam Silver supposed to do about the fact that they plucked Green out of the second round, Curry finally got healthy and turned into a regular season best 3 point shooter ever along with a handle, and the owners/players couldn't agree on salary cap smoothing (which is what led to the Warriors being able to afford KD - the big jump instead of the smoothing)?

Lots of little things have to add up to have a "dynastic" team like the Warriors do. That, or you have to have bar none the best player in the league (see Cavs and Lebron). No sports commissioner can prevent that from happening.

Oh, and Harden is clearly better than Klay. Which isn't saying Klay is bad in anyway. He's on a HOF career path. You just wouldn't lead a team with Klay. The closest you've seen to that would be Reggie's Pacers, which were never quite good enough, even when the East got weak.

Kwahi is interesting in that skillset wise he's probably better than Harden given how awesome and versatile he is defensively and how far his offense has come. But there's a mental component to the game... and I don't "YET" trust Kwahi to be that A-side player mentally. Which may not matter for the Spurs, since their A-side guy mentally is Pops.

 

Shouldn't OKC be able to offer enough money to Durant to convince him otherwise? That it makes the most sense financially to stay with the team that invested a 2nd round pick on him?

Just a thought. If I am KD and I can make 200 mil over 5 years staying in OKC as opposed to 4 years, 150 million with the Warriors, I will not say no to OKC.

 

Salary cap implications are like US tax law. They'll make changes next time in an attempt to prevent x,y or z and then things like a,b, or c will happen that wasn't /couldn't be anticipated. Then factor in that it's not just one side making up the agreement. The players obviously push for as much flexibility as possible. The owners push back.

The area they ended up with, where OKC could and did offer the most money, speaks to what you suggest. But for the super super stars, even the difference you suggest doesn't matter to them, because they're endorsement money can dwarf their NBA contract, they can bet on themselves with short-term deals that turns into the same $ long-term later, etc.

You're basically arguing for a system where only a player that remains with his current team can sign a $200 million contract vs. say a $50 million contract otherwise over equal years, and also handcuffing that player from endorsement money unless he is with his current team. And that won't ever happen.

The Warriors have 1 championship under their belt. One. Their first one in 40 years. And 2 amazing years, but just 1 ring. Odds on favorite for the next one, or two or three sure, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. The big issue has been KD joining them, and that's all about the huge cap jump. There should have been smoothing there

 

Guess OKC got screwed the most because of the lack of smoothing. The rest of the league never stood much of a chance outside of the Spurs and Cleveland.