No one said turnovers don't matter or aren't bad. If that's what you're arguing against you can stop posting so much
So, we agree that Nash is one of the better PG's to ever play the game. Right now, we're comparing a young James Harden who is in the early stages of his career as a full time PG to a prime Steve Nash. All things considered, and based on the information you posted I would say that James is doing quite well considering the bar is 2007 Steve Nash. It's naive to think that James isn't going to improve moving forward. It's also unfair to expect that he matches all time greats such as the guys you listed above in his very first season with a new coach, new role, new teammates, new system. Some of those guys took years to develop and had more stability when doing so. If you were to come back and revisit this 3-4 years from now and the situation hasn't improved, then I think you would have more ground to stand on and more people would get behind you on this issue.
Nash was more turnover prone than Harden. I can't believe this r****ded narrative keeps persisting. Nevermind, yes I can.
Don't forget his team members too. Put harden on that squad with a prime stoudemire, etc or put harden with the GSW in place of curry, but with Durant, thompson green iguodala as running mates and let's see whether his 5.5 turnovers would make it impossible for GSW to win the title. Everyone can agree that turnovers are bad and should be cleaned up. Where BBH's argument goes silly is his insistence that you absolutely can't win a championship with the current level of turnovers without understanding that they can be compensated for in a variety of ways - greater offense, better coaching, better teammates, or steals, better defense, better movement, better health etc. this is just another argument to get non-turnover prone Rubio on the team and build or brick houses. I agree we at probably only have a puncher's chance of winning the title, but before the season started we were considered 50-50 to make the playoffs. I'll be ok with trying to get Noel (that makes some sense assuming health), but not the injury prone, world's worst shooting pg unless he came for the cost of a second rounder. Then he can run our second unit as long as brewer is not on the floor, or he can run with the first unit as long as we have a sharpshooting center.
I am more concerned about Harden's 3pt shooting than TO's. I don't know percentages but going by eye test he is rarely hitting it. It helps us and his game tremendously when he's hitting his 3s.
1. James is a great player. (who is trying to do too much of some things to avoid being responsible for some of the things he should be doing.) 2. Nash is not the bar. 3. The bar is championships.
He's shooting a career low at 35%. He's also taking a career high number of attempts at 11.6 per 100 possessions (8.6 per game) and 47% of his shots are 3 pointers
I will when you quit discounting them and quit believing we can win a championship with Harden turning it over this much.
I don't discount them. I've always been one to point them out when we lose. But the point is to win, and we are because of Hardens passing and efficient volume scoring, so I'm not sure what the point of complaining about them is. We probably won't win a championship (unless Morey gets us another star) and you'll say it's because of turnovers. Maybe that will be the reason, but really we still need more talent on this team (remember the 3 stars goal and need to be top 10 on D)
This is an important take. The rockets are unlikely to win the title even if harden has only 2 turnovers per game in the playoffs. Losing doesn't validate the theory that you can't win with harden as your primary playmaker. It may be true but losing when you are good enough doesn't make it true.
I will say it is because James refuses to recognize and accept what needs to happen in order for him to win a championship. James needs to adjust his game. He's refusing to do so and bending the whole organization around his finger. He's the reason why we don't have a second superstar and a great ball distributor because he wants to dominate the ball......too much.
This is where you are nuts. Morey isn't being bent by harden. He and dantoni want harden in this position, they aren't being forced into it. I also think it's silly to say stats don't want to play here. Durant wanted to go be part of a super team. That is the only thing you can point to as a star snubbing harden.
The turnovers and 3pt shooting are areas he should work on changing (no player is perfect) but the ball dominance is not Harden would have high usage under any coach or system. I don't think harden is "demanding" high usage OKC brought him off the bench because they wanted him to dominate the ball, not play off the ball with Westbrook
Wait, what.....what? This isn't a terribly complicated concept. Why we pretend that turnovers are only committed when a player tries to make a pass, and not opposed to when they try to score continues to be a total mystery. When we discard the utterly useless assist to turnover metric, and the amount of raw turnovers per game, and actually standardize players by possession, which is like a grade school concept, we have an apples to apples comparison. These are just estimations, but still offer better information than the garbage Joatmac is trying to make fact. What is really needed is a new standard metric, which is points produced per turnover.
