Kawhi also has aldridge and a couple more guys to help him. Kawhi wasn't the only one who picked up his game. The whole spurs team picked up their game when it counted and that is why they are so dangerous. Does houston have that extra gear come playoffs? Does james harden have that extra gear come playoffs? D'antoni's system and Harden has made his surrounding players around him look better than they really are but we still need that other star to help. Plus athough I love what D'antoni has done to this team, the one thing that guys like Phil Jackson and Pop do best is make their teams and stars finish strong. There have been too many instances where we are the tale of 3 quarters and fall in the fourth. We need to learn to be perfect the last 12 minutes. Kawhi has definitely made his case for MVP with this game, especially his performance in the 4th quarter.
For today, sure. We've reached the point in the season where the narrative will change from night to night, depending on who has the most recent dominant performance. Recency bias is real -- whoever can pile up the most impressive performances in close temporal proximity to the vote will be the guy.
I swear to god I kept waiting for it to load because the page looked incomplete. That forum is ugly as ****. Lmao how many people are on that board? Like 12? Can we DDonate some posters?
Harden is killing his chances with his ridiculous TOs. That streak in the 3rd was pathetic and a major reason we lost.
Yes, Kawhi should hop over Harden in MVP talks at this point. Kawhi's single handedly taken a Spurs team to the 2nd seed and helped his team win over another MVP candidate. Talks would be much worse if this was a prime-time game, but right now, Kawhi deserves the MVP if season ended today. It sucks to admit it.
PTS TRB AST FG% FG3% K.Leonard 26.1 6.0 3.4 48.5 38 J Harden 28.8 8.1 11.3 44 35.5 Effective Field Goal Percentage This statistic adjusts for the fact that a 3-point field goal is worth one more point than a 2-point field goal.">eFG% K.Leonard 53.9 J Harden 52.6 Player Efficiency Rating A measure of per-minute production standardized such that the league average is 15.">PER K. Leonard 28.2 J Harden 27.5 Win Shares An estimate of the number of wins contributed by a player.">WS K.Leonard 10.8 J Harden 12.2 Add to the fact the spurs were predicted to finish second and have another superstar on their team, and we were predicted to finish somewhere between 6-10 , the choice is clear. Is Kawahi a better all around player, maybe. The fact of the matter is this year Harden is the most important player to their teams success period. Kawahi has missed 5 games this year, the spurs are 4-1 in those games. There is no way we would win a game without harden.
The major reason we lost is we got nothing out of anyone else . Outside of Harden the team went 8 of 30 from the 3 pt line. Harden had 6-9. Blaming Harden as the "major" reason is a bit rich.
Kawhi played his ass off tonight for sure. Possibly the best game I've ever seen him play but I'm not sure he can replicate those kind of numbers on a nightly basis where as James can and is often needed to in order for the Rockets to win. Popovich could give Kawhi a night off here or there or reduce his minutes and it wouldn't kill the Spurs chances to win a game. Without Harden, the Rockets have no shot to beat any team with a .500 record or better. I still think the Rockets need another star, possibly even two more star players before we will reach the top. I was hoping Gordon would be that 2nd star but he's been disappointing of late, as has Anderson and Ariza. These guys need to figure it out and start making some shots or else our playoff run will be a very brief one.
He also took this http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/18366721/drug-test-wait-kawhi-leonard-lifts-san-antonio-spurs
recency bias is crazy. but it is what it is. give kawhi the award right before we play them in the playoffs and watch the true MVP do work. rockets in 6 AGAIN
So the the second best team in the league during a 7 game winning streak (now 8) needs a miracle performance from Leonard to beat us on their court. The toughest court to get a win other than Oracle. It stings, but I'll take it. I also want to repeat, Dekker is not a good SF, and Ariza is playing too many minutes. We need to get someone at backup SF, would have been nice to be able to throw Lance Stephenson on Leonard for 5 minutes. 2 points. Fuggin hell.
