Russ will shoot 100% in the final 6 minutes of each game. That's pretty much guaranteed at this point. Better be up big going into the 4th quarters...
I am glad we rested Ryan Anderson Who is beginning to look fresh again. You see this is the difference between Dantoni and Greg Popovich. Dantoni doesn't believe and resting his players and pops of believes in resting his players throughout the season and before the playoffs. Now tell me who has more championships
Lol i dont know if youre aware that dantoni is resting a lot of guys tonite. Also you just gave him credit for resting anderson. So are you complimenting or insulting him?
OKC are easy to defend. Let Russ do his thing and guess what the thunder still might have 100 points at the end of the game. Rockets can score 110 even if harden has a bad game.
I know he is resting his place tonight but all season he said he was against it. It looks like he is finally coming around and understanding why he always loses in the playoffs because he runs his teams to the ground
Seeing as I've given up on the MVP campaign and hopefully Harden's superior teammates have taken notice of this, really hoping the Rockets get their stuff together and eviscerate the Thunder every game by 30. That way we'll remember this season as the one Westbrook won MVP only to get demolished by like, a real MVP.
The thing is Harden has never had a great series. The closest he comes is his 3rd year in OKC when they beat the Spurs to go to go the finals but he wasn't a superstar.. he was 3rd option and coming off the bench so if he stepped up they showed greatness but he absolutely shat the bed in the Finals against the Heat. As a Rocket he's had great individual games and good overall efforts but he's yet to have a signature series with his imprints that carried us to the next round. Furthermore, he's had multiple games in series where he was absolutely atrocious. He had 3 terrible games against the Blazers in 2014. If he played even a tiny bit better in any of those games we would've advanced. 2015 the year we thought James is finally a superstar. Arguabally should've been the MVP ... looking to shake his playoff demons from the previous year. Easy matchup against the Mavs for him to dominate against. He had 2 terrible games 1 good one and the rest were not memorable. The lasting memory of that series is Josh Smith. Next round against he Clippers. Probably his worst series ever. He had 4 games where he looked like a legit bum. He absolutely got bailed out by his teammates in game 6 when he was on the bench and we were on the brink of elimination thanks to Harden not showing up. Against the Warriors he put up some good numbers but again he had games where he completely disappeared and the lasting memory from any of the playoff games vs warriors (last year and 2 years ago) is a costly turnover at the end. Historically speaking his FG% drops by 30% in the playoffs compared to his regular season. He also turns the ball over more in the playoffs. It sounds critical but I'm just stating it the way it is. Harden has a lot to prove this playoffs. He's got the better supporting cast, better record, HCA and extra motivation for not winning MVP. There should be no excuses this time. We're about to see how good he truly is. Please make it happen.
Harden gets fouled a lot in the postseason. Our opponents know that the refs will swallow their whistle. I love the playoffs but I hate that they are officiated so differently.
refs often swallow whistle in RS as well and the fact/stat says harden shoots almost equal number of FTs in playoffs and RS each and every year
We may know later tonight, but I don't think the NBA ever releases the playoff schedule until after the regular season is officially over.
One of Saturday 4/15 or Sunday 4/16. Anytime between 11AM CT and 8 PM CT. Just block your calendar for those time slots
I just mentioned some series he was good in though. Also, the entire Thunder shat the bed against the Heat. Your talking about memories and stuff but not about what actually happened. Your memories can fool you. It's is a myth that superstar players just consistently carry their team through the playoffs. Remember the portland series? Remember LMA first 2 games? Remember the rest of his games? A great series from him, but he did not play great in every single game of that series. Sometimes your teammates need to step up and do something else, for Portland that happened. For Houston we had several guys disappear and we had Chandler Parsons (Who thought he was better than Batum) get shredded by Batum. Just good numbers? He almost had his team going up 2-0 in the WCF and going back home against a historic team. That the Warriors would make adjustments to slow him down is completely expected. That's why we had Dwight, or at least I thought, who in that series was completely dominated by Bogut (But Dwight performed well the previous series) The point is, the playoffs are a lot harder to get these gaudy stats. Teams are sometimes playing to stop that one guy. I remember Celtics-Lakers where the Celtics completely shut down prime Kobe. Nearly Everyone's stats dip in the playoffs and for him it's really not this extraordinary dip. Look at Lebron's, look at Jordan's. Yeah, Harden isn't going to put up 28/11/8 in the playoffs. He doesn't have the Knicks of the world to stat pad against and he'll be playing the same team at least 4x and that team will be gameplanning specifically to beat him. Also, according to basketball-reference he has less turnovers in the playoffs. Just because he hasn't had memorable moments doesn't mean he's been bad. Honestly this entire season whats his memorable moment really? Harden really just dully tears guys and teams apart. Even his crossover isn't as flashy, but damn its effective because he puts so much of his body into it.
