They said two things I agree with wholeheartedly 1) Nobody, except for James maybe, saw Harden becoming THIS good. 2) Harden has grown from a 6th man into a superstar.
iggy was fake finals mvp, cp3 was the REAL MVP of WCF and entire 2018 rockets playoffs run btw i didnt say he is better than those guys in general ,just that he played at that level during playoffs ie hes not declined
harden carried the rockets thruout the playoffs last year as with previous years cp3 can't even carry blake, dj, reddick past the jazz last year
2 months of play does not make a decline....its a small sample size... any player young or old can have a 2-3 months (even a year) of shaky play, particularly one coming off of a serious injury and playing on a dysfunctional team alongside a drama queen who happens to be his best buddy btw he was also having injury early in the season he played through
man harden couldnt get past kawhiless and parkerless spurs ...he was pretty good last year but not as good as cp3.... in best case they were around even imho whatever the point wasn't who of these 2 was better the point was there are only few superstars who could have helped harden the way cp3 did last year... if morey did know about supernova harden perhaps it was better not to sign cp3 but hardly anyone expected this improvement by harden as well as this much struggle from cp3
I completely understand Rockets fans b****ing about Harden's lack of defense 2-5 years ago. Last year he picked it up noticeably, and THIS year, if his jersey didn't say "HARDEN" on the back, the media would be talking about what great defense this guy is playing. For someone on ClutchFans to say Harden isn't giving effort on defense this year, it's a sign they're not really paying attention. Harden has been an absolute BEAST on defense during this back-to-back, shutting down both Jokic and Gobert when he was on them in the paint. And he's been doing it most of the year, often with little help from his teammates.
