he averaged 29/6/6 in the 2018 WCF. against easily the best collection of perimeter defenders in the league. with 2 games where they didn't even have to worry about the only other creator on the team in chris paul. i suppose you can want him to do better, but that's not a bad performance. certainly not a flameout. of course it's not his regular season numbers, but you aren't supposed to get your regular season numbers against the most elite perimeter defensive team. nba history says people do worse against really good defenses, no matter how great they are. and whatever he did, we were up 3-2 on one of the biggest favorites in nba history so something was working. the only players who i would be really confident of doing better are lebron and jordan. maybe kawhi (and even he was worse about last year's warriors than harden was, so maybe not). even by your count, harden had a good series against the warriors last year. so that's a good series and at least an average series in our 2 biggest recent moments, series that were the only tough series the warriors faced. sure, we all hate the spurs series. even if you don't think he had a concussion, what would that have to do with d'antoni not holding him accountable? if anything, that would be year 1 of d'antoni and nothing like that has happened again and he just had his best series against the warriors. but that is beside the point. i don't understand what it has to do with accountability. some players aren't the best playoff performers. steph curry isn't. david robinson wasn't. karl malone wasn't. even someone like damian lillard, despite his buzzer beaters, has fairly bad playoff numbers. the superstar who can carry you all regular season (and i mean really carry in harden's case) and have amazing playoffs is a rare species. it doesn't have to mean they aren't accountable to something. harden has been top 5 in playoff PER each of the last 2 seasons and had the 2nd best team in both playoffs. if he's somehow doing that while not caring enough about winning, then that's pretty amazing.
Well stated! Folks dont understand the level of dedication and necessity of hammering every nuance that goes into a championship... they just focus on the talent aspect or the offensive stats and figure the rest of the team can worry about the other stuff... when really it takes everybody giving their all continuously...... and before I get attacked by the Harden White Knights... I'm not saying Harden lacks dedication or anything... just following the premise of really anybody that wont take constructive criticism or allow themselves to be held accountable for their actions...
Harden averaged 29 ppg on 54% ts and 47% efg. That's significanltly below his regular season averages. Kobe Bryant has faced equally if not more stout defense in the playoffs and has higher efficiency even though it was a different era of basketball while also planning all NBA defense in the playoffs.
i still don't see what that has to with accountability. if harden was more accountable would his 3's start to go in more for some reason? besides, i already said the numbers were below the regular season. that's what happens when you play elite defenses. always has. a) no one has said harden is as good as kobe (who certainly wasn't playing all-out defense in every playoff game) b) kobe and other great players have had plenty of series where they shot poorly against elite defenses like the 2018 warriors. the spurs seem to be the only team kobe really had good series against. the 2004 pistons made him shoot horribly even though they had to focus on shaq. the 2008 celtics was a rough series. the 2009 magic held him to like 41%. i don't know remember exactly what he did in the 2010 finals but he shot 6/24 in game 7. michael jordan's worst playoff shooting series were against the '97 heat (38.7%), the '93 knicks and the '96 sonics. lebron looked terrible against the 2007 spurs and 2008 celtics and even though it was still an epic series, he shot less than 40% against the 2015 warriors (who didn't have kevin durant). you face elite defenses, you tend to shoot poorly. maybe harden struggles more than the best of the best of the best, but unless you have a trade in place for someone better, i'm not sure what the solution is other than hoping harden shoots better.
Exactly. I also didn't say Harden wasn't dedicated, or was the problem. Merely that IF he resented that strongly being held accountable, and THEN requested a trade....we should strongly consider doing so. Could well be addition by subtraction. Hopefully that scenario isn't the one we're faced with. I don't necessarily agree with the premise I replied to...that being that if JVG came in, and held Harden accountable, that Harden might resent that and ask to leave. I would think he'd welcome the change, and the renewed ability to achieve the ultimate success. Also...it's much worse if your star player has that attitude, as it then becomes nearly impossible for that to not spread to the rest of the team, or at the very least for resentment to build. Star players can be held to different standards, except for this one case. The Cowboys in the 90s were a perfect example. Their star players, particularly Irvin, were held to different standards, but they were also extremely hard working and had a win at any cost attitude. Other players knew that, and there wasn't really any resentment. But, look at any successful team...how many championship teams had a star who didn't like being held accountable? off hand, I really can't think of one. Whereas examples of good teams that never did win anything...lots of examples there.
tbh thats why i wasnt all yippy skippy bout goin after Tomball Jimmy... that dude has immense talent - but he's a straight up diva who has issue everywhere he goes... he doesnt strike me as a guy whos great for overall team morale and unity - despite his talent... I mean, I get that more often than not, you have to gamble on that level of talent despite misgivings - but he wouldnt have been my top priority... jus sayin...
Us losing to LeBron and Kawhi wasn’t unlikely. We’ve seen Harden fold too many times in instances where we were at an advantage to just assume he woulda delivered vs those two and their supporting casts in those years.
Did you miss the games vs GS after Durant went down? No one said Harden wasn’t accountable. He has taken accountability for his playoff flameouts year after year. But every year he plays worse than his regular season self and gets ghost when it’s time for us to get eliminated, no matter who the coach is. It’s happened so much that no one is surprised when it happens anymore.
I was with you in total agreement on a stand point of moral victories until you made this last statement. Of course, moral victories are always bitter sweet. The 2018 lost was tough, yet you have to celebrate and remember rockets 25th anniversary of 1995 championship. So are you saying that harden had better numbers against warriors than the 2019 finals mvp, kawhi Leonard? I'm just saying because kawhi Leonard put up 28 points and 9 rebounds against warriors in the finals.
sure, anything is possible. but i have a hard time believing the rockets team that was up 3-2 on the warriors wasn't a mentally tough group ready to pretty much shred whatever cleveland was going to show up with. i suppose in my hypothetical, the chris paul injury never happens (even with durant signing that might have been the only thing that stopped us). well i said maybe the 2019 title. toronto got a whole series without durant, a game without klay, and then the 4th quarter of game 6 without klay when he already had 30 and was on fire, and they still barely clung to a win and i'm certain they didn't want to find out what would happen in game 7. i think vegas would have us favored over the raptors and vegas would definitely be factoring in a possible harden letdown.
in the game durant missed he had 35 points, 8 rebounds, 5 assists, 4 steals and an EFG% of 56% and, if zach lowe quoted it correctly, was 4/5 with 12 points in the 4th quarter. would MJ have made it 41 points and got the win? would lebron or hakeem figure out a way? i guess. but i have a hard time calling that a flameout. in game 7 the year before, he had 32. not on great efficiency, but game 7's rarely feature high efficiency performances and certainly not when you are going up against the playoffs #1 defense with no other creator and your teammates shoot 5/31 on 3's. again, are there a handful of people from nba history who might have had a better game (and might not)? sure. but i feel like we're still basically holding the spurs game 6 against harden if we're mad about the last 2 warriors series. harden led/tied both teams in scoring in 5 of the 6 games last year. he had better offensive numbers than kawhi against GSW and kawhi faced 12 whole minutes of durant on the floor when durant would be the most logical guy to guard him. it's not like i'm saying "give me james harden over anybody out there for a playoff series because i'm 100% confident he'll be great." i'm just saying he would quite likely have a ring if he didn't run into a basically unprecedented team and yet he gets treated like there's no way to build a great team with him as the main guy when the 2018 team was probably better than a decent number of champions and the 2019 was still very good. he's had 2 really good playoff runs in a row against essentially as elite a set of defenses as you can face in the playoffs (utah x 2, gsw x 2 in 5 series).
The only time JVG has had a player close to Harden's capabilities is T-mac... and he let T-mac handle the ball as much as he wanted to. It will be a pretty bad look for team Harden if he continues to have coach after coach without sniffing a championship. They know that. He's also not going to be able to carry a team game-in/game-out for years to come. Its likely that his best years are behind him, but he's still got several years of high productivity remaining... that need to be optimized.
God speed for nba, rockets, worldwide. Gotta cut harden slack. Even drexler got embarrassed in a finals by Jordan. Drexler's embarrassment was even worst because drexler fouled out twice against Jordan in the finals. Essentially, drexler suffered two in game disqualifications versus Jordan.
This are not normal times, I am not sure what 2 seasons of Corona would look like. That's 2 years of Harden's prime and 1 year of JVG's new contract if it comes to that.
You should read "The Jordan Rules." Should the Bulls have traded Jordan in 1990 when he acted like a total ******* to his teammates, and wouldn't take criticism or be held accountable? Not saying Harden will necessarily approach that level of greatness and win championships, but he might. Having a star that has a chance to be that great is rare. You don't trade that away unless you are forced to. Sure, you wish he would listen to every coaching instruction, and be the perfect teammate at all times. However, the ego that makes him stubborn is also what allows him to reach a higher level than other players. You take the good with the bad. From all accounts, Hakeem was not always the easiest guy to play with or coach for most of his career.
He was 11-25 in that game. Lethargic. No defensive impact. Pull the game thread and you will remember how disappointed folks were with his play. I’m not trying to hear the “vs the top team” nonsense. If you want to win a title, you have to beat top teams. Top de defenses. Still do what got you there. It’s a very small list of guys that have led a team to a title. Look them up. Most don’t play worse in the postseason literally every year. Harden does. He’d likely have rings he brought his regular season level of play to the playoffs. So no, he doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt that he would suddenly reverse trend and beat LeBron or Kawhi with solid supporting casts.
