Harden's mother: "He is doing the best for his career...He is asking for a chance to get a ring”

No, I did not. My post was entirely about how Harden shot the ball. I specifically mentioned shooting like crap, and the conditions that caused it, and other great players who have suffered the same fate in comparable situations.

Why are you more concerned with Harden's shooting than the outcome of the games anyway? We were pretty competitive in game 7 despite Harden's shooting woes and Scott Foster bending us over for 48 consecutive minutes, and that was in large part because of his defensive effort, the attention he demands on offense, and his unmatched bball IQ. Can you not see that beyond some bricked 3s? James Harden took Clint Capela and Eric Gordon to the verge of a championship against Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green, and all you see are turnovers on the box score?

EDIT: Also I just checked the stats since a number you mentioned didn't sound right. Harden only had five TOs in game five. Not nine. And I bet two of them were BS charges called by Foster.

 

Absolutely. He got paid for his services for those 8 years. It isn't slave labor where we owe him anything. Fans created his salary. Now he's getting paid 40 million to show up to work and instead he parties and doesn't show up to first week of training camp with a new set of teammates he needs to build rapport with.

 

...And I’ll tell them why if they want to come bye

 

Because Harden almost always comes through with horrible performances in the playoffs or disappearing acts in the 4th due to his nature of walking around everywhere off ball and making it easy for defenders to deny him the ball. Look at his drop off in ts% from regular season to playoffs. It's a signficantly larger drop off than most other superstars

It's a pattern. It's a pattern everyone but his stans acknowledge.

 

Good thing you didn't say they could suck your dick.

Otherwise fchowd would have been all over you like white on rice.

 

Report him to clutch for using inappropriate language. I have him on ignore

 

He had 9 turnovers in game 7 and 5 in game 6. He shot around 30% in game 6 and 7 from three.

Edit: he shot 24% from three in games 6 and 7 in 2018.

 

Man, PG13 has an entire nickname mocking his poor playoff performances. He does it with a guy who, up until that point, has been pretty flawless in the playoffs (Kawhi) and we're still putting it all on Westbrook. He didn't 'play like garbage' and he wasn't the sole reason they lose, just like any player really and for those OKC years a lot of times he was the reason they won.

Lebron left Miami to go to Cleveland. AT the time, they were the worst team in the league, bottom 5, Kyrie was a stat stuffer (like, actually. You guys want to see empty stat superstars, look at Kyrie, Not Westbrook.) and Lebron goes there, instantly, contending.

Lebron goes to LA...Instantly contending. Wherever Lebron goes to, they instantly contend. He could have went to the Knicks and they'd have won. Lebron simply wanted to play in his hometown again.

PG13, whatever. You can't win with him as your first option and it may be you can't win with him as your 2nd, his best year he's ever had has been playing with Westbrook and I don't know if he'll ever have the confidence to be the 2nd guy.

I guess, I don't see what's so sad about it. that I won't buy into a narrative that is being made up by a poster here and not even the beat writer?

You even admit that he's not a bad teammate or leader, so does a good teammate/leader ignore coaching? Or, maybe, is it likely that what Royce reported wasn't that big of a deal for the OKC staff and like Durant said they ultimately let him do what he wanted?

Russ literally came out some days ago saying about Brooks "He lets me be me."

 

I bet you're loving this. You've always hated Harden. Carries us every year and gives his all most nights. But yeah, he's the reason why we're in the ****. I don't blame him for leaving. We're not going to win anything whilst TIlman is here. He turned us from a title contender into a struggling playoff team.

I hope he leaves and wins a championship. The amount of disrespect he gets from his own fans is a joke. If he joins Philly or the Nets, I guarantee you they make the finals. We'll struggle to make the playoffs next year if Harden isn't here.

 

Are you a Rockets fan or a Harden fan first?

It's obvious you have nothing substantive the same as you had to resort to personal character attacks and conspiracies about agendas

 

Im not gonna talk about the other stuff because you clearly wont listen and have an absurdly high view of Westbrook as a player for whatever reason.

Dude, people are more complicated than that, its possible for him to be good teammate but still be arrogant and do dumb things on the court.

Royce Young is the Thunder's most respected beat writer. He likes Russ a lot. He did a lot of campaigning for him for his MVP. He's not trying to craft a narrative, he's reporting and doing his job. You are not seeing reality. This is "fake news" level.

 

First of all, the team outcome is all that should matter, and the Rockets have never shrunk in the playoffs behind Harden. They have never lost to a team that they were expected to beat (except MAYBE the 2014 Blazers). The Rockets have at minimum met expectations, and frequently beat expectations in every single playoffs Harden has led them. Individual stats be damned. If you're a Rockets fan, that's all that matters. And if you think that anyone other than James Harden is primarily responsible for our playoff success, then we're at an impasse. You can't give him all the blame and none of the credit.

Second of all, while there is an argument that Harden shrinks a bit more than average superstars (like the 2-3 best players in the NBA at any given time) in the playoffs, his playoff failures are grossly overstated. He has played very well in most playoff series, but I think most of his poor performances are explained by several factors:

1. The unusually high volume of long range and high difficulty (step back) jumpers he takes. As defenses ramp up, those shots are affected more, and there's also greater variance, leading to some memorably horrific games.
2. Playoff officiating allowing for more contact (and more Scott Foster)... which is total BS, games should be called consistently no matter the month, but I digress. Point is this disproportionately affects Harden.
3. Harden has almost exclusively played elite (top 5-6) defenses over the last several playoffs, with just a couple exceptions.

But again, outside of a few poor performances, Harden really doesn't play that much worse in the playoffs. He's also had some excellent postseasons, including this one. Even that 2017 Spurs series, if you take out that atrocious outlier of game 6 (where Kawhi didn't even play, so god knows WTF happened), Harden's TS% was about 60%, which is barely any worse than the regular season, despite playing arguably the very best defensive team in the NBA and the very best defender. In the playoffs.

 

Lol didn’t that @HP3 guy just cry about this imaginary stuff happening to him.

even in this thread the hate @fchowd0311 is getting is unreal. Why the **** would someone like him who joined this site before harden be loving this? He’s a fan of the team and you guys can’t ever lay off or be objective. The GARM used to be a much better place, player only fandom was moderated much better and decent discussion used to take place

 

What? No I didnt. And I have never disrespected Chowd personally. You on the other hand do attack people and make remarks like that. And thats what i was referring to.

 

Come on man. Surely you can understand the treatment he gets. He's a single issue poster with the same 5 talking points and has posted the exact same messages thousands of times. I have read every single thing he has to say, every single response to it, back and fourth forever and ever more times than I can count, and I've only been here for like 5 years. It's not a mystery that he's the only poster on this board who gets treated that way. It's tiresome.

 

I love posting about other things. It's just not many people reply to those. They seem to really vehemently disagree with my Harden takes and people usually only reply when they disagree with you.

I'm glad you follow me a lot though and I ow my posting history intimately.

 

She made her Instagram private. James should really hire an agent and a new publicist. This has been handled terribly. Remember when he was “locked in” per Shams and then five minutes later only wanted Brooklyn?

 

and I think you have an absurdly low view of Westbrook...to the point where he can't get credit for winning but takes the blame for losing.

Me having a high view of a first ballot HOFamer should not be a surprise.

I'm not saying Royce is crafting a narrative. I'm saying that wasn't even Royce's narrative. It was just a story about why Russ takes the shots he does and was not meant to be some "Russ doesn't listen to coaches" story that some made out to be here.

That a player took some data from a coach and denied data is not some scandalous thing. In fact, even Coach Pop denies analytics when he thinks its silly.

 

One thing is pretty clear to me though, we better not be trading him to Brooklyn. Unless its a 3 team deal.