Shaq goes in on Harden - " you didn't give everything to the city of houston"

Everything you said was true AND he did not give everything he could.

He SAID something literal, I didnt take it that way.

I'm not sure why I need to give more credit to Harden than he deserves. He was astounding, he made us relevant, and is a once in a generation talent.

That doesn't mean he's perfect and didn't make mistakes, like how he handled this, or always performed at lower standards in the playoffs, or slacked in close games near the end, or hung around the perimeter while others were trying to make things happen, or playing poor perimeter defense, or not coming through late in series when he regularly shined in the first few games.

You want it all to be on one side, but life isn't like that, and its not because I took something something literally. Thats polarized rhetoric, and no one is owed absolutism just because you're hellbent on it.

 

Shaq's Dad didn't stop it from ending bad in Orlando or LA., he's an older guy now bending history.

 

I just don't 100% focus on the negatives while completely disregarding the positives either. For every 2017 WCSF Game 6 there is this.



for every 2015 WCSF game 6 there is this,

https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/201905080GSW.html

Was he not giving his all here when he had to do this almost every night to just get the Rockets to the playoffs?

 

Get ready - if the Rockets wind up doing better without him (and last night was a good sign even with EG, Wall, and Oladipo not playing), you are going to hear a lot of pundits chirping about Harden's attitude and not being a good teammate, disruptive of team chemistry, etc.

I said it before but he had to go and his departure will probably improve the Rockets as crazy as that seems due to the old adage of "addition by subtraction."

 

Bro we get it, Harden was great when he was here. Nobody is saying otherwise. But Shaq was a 100% on point. Who is going to sit here and kiss Harden's ass when he directly disrespects the Rockets organization and the players unless you are a Harden stan? It's not that Harden decided to leave it was the WAY he departed is what Shaq was pointing out. And that's what the HardenOnlyFans don't understand. Let's me ask you a question and I want you to be honest with me. Do you really think any player can leave a franchise the way Harden did and not one person call him out for it? Shaq, Magic, Barkley, Eddie Johnson, or anyone that played in the 90's or before that is from the "old school". They aren't going to give ANY of these guys a free pass when they act like Harden did. They are going to call it like they see it. And 99.9% of the time they are going to be right because they have been there before. Like I said before this isn't Max Kellerman, Stephen A Smith, Nick Wright, Colin Cowherd, or some other guy that never played pro ball saying these things. This is coming from a guy that is even more decorated as player than Harden is and will probably ever be. And for any anyone to sit up here say woah is Harden, it's the media picking on poor old James again is a fool in my opinion. Now you claim you were a player, coached, and have a family member in the NBA currently. If anybody should understand where Shaq was coming from I would expect that to be you. Sometimes you just gotta give a guy some tough love. And I think that's what Shaq was giving Harden, tough love.

 

Will that Nets team even make it to the Finals? KD is not better than LeBron and Harden certainly is not better than AD.

 

Codman I respect you a lot brother but I 100% disagree with everything you said here. Not many hall of fame players win a championship by themselves. Yes Shaq needed Kobe just like Jordan needed Pippen and Rodman. Magic never won without Kareem. Bird never won without Mchale and Parrish. It takes a great team and great players to beat a great team and great players.

 

If he was going the tough love route, then I totally missed it. I heard that tired playoff narrative as if the Rockets were putting away Larry Obrien trophies before he showed up. But honestly, you're right James acted an ass. My personal pet peeve, he broke the golden rule of being a professional athlete, he showed up out of shape & claiming he wanted to win a championship. That made Harden look stupid. Ironically, it's a rule that Shaq has broken (called out for by Kobe) and Barkley who did it repeatedly. Shaq didn't leave the Magic or the Lakers on the best of terms. And Barkley burned bridges wherever he played, so it's kind of hard when you know the history of these guys to listen to them be holier than thou now. If Shaq would have focused on James's behavior out the door, then there's nothing that could have been said because it was ridiculous. As I've told the young man in my family on his draft night, It's a business now and basketball is your job. Be professional and Harden was the worst example of that on the way out. It was time for both sides to move on. I'm excited for the new guys.

 

I understand Shaq's point. And I get that Harden wanted to be able to win a championship. Shaq is basically saying you want to form a super team with the Nets but you were able to hand pick the guys you wanted to play with in Houston. But it is what it is. I'm not going to waste my precious time going back and forward about James Harden, I got better things to do with my time homie. But good luck to Harden and go Rockets!

 

Lol, I think many of us will start to enjoy the talking heads on national TV again when it comes to the Rockets. I agree with Shaq, but wondering how I would feel if Harden had just been traded to Houston from Brooklyn. This is probably one of the main positives of Harden being gone, we can watch TNT again.

 

Curious, did you like the trade? The return.

 

What makes you say AD is better than Harden?

 

I absolutely loved the trade. To me it was the trade that made the most sense. I believe Stone is betting the house on this blowing up in the Nets face. The Nets have A LOT OF ISSUES. The Nets defense sucks. Nobody knows what's going on with the Kyrie situation. They only have 1 true center in Jordan now. They lost a lot of depth by losing Allen, Spencer, LaVert, Prince. And their bench is not great. KD is coming off a major injury, Harden is not in great shape right now. And their big three all have egos the size of Texas. So this could potentially really work out very well in our favor. LaVert and Allen don't move the needle enough for us, so Stone decided to go out and acquire Oladipo and Exum both whom are on expiring contracts and get another FRP from that trade. And it's rumored that a lot of teams are going to be inquiring about the services of Oladipo at the deadline. So that's another FRP or two. Then we still have Tucker that's as good as gone, that's another late first round pick probably. We have almost $50 million dollars in expiring contracts so we are going to be super active at the trade deadline. Some of those contracts are going to be moved for picks or some might be moved for players but it just gives us so much flexibility.

 

I agree 100%

 

Yes and no. Let’s not act Harden didn’t quit before but context matters. Of course last few games he did but that’s not what he’s implying.

 

I'm just glad we didnt get Ben Simmons. Dude seems soft.

 

Because AD is probably one of the top 5 best offensive players in the league and is probably one of the top 3 best defensive players too. He's the text book definition of a complete player. AD virtually has no weakness in his game. He can shoot the three, mid range, post up, fade away, handle the rock, get to the rim with ease, great passer, excellent rebounder, great rim protector, good on ball defender, great help side defender. Should I go on lol? Harden is a great player no doubt but AD just has more facets to his game to me.

 

Honestly
I may concede some of that but
There were times I thought the pelicans
Had similar talent to the Rockets but
Did not go as far

Rocket River

 

Not trying to be rude when I say this but who the hell did AD ever play with that was a hall of fame player other than Rondo?

 

I think it's plausible to recognize BOTH that:
1) harden WAS unusually inefficient in crucial playoff games more times than not (he's averaged in the low 40% shooting for the majority of his rockets career, with the exception being last year). As much as shaq is a "casual," I can't fault his take on him here.
2) harden didnt have a legit superstar superstar next to him to "bail him out" for almost his entire time here, not on the same levels of wade to lebron, kobe to shaq, steph to kd (or vice versa), etc., with the exception being cp's first year here.

To point 1, harden has had some great playoff games (huge shots, huge harden-like stats on semi-good efficiency), but he's also had a lot of terrible ones too (10+ turnovers, 25% shooting nights, routinely getting beat off the dribble for whole series'), with the worst culprit of this being the first playoff series with dwight against the blazers. He had ONE good game that whole series and it was our elimination game when he and pat bev couldn't make a moderate level read to switch onto dame. He looked ready to quit in game 6 against the cp-hobbled clippers where corey brewer and josh smith (and blake griffin) saved us from elimination. We can hold out hope that maybe he had a concussion against the kawhi-less spurs? Even last year, when we beat the inferior thunder in 7 games, he was having another meltdown game that was only salvaged by a clutch block on a broken play. Credit to him for that block, but should it have gotten THAT close against a team with one semi-allstar in cp? Of all games to flake on, it had to be game 7.

[*To be fair, as much hate as harden gets against the warriors (and that debacle of a year where we were the 8th seed and harden went like 2/11 with 12 TOs), he's actually played fairly well against them with the deck insanely stacked against him. In fact, Harden seemed to play better and better against them with each year in the playoffs. Just sucked that our roster was also getting worse each year against them too. We can all agree here that he played overall well enough in 2017-2018 to have beaten them with a healthy cp3, considering the refs against him and cp getting hurt. He played really well in the clutch for games 3-4 of 2018-2019, finally hitting those shots that we've been clamoring for him to hit. Could he have been more aggressive in game 5-6 of that year? Yeah probably, but he had good games essentially iso-ing on the freakin KD-iggy-klay trio, with a limping cp and worse defense to support him. Overall I don't think the warriors are a fair barometer to evaluate harden given the context, or at least not as a standard to say he was unclutch against them.*]

To point 2, I think his second stars rank in this order:
1) cp3's first year
2) dwight's first year (26ppg, 14 rpg, and 3 bpg in the playoffs)
3) russ (post-injury) / dwight's 2nd & 3rd year / cp3's 2nd year
4) Wall?
5) Jeremy Lin and chandler parsons (totally kidding).

-Only in 2017-2018 did he have a legit superstar next to him and james was starting to really fizzle out and was trending to full meltdown mode (like the spurs series) in the game 5 elimination game, until cp3 closed out the jazz single-handedly, going for 41 and 10. BUT I suppose it's not a HUGE knock on harden because when has he ever had another player to "bail" him out at any other point of his rockets tenure!? I think that's what a lot of people on this board want to point out. Outside of that 1 year, Harden has never had superstar help next to him, at least not to the same level that his contemporaries have. I can't argue there. He hasn't. I think the only series where he had the help all series and didn't show up was the blazers one.

All in all, I think both points are true. He's unusually un-clutch in the playoffs (especially his percentage comparisons), AND he's rarely had adequate superstar level help that all the guys he's compared to has.