I don't think Harden was ever on a Rockets team with multiple 40% 3 point shooters. Most seasons he had one teammate that just barely got to 40%. Like Mclemore, Pat Bev, Ryno, House. And nobody on the epic 2018 team. Now he has Harris 50% Durant 43% Johnson 42% Green 42% Irving 40% + Harden himself 41%
To be fair, only Harris is a career 40%+ 3pt shooter. (Irving is close, 39%). I don't think the high percentage will sustain for the whole season. They are in a hot streak. I mean, has there ever a volume 3pt shooter that achieved a 50% average for the season? That said, Harris, Irving, and Durant are all great shooters. Having that many shooters on the floor definitely helps giving you better looks.
Because of the makeup of this team, all of these guys are getting more uncontested 3pt attempts, which is leading to a higher 3pt% for all of them. They absolutely can keep this up.
That’s outdated and something is way wrong with the FG% chart. Even at Feb 8th, Harden was above his career %, and was never in the 30s. How can Wob let that slip by. I guess the 40% line is supposed to be 50%, and the bars are reversed for Harden career v Harden BKN
doubtful. 40% shooters throughout an entire year isn't exactly common. it'll eventually regress to more of a mean for guys on that list. They can certainly keep up shooting at a respectable rate considering the open looks they'll be getting but at a red hot pace of >40% in a full year, that definitely isn't likely
Agree that these guys probably won't keep that percentage over the course of their career. But my point was that based on this current roster and the difficulties opposing teams face defending against it, all of these players will be facing more uncontested 3pt attempts than most players do. You see in things like the All-Star Weekend 3pt competition where guys are making over 50% (some over 60%) of their attempts...it's not unreasonable to expect these players to hit a higher percentage (40+%) when the majority of their attempts are wide-open. Yes, over the course of their careers, they will play on teams that don't give them as many uncontested shots. But as long as they have this particular Big 3 with their uber-scoring ability, those open shots will continue...
All star weekend is a straight pickup game. The nba season is not. in terms of trying to relate the two, yeah it's unreasonable. it's a given the others will get open looks. that's just impact of playing with true elite players. but that doesn't mean guys will still stay red hot forever. They won't
Right...that's why I said 40% (instead of 50-60%). Players in real games have to deal with more mental pressure, physical fatigue, etc. But purely looking at what impacts a player's shooting percentage, they will make more wide-open shots than contested shots, and this roster will give every one of these players more wide-open shot opportunities...and the result should be that they make a greater percentage of the attempts. Harris, Durant and Irving have all had previous seasons with a 40+% 3pt%, so I expect this season they should all have an easier time achieving it (Fwiw, Harris' career 3pt% is 43.7%, with the last 4 seasons all well-above 40%). Harden's career % is not that far below 40% and you can see with the Nets that he's only taking wide-open 3s where that was not true at all in his time with the Rockets. I'll agree that Green and Johnson will have a harder time keeping their percentage over 40% because they've historically not been very good at it...but they are maintaining 40+% now because of the wide-open nature of the shots they are taking.
This is his pinned Tweet so he is proud of this and has left it up. I just found it interesting that this was one of the earlier takes on what the BKN situation was. I was running late for work, I should've pointed out that it was a 3 weeks old Tweet. My apologies.
Harden and Kyrie giving back to the young guns. Looks like some compliments and words of encouragement to Haliburton. Respect. Tyrese out there soaking it up too. The broadcast team was making comments during the game that since he wasn't able to practice with his teammates after being drafted, he watched videos of them to learn what they could do and then played NBA 2K with them to see what their strengths were in the game for example like figuring out who the shooters were. Tyrese thinks differently. I mean, that is a little unorthodox, but who does that? This man is looking for an edge any way he can get it.
I was being sarcastic about Harden being MVP, but seeing how I'm seeing media members actually make cases for Harden to be MVP is crazy to see. That big-market stimulus is real. I remember when Harden didn't make an All-NBA team after averaging 29 points, 7.5 assists, 6.1 rebounds and 1.7 steals per game on a playoff team in 2015-16
I'll say again that I think it's more the spectacle and hype surrounding a team that has 3 future HoFers (4 if you include the coach) playing above expectations than it does with being in a big media market.
I agree with you, but team context matters. The year Harden didn't make All-NBA, the Rockets underperformed miserably and were a .500 team. Two years later, when the Rockets won a lot of games, Harden won the MVP. I guarantee you if the Nets were struggling right now, if they were a .500 team, nobody would be talking about Harden as an MVP candidate.
Yeah, but generally spectacle and hype work against a player like Harden. Harden played well above pre-season exceptions in 2016-17 while the Thunder played under expectations and Westbrook won MVP over Harden. because of 2 uncontested rebounds per game. Not to mention the, "who cares what Harden does in the regular season, do it in the playoffs" rhetoric we've heard for years.
