The “give me Harden over FVV” takes are embarrassing

Imagine Beard in that backcourt instead of FVV and Jalen? He'd finally have the defensive team he needs and enough targets to just cook on offense. He'd weaponise both the lob threats we have AND those who can actually hit down an open shot like Dillon, Bari and Unc

 

Harden and Van Gundy have grown particularly close. The two speak frequently, in person but also over the phone. Sometimes they’ll discuss the defensive strategy for the following night. Sometimes Harden, a basketball nerd, will just listen as Van Gundy tells old war stories from all his years around the NBA. The relationship, people close to Harden say, is one reason why Harden’s been more engaged on the defensive end this season. The 3.5 deflections he’s averaging per 48 minutes are his most since 2020.

“He helps me a lot, and I know he helps our team a lot,” Harden said. “He understands players.”

Like his teammates, Harden knows Van Gundy isn’t asking for more effort than he’s giving himself.

 

That's why it's smart to have assistants who are specialist head-coach calibre coaches. Ime needs to go find himself an offensive *cough*D'Antoni*cough* specialist type coach to teach the team how to score. Be even cooler if you could pair them with a *Cough*get*cough*the*cough*****ing*BEARD*cough* to run the offense from the floor and actually weaponise those skills we have (some of which are literally "best in the league" quality traits for some players.) If only we had people like that in our franchise history we could turn to that'd be a perfect match made in heaven.

 

I’ma be honest, I think the offensive issues are far more personnel related than coaching related

even someone like MDA requires a good PG and good shooting…someone to run the PnR and floor spacers…MDA with this current roster, and I think the offense would still be sh*t

this team went 11-20 on free throws in game 1…they can’t shoot a lick, this is 1 of the worst shooting teams I’ve seen

Ime fcked up tho advocating for a bum like FVV over Harden

 

Oh I agree, MDA with FVV aint gonna do **** either. But imagine Ime with MDA and Beard running the offense so he can focus on the defense? Sounds like a cheat code.

 

It's been fun watching James. We would be a force if we had him now.

 

It actually annoys me a little bit that if we swapped out prime Beard for either Jalen or Fred (or both, I don't actually care) then our current supporting cast would've been good enough to actually justify his talent rather than him maximising whatever crap Morey threw together and achieving little beyond fooling people that Morey was a genius.

 

Nobody predicted Harden would be playing this well two years later.

 

I think there are quite a few people who thought James' game would age well. Its not like he ever relied on running and jumping. He is one of the greatest offensive players in history.

 

Rockets wanted to force the growth out of our young guys instead of having Harden as an offensive crutch. I don’t know if someone as mentally insecure/inconsistent as Jalen is as a player right now has nights like last night if he can defer to Harden.

Worse off team today but maybe better for it in two years.

 

Fvv is so ****ing bad and unreliable that he helps jalen green develop?

This is really what we are going with now?

 

Freds USG rate is nearly half of James. He clearly isn’t an offensive hub. I don’t know who we is, just giving my own thoughts here.

 

It's weird how many Rockets fans make up things to say to denigrate the second best player in Rockets history. Look if you don't like his playoff failures or how he left the team so be it. But at the very least don't make up things that clearly aren't true. Just look at how Maxey flourished because defenses were keying on Harden. He was able to develop against lesser defenders so that even after Harden left and Embiid got hurt, he was able to score at a all-star level efficiency. Look at how all the bigs have played well in the years Harden played with them. Even if we assume it's true that Jalen will be hurt a bit, does no one care that players like Sengun, Jabari, Tari, Cam, and Reed have not developed under FVV's guidance? Two have been relegated to DNP-CD. Two have basically been the same player in the past two years. And one has regressed from being an efficient player to an inefficient player. It's like people are so fixated on making sure Jalen Green is coddled as much as he can be, while other prospects are left hung out to dry.

 

Yeah it's been crucial to let the young guys have the lions share of tge burden for development and tbh i trust Fred alot more with reinforcing Ime's culture and helping set the young guys mentality going forward along with Brooks. Obviously Harden is the better player but Fred was the right move for the rebuild

 

Most posters are extremely short sighted and apparently emotional too lol I didn't realize your post would elicit such strong responses

 

I’m not saying anything to knock harden, if you saw that in my post you were looking for it. This is a convo that’s been being had for a long time and my point isn’t really original so you guys already have the pre-loaded retorts, I get it

On Maxey, every player is different, I’m not saying it’s impossible to develop next to James he’s a great facilitator. I’m saying Jalen in particular has been a mentally weak young player.

 

I think people forget though that the issue with Harden in the playoffs over the course of his career is that the offense in the regular season completely revolves around him for good reason.

In the playoffs though you have to completely change the identity of your team on the fly when in that series an opposing team gameplans around taking Harden out of the game.

Harden is a great player, but it is not a controversial opinion to state that he is a challenging player to lead your team when it comes to the playoffs. Even in his best playoff run playing alongside prime KD, Russ, Ibaka, etc. that OKC team still relied on him running their offense, and when Miami, and others decided to gameplan in a 7 game series to take him out of the game, it completely threw OKC out of it, and Russ going off wasn't enough to win that series. As Harden became more of a staple in his team's offense, it just became more and more of an issue.

When MOREY seemingly solved that issue by bringing in CP3, and having the most successful playoff run since the OKC finals run, Harden's ego couldn't deal with CP3 so he led the push to make the dumbest trade in Rockets history.

I loved Harden here, and hope they retire his number, and put up a banner in the rafters.... HOWEVER... lets not do this revisionist history thing please. This is a player whose greatest strengths on the court became the TEAM's weakness when it mattered in the playoffs, and whose personality and ego ended the potential success he could have had over the longrun when the team game him what he needed.. NOT what he wanted. When he got what he wanted, it was the beginning of the end.

 

Harden’s unquesionably a better player than FVV, but Fred is better at giving this team what it needs. He played a perfect game last night, didn’t force his shots, played amazing defense, and reined in the young guys when they got out of control.

Harden’s great, but he’s at his best when the whole team revolves around him. FVV is able to become a super role player and fill in the gaps to let other players shine.

That said, I hope Fred can rediscover his shot at some point.

 

Its just laughable to try and justify the fvv signing especially when the alternative was harden

Like why does a starting pg being paid 40 million have the usage rate of a center… as if that makes any more sense

 

Actively wanting to put the future of this entire rebuild on a guy you know is mentally weak is just wild.