To bring back a guy that forced his way out of a franchise that gave him anything and everything he wanted and he still pouted and fat suited his way out. Stone is guilty of many things, not bringing back Harden is probably his best decision Cavs will soon find out
Its the fact we didnt even try to get a single pg is more triggering. If we wanted to get harden, u can bet your a$$ the front office would do whatever it took. The fact that we did nothing to improve our situation goes to show our team is either arrogant or isnt serious about winning it all. We are missing any semblance of a pg/playmaker, but nah we r good sitting still and doing jack sht. What's the point of kd then?
Made Jarret Allen look like an all-star. I can't imagine the easy looks Jabari and Sengun would have got playing with this man. Can't believe we chose FVV over one of the greatest offensive players of all time.
Yeah the FVV NTC yeah but some of us wanted him when he first wanted to come here and Ime reportedly wanted nothing to do with him. I think Harden would have made all of our young guys look better and having him run with Jalen would have been a fun team and running an actual PNR with Alpi would have been deadly. If you tell me there are two routes... 1.) Rockets get Harden instead of FVV and we keep Jalen (not sure if we would have had the money for Brooks) and grow the team that way vs 2.) where we are at now with KD... I'm picking Harden. KD one of the greatest scorers ever too but I think it's clear now that offense only works with him if you have a good PG so that he can finish more plays than he initiates or rather...maybe Ime just doesn't know offense well enough to really unlock an offense with KD. With Harden there is nothing to really do, he just has to play Harden and watch the offense go. The Harden slander needs to stop. He's one of the best players to play and is an entire offensive engine on his own and we turned it down for a journeyman PG.
I think the better question is did we even have to start Harden. Harden could have been the 6th man here letting Reed start at PG with Amen. Harden, Capela the Rimrocker in PnR, and Eason off the bench and Harden just does his thing. He would have had starter minutes and overlap at the end of games. Probably still the same amount of points, opportunities, utterly destroying all other team's second units. Rockets have lost leads when KD, Sengun, etc don't produce. Harden would have erased that disadvantage and made the game easier for everyone. Everyone so worried about Harden clashing with the team concept when you have the perfect spot for him. Alternatively, Harden could have been the dribble penetration and kick in the starting offense we lack so often when everyone just does their iso dance to the paint with TOs.
Ime is the biggest problem. He chose FVV over Harden initially, and the 2nd time around his ego is too massive to admit he was wrong so he had to double down. Ime's ego couldn't handle Harden being here and being able to run offense in his sleep better than anything Ime could draw up in his wildest dreams.
Why does all of that matter? What matters is now we got FVV in his NTC so writing 1000 words on what could have been 2 yrs ago makes zero sense. If we got Harden back then we wouldnt even have KD now as Harden makes more than the 25M salary of FVV meaning we would be over the apron and not get KD.
We are 1M under the apron we would have to have a trade that dumps salary to get that pg. Secondly the point of KD is to be the closer and be an upgrade to Jalen Green. The pg playmake has to be either Amen or Reed otherwise why we have them on the team? I would rather keep investing on these two guys than get some stop gap. A stop gap wont move the needle. The people who are triggered have no clue how the cap works just think getting Harden is as easy as telling him to come here.
Dumb harden haters refusing to admit that fvv over harden was dumb as fk now and dumb as fk 2 years ago. Fk ime, fk stone and fk the harden haters, rather b petty than have our team succeed. Doubling down on stupidity. Extending fvv was the stupidest thing ever, hell signing him initially was dumb as fk also.
It's a message board, people talk about things teams should have done all the time. People talked about how stupid it was that we drafted Marcus Morris over Kawhi when most of the board actually wanted Kawhi at the time. We're allowed to look back on decisions and say "Man that was dumb" it's a message board, why discuss anything at all? What's the point? The fact is, it was a mistake to choose FVV over Harden, we shouldn't have. Yes, I know that means we don't have KD but I addressed that in my post. Ime is no Kerr, KD is not playing with Kyrie, he's not playing with Curry, he's not playing with prime Russ. So what we see is a mutilated offense that can't reliably get him the ball where he's doubled into TOs all the time. Yes, I would have rather had Harden here with the young guns, that's all I'm talking about. Yes, I know that means we would not have KD, I don't care. Us having KD right now isn't doing much good for us, we look like playoff fodder right now and we're now depending on a journeyman old PG to come back off a torn up knee in order to contend...or hoping that one of our young guys actually turns the corner and becomes a legit superstar player...both of these look unlikely tbh SO I think it's very relevant to wonder what this team could have been if they had picked up Harden instead of FVV then because many here were actually arguing that FVV was a better option over Harden.
