As someone said in another thread (and I'm ticked off at myself for not remembering who it was), Harden is the kind of player you tank to get. As it is, he was the 3rd pick in his draft. Hindsight, of course, always being 20-20, he'd probably be the 2nd pick of the 2012 draft. I'd take Davis over him, even after the spectacular game he had last night. Why? If talent is close, you always take big over small, unless you already have the big. They're just so much harder to get than a wing. In my opinion, Morey did more than trade all those assets for a former #3 pick. He got the equivalent of "tank talent" while skipping the agony of tanking and placing a low percentage bet that you'll luck out and get that 1st, 2nd, or 3rd pick. Heck, most of us would have been thrilled to move up to the top 5. Morey blew by all that. He traded Martin's season this year and expiring contract, and a nice player in Lamb, the 12th pick of the draft we're talking about, along with the crap shoot of future picks, still valuable, for someone I consider talented enough to be the first pick of the draft if you already have that big. And that's genius at work.
shoot just look at his own draft... only Griffin and Thabeet were taken above him...and he obviously would be the no 1 pick in that draft looking back now.
Kind of funny... after the first year, everyone said OKC should have taken Curry, Evans, or Rubio and that they made a mistake. Wish I could find Bill Simmons' article on it... Heck, even last year people were saying OKC should have taken Rubio.
while we are at this. I got a pure academic question for everyone. Lets say we redo the 2010 draft right now. Where would Lin go? I'll argue that he'll go anywhere from 3rd-6th.
to be fair, at the time of the Harden draft, Westbrook was still perceived as a long term SG / combo guard. While Harden was perceived as someone who's not an elite playmaker - which was obviously the wrong part. I don't remember Simmons suggesting Evans, he didn't like Evans, but i do remember Rubio. Simmons just thought Rubio was a clear top 2 player in that draft. And he might still be right.
Fair points indeed. Just funny to me to see that he 'obviously should have been 1' when I've heard so many times that other players should have been selected before him.
i suspect Harden wins today. I'm taking Davis. <form method="post" action="http://poll.pollcode.com/sjxa2p"><table border="0" width="175" bgcolor="EEEEEE" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0"><tr><td colspan="2"><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000"><b>Anthony Davis or Harden?</b></font></td></tr><tr><td width="5"><input type="radio" name="answer" value="1" id="sjxa2panswer1"></td><td><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000"><label for="sjxa2panswer1">Davis</label></font></td></tr><tr><td width="5"><input type="radio" name="answer" value="2" id="sjxa2panswer2"></td><td><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000"><label for="sjxa2panswer2">Harden</label></font></td></tr><tr><td colspan=2><center><input type="submit" value=" Vote "> <input type="submit" name="view" value=" View "></center></td></tr><tr><td colspan=2 align=right><font face="Verdana" size="1" color="000000">pollcode.com <a href="http://pollcode.com/"><font face="Verdana" size="1" color="000000">free polls</font></a> </font></td></tr></table></form>
Different thought experiment, if someone hasn't already tried this: what if the Rockets hadn't blown up the roster, but traded those same pieces for Harden? So, Harden, Aldrich and that scrub for Martin, Lowry (instead of Toronto pick), own #14 pick, Dalembert(to trade up to #12 for Lamb), and Dallas pick. I'm not sure anymore how much cap space we'd have in this hypothetical or what's possible there. Asik?/Camby?/Motie/Smith/Aldrich Scola/Patterson/White Parsons/Budinger*/Delfino? Harden/Lee Dragic?/Lin?/Douglas/Machado How many of the ? marks could we have kept/acquired? How good would this team have been with those vets plus Harden? * Or, execute the Budinger trade anyway for Terrence Jones.
the only reason you would take davis over harden is the same reason why portland took greg over durant... great big man are hard to come by (insert that's what she said or other joke)
its funny because last year, everyone on espn and bleacher call me stupid for preaching that westbrook should be a 2 and let harden be the primary ballhander
i would take him because i think he'll be the better player. i think his upside is a top 5 player for many years.
well, #1, positions are defined by defense more so than offense. it makes sense to develop Harden as a "2" defensively. two, Harden was the ball handler a lot. Offensively, you just work with what you got. If you have two great ball handlers / playmakers, you'll use them both. Harden is a bit better off the ball because of his shooting ability, so in that situation it only makes sense to use him off the ball quite a bit.
You say this is as if Blake Griffin is an elite PF with a skill that is something other than jumping out of the building. His athleticism is just about his only asset.
Blake Griffin is easily one of the most overrated players in the game. I'd take James Harden any day.
at this point, he's the most underrated player in the game. After his rookie year, it's like people got tired of him and started to exaggerate his weaknesses, and it got to a point among fans where it's ludicrous. like the post above. I don't even know what to say there, or if it's worth spending time to respond in depth, but my first two thoughts were facepalm and LeBron, so there it is.
