Does Harden have the potential to be better than T-Mac in his prime?

I was responding to your comment that McGrady could dribble and shoot. All wings can do that.

His ability to play the 1,2,3 on offense is a result of his natural ability, not hard work.

Yep, not everyone can do that. Do you think that in practice, the coach makes him practice those high risk moves? Doubtful. So since its not something that he consistently practices, it's most likely a result of natural ability.

100% wrong. Jeff Van Gundy once talked about a book titled "Outliers". One of the theories of the book was that a naturally gifted person would need at least 10,000 hours of practice to become elite.

And then, if I recall correctly, Van Gundy said something to the effect that McGrady was the product of a naturally gifted person who practiced only 1,000 hours.

 

Six minutes left, game seven against Utah, Tmac's refused to take the ball to the hole when defended by Derek freaking fisher. Jump shot after jump shot.

I'm sure you'll want to tell me what he averaged in the series and the numbers he put up. I can tell you I watched those games And Tmac's shrunk in the big moments.

Do you think Kobe would not have taken those rockets team past the first round. Tmac's was a giant tease, sportscenter highlight. And a waste of god given talent.

 

TMAC had to shoot because he was getting hacked by fischer all night long when driving and they were letting a lot of those go. And its not like yao ming was scoring at will against okur or boozer he wasn't.

but the main problem was that the jazz gave us match-up problems just like the mavs did. they knew how to exploit yao ming on the defensive end who couldn't guard boozer posting up or couldn't go out to the three point line to guard okur. the jazz were good.

its not like kobe would have beaten them by simply showing up.

 

absolutely. harden is only 23 and seems to be healthy

 

what's with all the journeymen that won championships as bench fodder but never gets to be the man, second option or even the first guy off the bench?

 

tofwalker,

did the journey men get paid 20 million a year?

 

who cares about the money when the owner is willing to spend
on Chris Boshes, Gasols and whatever second tiers of the league

 

he got max money to help his teams win a championship.
he had the talent. but he has no heart and no leadership.

watch those clutch city videos, see how the other Rockets were all proud of Dream and how Dream was so gracious to them.

People talk about the Tmac Orlando days like he was Michael Jordan, he was more like Michael Spinks.

 

Harden can compare in some aspects, but tmac was just a lot more versatile on the offensive end. He was also known moreso as defensive specialist when he entered the league and harden has never been that. Harden has accomplished more in terms of team success. Tmac was more valuable in the half court and was more cluth in my opinion.

Harden in a couple of years is what i will compare to tomac in orlando in terms of who was better in their prime.

As of NOW, Tmac has the edge.

 

Those Orlando T-mac fans be trifln.


Toronto T-mac fans is where its at!

 

that's the wrong dinosaur on his jersey. it should be this one:
the one that burns bridges

 

All this talk should reserve until Harden has taken us to playoff and wutever result that has been done.

 

You are embarassing, tweakin everything in your pathetic attempt to diminish his prime and how good he was at one point.

32.1 PPG, 6.5 REB, 5.5 AST, 1.7 STL, .564TS%, 30.3PER, .262WS/48, +7.7xRAPM.

How many modern NBA players matched a season like this? You always say how long you watched NBA but judging on posts like that it seems like you only looked at PPG and never watched any NBA.

 

So Tinman, Kevin Love must be the worst star of all time.

 

I love how half this thread was spent talking about Tracy McGrady in his prime, because some posters only read the thread title and didn't realize the question revolved around Harden in his prime, which at 23 years of age, he is years away from fully realizing.

And even then they were crazy disingenuous about "McGrady's prime", because the conversation was then focused further to just one season McGrady spent as a young man in Orlando, rather than his actual prime years, which were spent chucking shots, losing, and being a prima donna in Houston.

Mental gymnastics so intricate even the Russian judge gave it a 10. We get it. You like your guy and so overstate his ability. ("Better than Tim Duncan! Better than Kobe Bryant!") You like your guy so much, you even try to pad his meager career accomplishments with make-believe ones. ("No no, see, he should have won MVP!")

But meanwhile the rest of the objective world can't help but notice how McGrady had just the one truly great season after all, and never actually made any of his teams successful then or from that point on. Certainly he never made the Rockets a success with his terrible shot selection and poor, poor, poor man's Scottie Pippen-without-the-defense routine. That's a lot more probative in hindsight than whatever dumb sentimentality one brings to bear.

The question essentially is, "Knowing what we now know about Tracy McGrady's downward spiral of a career, will James Harden end up being better?" And the answer is "of course." McGrady's trajectory was to start strong and then get progressively worse as his career went on. There is no reason to think James Harden will suffer this same peculiar fate. Certainly the fact that he's no Tracy McGrady will only end up helping him.

 

One good season based on fluke three point shooting. He shot 39% on 6.0 3PA which was fluke, that is something which even elite shooters(Bird, Durant) were not capable of doing year in and year out. He was below average shooter in reality(about DWade level).

And yet his TS% was .564 which is good(His second best TS% season was .532), but Lebron's and Durant's TS% is consistanly over or around .600.

 

another hater

 

Will Harden be as good as McGrady's best season in Orlando? probably not. Will Harden be as good as McGrady in Houston? He's basically there right now.

 

T-Mac played in all the games in the 22-game winning streak, except one game, the very first one. You may say he had a 21-game winning streak if you prefer, not a big deal.

It is quite an accomplishment of T-Mac by considering the fact that the last ten games in the streak were won without Yao Ming playing, who was injured.

 

The answer should be "who knows? let's wait and see", to be objective.

There have been too many promising young stars who ended up with disappointments eventually.