agreed. though turning point came when mchale put harden back in after he hurt his knee. the unit that was on the floor during the second quarter run was doing well. but then again, with parsons and james being out for a bit, the starting unit needs to get as much PT as possible to get the chemistry back. you could tell that things were a little out of sync when both parsons and harden were on the floor together. and regarding harden in his own mode - yeah i see that at times as well. i think he still playing with a chip on his shoulder, out to prove OKC wrong about not giving him the max.
His problem is when he has a bad game, he wants to save even more energy from defense to improve his stats. He decides when he plays and thus the coach couldn't care less about his health. Some parents spoil their kid when he's young and lose control when he grows up.
Harden is good at the gaming theory, no doubt he is Morey's fav... So sad plenty of NBA-watching population feeds on the stats line, and stats-only, while not watching the basketball, making the defensive effort, teamwork spirit, the intangibles dispensable... Of course, the fantasy team and winning money matters more.
Honestly i watched Kevin Martin on defense for 2 years so maybe I'm desentisized to seeing bad defense.
Tony Allen? Ariza? OJ Mayo? Danny Green? These guys are not exactly offensive stars normally, are they?
Last night game was so eerily reminder of how we lost so many games this season. We are not going anywhere this playoffs with the way Harden plays his defense. McHale needs to enforce him to D up by reduce his minutes. Less minutes and more effort on both ends!
Morey bet the farm for Harden and he can't afford any failure (i.e. bad stats) from him. McHale used to be a manager and can't understand it better. The result is most of the time Harden only puts energy into improving his stats, and the coach demands other players to collaborate and cover him in defense and intangibles. Harden may be a rising star but the stats(star) padding (making) effort is so obvious, it looks bad.
Harden was coasting last night. Maybe some hard partying the night before, or catching up with some Arizona folks early in the day? He was coasting, entirely. He decided to play harder, faster, etc. when it was like under a minute and a half. Far more aggressive. Defensively, he's always been pretty ****ty. He's good enough to NOT be a liability, but not good enough to be a shutdown defender. With that said, I'm not too worried. I think this young team is eager for the playoffs. They'll get extremely hyped up for the first game, crash in the 1st half and play catch up in the 2nd half of the very first playoff game this weekend. These guys are 20-25 years old with 3 years exp. or under, they are going to go through some serious highs and lows. I think Wednesday will be a high, but the playoff game I'm curious to see how we come out.
he was. the question is - why did he come back in? they got the lead with him sitting on the bench. they didn't need a one-legged harden in this game. a two-legged anderson is much better than a one-legged harden. i don't understand why this is so obvious to me watching the game but seems to escape the coaches.
I think the bigger problem is that there are people out there like you who think he just plays to improve his stats. I mean you have no proof of this and just assume and everything about Harden says otherwise.
Just a caveat before my post: i have no idea one way or another but i'll give him the benefit of doubt. he's been a model teammate since day one and i like him as a player. that being said, you can't blame people when he does have a history... game one of OKC vs. Miami in the 2012 finals. he finished with single digit points and 5 shots and 20 some minutes of play. OKC won the game but he was pretty upset about his stats and was complaining out loud about it. which earned him a reprimand from perkins. prior to all star game when we were on the 7 game losing streak - it could be argued that both he and the rockets were trying really hard to make sure that he gets the coaches selection. we saw an increase in shots and prob the worst efficiency from him for the season. again, not indicative of a trend at all and for the vast majority of the time, he has been a model teammate and guys like playing with him. but things like i mentioned above do stick in people's minds.
Actually he was not complaining about his stats. He was complaining about his role and that's entirely different. It's the same thing you'll see from any big time player, they want to play 40 minutes a game and they want to hit the game winning shot. That's why they are who they are. If you did not give the ball to Hakeem he would tell you about it. It's the same for every great player. Harden was disappointed in a lack of minutes that game and he was already playing 3rd fiddle to Durant and Westbrook so it's a delicate thing to balance. Players that care about stats and such usually don't even care about losses. You'll see them laughing it up after the game, seemingly content. I won't name names or anything...but you don't see that with Harden. After a tough loss he's avoiding interviews and you can see the disappointment on his face or the drive and determination he displays when his team is down sometimes. Also it's very natural for a player to want to go to the all-star and achieve MVP awards and all things. So I don't get what's wrong with him for striving for individual awards. In fact I would love to hear him say "I want to be MVP." it's better than him settling for something less.
