James Harden: One of the top 6 players to build around

Lol at Westbrook at number 3. I would never want to build my team around him. Would be a perennial 5th-8th seed team.

 

I would rather have 3 players over Harden. This doesn't mean Harden is the 4th best player in the league (also Harden is better than Irving this year).

LeBron
Durant
Irving
Harden

Harden is securely the 6/7th best player in the league. I still can't believe we got a 23 year old franchise player.

LeBron
Durant
Paul
Bryant
Parker
Harden
Melo/Wade/Parker/Westbrook

 

Am I the only one who thinks a case could be made that CP3 is overrated? Yeah, he has a nice dribble, but when has he led a team anywhere in the postseason? And he had talent this year.

 

I'm a clippers season ticket holder and I think cp3 is overrated. He puts together some great stats, but the team made a lot of their runs when they brought their second unit in. Bledsoe is also a better defender.

I would put Blake griffin and steph curry above harden as best players to build around.

 

Blake Griffin

u 'avin a giggle m8?

 

Building a team around Russell Westbrook is almost as bad as building a team around Allen Iverson.

Beyond the obvious:

1) LeBron James
2) Kevin Durant

It's really hard to see where everyone else shakes out... CP3 seems like an obvious choice, but if you look at history, a dominant point guard does not seem to change the game as much as, say, a dominant center. I think people tremendously underrate defense (particularly in the context of team defense - how an individual player can affect and direct defensive assignments), and since it is so under-measured, it's hard to know how much a fantastic offensive player such as Harden stacks up against someone who maybe doesn't score as much but defends tremendously well.

Actually, the CP3 example is a good one. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that CP3 is a shut-down PG and whomever he is guarding will underperform tremendously. However, CP3 can only guard other point guards and maybe some shooting guards - everyone else is just too big for him to do anything with. So if you have CP3 lining up against, say, Jeremy Lin, and let's say he shuts Lin's penetration game down so the latter doesn't score more than 8 points. Does anyone here really think that holding Lin down prevents the Rockets as a whole from scoring their points? Particularly if Lin's job isn't to score himself, but to get other people in a position to score?

And then if you counteract that with a disparity at PF or C, where all Lin has to do is get the ball to the big man's hands for a 65% FG% (or a 70% TS%), you can see how even if CP3 has lockdown defense on his man, it just doesn't have the same effect.

I think there are players that everyone recognizes as "good" who are probably much better, from a team value perspective, than most would give them credit for. Without digging into the available stats, I'd say that guys like Tim Duncan, Marc Gasol, and LaMarcus Aldridge come to mind. You probably wouldn't rank them higher than CP3, but in reality they might meet or even exceed his production from an overall perspective.

 

Russel Westbrook? Are you kidding me?

 

I'll never take Russel Westbrook as my franchise player and build around him. He is a good player, but as leader, a first option to be your franchise? No.

 

Blake griffin is the best athlete in the nba second only to maybe lebron. Nobody else in the league even close. Anyone who has played basketball before knows that its an athletes game. Good fundamentals will only get you so far. Griffin is 24 and still very raw, but what he's got cant be taught and everything else can. I know this us a rockets board and you guys love your players. You should also be grateful that the warriors wouldn't trade Klay Thompson for harden and allowed the rockets to get him from thunder. That said, harden is a very good Sg and relatively polished but is way closer to his ceiling than Blake griffin. If you polled most gms on who they would rather have going forward, i bet most, including Morey, would take griffin. Harden is a great 6th man and third option on a great team like the thunder had two years ago, but I'm not sure he is a guy you build a franchise around. Here are the guys I would rather build around in no particular order based on potential going forward and not based on who had the best stats this year so please don't tell me I'm an idiot followed by a bunch of stats:

Blake griffin
Steph curry
Brook Lopez
Deron Williams
Lebron
Durant
Westbrook
Cp3
Kyrie Irving
Anthony Davis
Derek rose
Marc gasol
Tony Parker

I didn't include dwade on this list because I think the miles have caught up with him and I sorta see Carmelo right on par with harden. I think rondo is a better player, but he's such a bad locker room guy. Same goes for Dwight Howard.

 

There's a reason the thunder traded harden and not Westbrook. Thunder front office has been very screwd in recent years.

 

I meant shrewd and not screwed...haha.

 

It wasn't Westbrook over Harden it was ibaka and holding on to Perkins and not using the amnesty on him, which was probably a mistake.

 

Yes, but if okc front office thought harden was better than Westbrook for future growth of the team, they would have traded Westbrook and signed harden to max.

 

Harden showed he was a capable first option on a team that got into the playoffs in a tough conference, all without having a training camp with them, 95% roster turnover, and a bunch of mix-and-mashed pieces put together. You clearly don't have the kind of eye or foresight that it takes to be a general manager of a franchise worth upwards of 100 million dollars (at the bottom end).

 

Harden's an obvious Top 10 player to build around. It's really not even debatable looking at what he accomplished at 23.


Oh and LMFAO @ Blake Griffin over Harden....that's ridiculous...

 

This exactly. OKC made the wrong choice - it's pretty obvious now in hindsight that they should have focused on keeping Harden and building up the rest of the roster with cheaper talent.

 

lol @ Westbrook

 

You actually believe Russel Westbrick is better than James Harden? lmao

 

Think about this one. If okc had harden instead if Westbrook this past season, do you think they would be better. Look how much worse they were after Westbrook got hurt. They lost 2 games to an 8 seed and essentially got swept by Memphis as they should have also lost game 1 of that series.

I'd probably take harden over Westbrook in fantasy basketball next year being they will likely go ISo with him 90% of the time. Harden is a top 4 fantasy basketball player for sure.