Great interview. Loved all his responses but one... If he didn't do that just right, it would be so annoying. I can see Harden thinking "I'll wait til next time I'm taking a dump to respond to this text."
Well.... Defense. Defense. Being a 2-way player. Perimeter. He pretty sums it up. I looked at past season on every point Sampson says... And i see, yup, yup, it's how it happened.
lol you can stop pretending you read the interview now. He did say "two way player" a lot though, so I can see how you caught that in all 5 seconds of skimming (like I did).
Glad he pointed out that James and Chandler need to work on their defense. Harden's D is non existent and CP's D is vastly over-rated.
Notice that he says that Chandler and Lin have to be better two-way players, and James has got to be a two-way player. So he singled Harden out, implying that Chandler and Lin play on both sides of the floor, whereas James is only on the offensive side. That's nothing new, but it sounds quite harsh the way he phrases it.
I don't know if Sampson can be a great coach, but he sure doesn't bull**** around when you ask him a question.
haha, I wouldn't read too much into it. But yes we all know Harden needs to improve his defense. It is the remaining factor holding him back from being a top 3 player.
Okay, this is going to show how little I know about basketball but thanks to this interview I finally get what Jackson means by "hand down man down".
He'd make a better general than a coach. But I think this team is uniquely suited to his strengths and weaknesses.
That's pretty evident. No need to debate that. But he is practically a liability on defense, which is infuriating, because it's not like he doesn't know how to play defense. He just seems to put 100 per cent of his effort on offense, and when it's time to defend he rather rests and saves his energy for the next possession. When the rockets are outscoring the opponent it works just fine. But when he's having an off-night and relying too much on foul calls, he brings zero offense PLUS zero defense (I'm exaggerating here, but you know what my point is). Since we have many offensive options I'd be happy if he spent his effort 50/50 on offense and defense.
Everyone should already know that Parsons can play defense. It's just a matter of it being something he chooses to put effort into on every play. I feel like last season he put a ton of work into his offense but dropped off on defense. I think Harden can defend too, but it's something he has to choose to put effort into. Hopefully with more shooters and a better offensive center, these two can step it up and put forth more effort on the other end.
