Yeah and that's the difference between him and the other elite players. There is no reason why he can't be a good defender. His big enough,strong enough,and laterally quick enough to guard his position. It makes no sense with his effort level. I've always said your best players have to give just as good effort defensively if your team wants to go far. That's probably the reason why brooks never started him despite his offense being a gigantic plus.
At least, if not more...... he guards a spot on the floor, not his man.... always has. On that same play there are at least three Rockets making mistakes defensively..... Harden, Lin and Howard.
"See man, see ball." Wait 'til we play the Spurs with their camo uniform. Harden will not find his guy all game long.
in the day and age of video and internet - too much is made of individual plays and fan reaction is gut wrenching
What? Are you even watching the games? Harden ball watched on every single possession. It's like the ball is some sort of magical object he can't take his eyes off while the person he's supposed to guard does whatever they want.
green could be dressed in full on reflectors with strobe lights and is still gonna light harden's ass up anyway. What Harden has to do is just keep him from running circles around him.. If a spot up shooter burns you, o dear lordy lord...
Except it's not just one play. HMMMHMM posted a video of a bunch of these poor D plays from the Clippers game and plays like this is typical of Harden. There was one where Harden totally missed JJ Redick on a baseline cut just like he did with Blake here.
At the beginning of the season someone joked that Harden should be the 6th man of the team. With the way he's playing that actually may not be a bad idea
http://stats.nba.com/playerTrackingSpeed.html?pageNo=1&rowsPerPage=25&sortField=MIN&sortOrder=DES you can see how slow Harden played. he basically moved as fast as AI Jefferson, Marc Gasol. I know he played lots of minutes, however Carmelo played more and is still faster than him. I just don't know if his injury is still the problem, or just effect.
