oddly enough Harden have a tendency of making whatever role player he's guarding look like an offensive dynamo.
So what's the deal? We know he's capable.... Too lazy? too tired? Too injured? The guy looks lethargic out there on D.
he's not a good defender... he has mental lapses and he takes too many chances. when steve blake is blowing past you, you got problems.
He isn't being held responsible. Someone a coach or teammate has to get in his face. His defense led to the barrage of threes last nite. He is too good on an athlete to no be able to keep someone in front of him. We need to fix this just as much as we need to figure out the twin tower thing.
Poor Harden, always has to do everything on his own... in fact he disregards plays McHale ad then current PG call and goes ISO on his own. He puts that burden deliberately on himself.
harden hate is hilrious. a pitiful offensive performance and you still had a shot because he takes it to the hole?
If Harden played for the spurs....He will be ripped apart by pops on offense and defense. Mchale has to get in his face sometimes, assistant coaches, teammates someone has to push him...but he is the big man on the team...hoping dwight howard push him.
my solution to harden's lazy perimeter defense? make him guard the 4. he defended Ibaka in the playoffs didn't he? until he learn to put more effort playing perimeter defense, make him guard the big men
Kenny Smith made a real good point last night, paraphrasing: "Harden's a great player, but he's not in the upper echelon of superstar level. The superstars like Jordan, Kobe, Lebron play both ends of the floor. Until Harden does that he'll never be on their level."
Steve Kerr was saying the same thing during the telecast last night. He noticed his lack of D and made the point.
Sometimes I wish McHale just take a timeout and pull him aside and lecture him then put him in a minute later
He did shut down Monta vs Dallas and Henderson vs Charlotte. Most of Monta's points came when Harden wasn't guarding him. But he's had trouble with Blake and Redick, who move a lot without the ball. Monta and Henderson play 1-on-1 iso ball, which Harden is good at defending. But if Harden doesn't shape up, we're gonna see a lot of opposing SGs beat us this year. I don't think McHale really has Harden's ear, because it would be so easy to fix the problem.
Kerr is a big f-ing LOF, who cares what he has to say? Who cares how many championship he's won or how good his basketball knowledge is. He's LOF just bashing Harden to make Lin look good. Harden's mind set needs to be changed. You can't always beat the other team with good offense but lazy defense. Harden sometimes lets his guy blow by him but try to poke the ball from the back, just shows how lazy he is. I think JVG talked about it once in a game I forgot about who. Harden needs to lead from the defense end. He's still young, he will change, but we aren't true contenders until his mind set is changed.
Right now I'd settle for him being an average defender, forget elite. He is argueably worse than Kevin Martin was this year. You see the steals and blocks and if you just looked at the stat sheet without watching the game you might think he was playing great defense. Harden tends to be an all or nothing defender who gets a decent number of steals due to gambling, but gives up a ton of wide open shots when the reaching gambles fail.
