Kevin Martin "mailed it in" on BOTH ends of the floor for most of his last season with us. It was awful.
one more thing: his euro step is top-notch, if not the best in the league, meaning, his lateral movement must be real good. right? So what's lacking must be the effort, the focus, the discipline .
Is his foot bothering him? Not completely healthy? He said he was in the best shape in his life.... Preseason averaging 21 points in 20 minutes He should be having couple games of 40+ points while still be moving faster
Kevin Martin was a consumate professional in his last year sitting on the bench, all smiling and happy
I don't care all that much. I want him to put in a bit more effort, but I'm not ignorant of the fact that he scores very very efficiently. I'd rather we have a lockdown defender at SF who can defend the best SG/SF every night. There's only so much you can ask of a guy. He puts up 24ppg on 16 shots, while dishing out 5 assists and going to the line 9 times. It would be nice for him to be a competent defender, and it would be nice for Dwight Howard to hit 90% of his FT's. These things are barely going to change. The best way to deal with it is to build a team AROUND the flaws/strengths of our star players. There's only one Lebron James in the league. All the other stars have visible flaws in their game. We have two of those stars, and most teams dream of being in this position. You can't sit here and tell me that a team which starts Beverley, Garcia, Jones and Howard (four above average or excellent defenders) alongside Harden can allow the Utah Jazz to shoot 54% from the field and 58% from 3PT range, and it can all be blamed on James Harden. No matter how horrible he was on the defensive end, he still dropped 37 efficient points. This is a team issue. I feel there's a lot of overconfidence in the team. The team is clearly headed towards a cliche soap-opera style players-only meeting, after which they may get serious about helping this team win. The good news is it's early in the season, so chances are that they will improve. Adding Dwight Howard is a significant change to the team. Beverley hasn't been with the Rockets for a full year. We are dealing with some injuries. The schedule has been tough, and our last game was in a tough arena. Things are looking extremely positive. If you take into consideration the regular quirks of integrating Dwight Howard into the offense and changing the starting PG - we actually are doing better than expected. Once people stop dreaming of Dwight Howard making FT's at a decent clip or James Harden being a competent defender or TJ continuing to hit 50% of his 3's or the revamped Rockets instantly establishing excellent chemistry... then they will realize we're actually in a fantastic place right now. It's unlikely we'll be the top seed this year, but I do feel like by the end of the regular season we're going to be a top 4 team in the NBA. Miami is unlikely to get better than they've been. Indiana are unlikely to improve on their early season form. The Spurs are the Spurs. OKC is the same OKC minus Kevin Martin plus the potential of Jeremy Lamb. The Rockets are actually going to get better just by doing the same thing with the same team over and over again.
It doesn't take a NBA All-Star to recognize when someone is putting in a piss poor effort and coasting. And a NBA All Star is the LAST person that should need to be told to stop coasting.
It's also obvious that he hasn't been healthy all season. If Lin hadn't been injured Harden wouldn't even be playing. Look, I wish Harden would play better D as I know he's capable of it but I won't criticize him when he's playing hurt
I see you don't believe in putting blame where its do. There is nothing wrong with keeping 100 with your favorite player. Is he our best player, hell yes but he is most definitely not perfect and has to improve in a lot of areas. **** especially on defense.
I don't remember a lot of people giving T Mac a pass when he was out there playing hurt. Jokers still bash the dude even though he stepped his game up on both sides of the ball while playing hurt in that last series against the Jazz. I was always told, if you are hurt and its hurting the team, then you shouldn't be playing. And if Lin was playing dude would still be out there playing. Harden scored in his thirty's in these last two games, so he wasn't that hurt. LOL He also showed flashes in both games on the defensive side. So please stop it with the injury excuse. Harden can play much better if he wants to. LOL
It's not just how well you play, it's how hard you play. Love him, hate him, hate his fans therefore hate him, most would agree Lin plays hard every game on both ends. You can excuse poor shooting or poor lateral movement on D due to injury, but you can't excuse lack of effort. Harden got a free pass last season by almost everyone that wasn't a LOF due to his offensive efficiency and the lower expectations placed on the team as a whole (plus the joy in finally landing an all-star). But it isn't just LOFs that are questioning Harden's lack of defensive effort or heart this season. If you can put in enough effort to put up 20 shots a game (including attempts which become FTs), you have enough health to at least try and make a consistent effort to play at least average D. Harden needs to get this to take a step forward to becoming a true superstar. What he doesn't need is his coach or his fans giving him excuses. In short, performance can be hampered due to injury. Effort should never be. Even on D, Harden's issue has never been ability. It's effort.
He was matched up on Jefferson. In the first quarter when Hayward was going off for 18 points, Harden was not guarding him.
Great post by Mathloom. You can't expect to leave Brooks on Trey Burke (when you also have the best defensive point guard in Bev) who's having a Chris Paul like game & has a clear size advantage on him & blame James Harden. Harden did get burned by Hayward but Harden burned Hayward even more for 37 points. Brook's give & take with Burke was not as efficient. Not putting the blame on Brooks, a lot of things went their way, Dwight also put on a horrible effort last night.. he just didn't seem too interested. I think he was looking over this game. I don't scapegoat our players & I do give them the benefit of the doubt 98% of the time. That being said this one was not Harden, any rationale fan that has cooled down after the loss can very well realize that.
