Yea that's great in a fantasy land and I believed like you did at one point in time, but no longer. The reality is this team is like an engine and Houston runs their engine longer and at a higher rpm than anyone else in the league due to pace and style. There is naturally going to be more stress on the parts which will cause wear and tear. I saw this with McGrady who did everything for his teams in the early years. Best defender and always had the ball in his hand. Again, body completely destroyed by age 30. I saw Yao give 100 percent for years, and he was constantly injured, again done by age 30. I want a healthy team with a reasonable seed in the playoffs for as many years as possible. If harden, our primary offensive weapon gives 75 percent effort on defense and that keeps him healthy then so be it. We are fighting a losing battle with seeding, because of the division rules. We are always going to be 4th or 5th until the Spurs are no more. I have accepted this, so should you.
Actually in an organizational sense, unlike most spheres of human society, the analogy of team sports and War Games is probably the on of the most apt comparisons. Unlike most spheres of human life, Sports, like Warfare is a zero sum game. There are no win-win situations on the court. There are only victors and losers. And like a long military campaign, it is as much a battle of strategy and tactics as it is a battle of attrition. You have multiple "nations" (teams), competing over a finite set of resources (players and cap space), both attempting to field the most effective teams (units) in order to win the largest number of games (battles) to win the larger campaign (season). Teams are created at both a macro level (front office vs command and control) as well as a micro level (roster and coaching staff). Similarly, there are clear chains of command (owner > gm > coaches > players) as well as training, specialization and small unit dynamics (practice, coaching, stars vs role players, floor leadership). Teams are composed of differing personalities and skill sets, who have to be integrated on both a cultural and operational level. (team culture, discipline and practice). Those skill sets are maximized through a combination of roles (assignments), plays (tactics), and roster management (resource allocation). On the larger level, play time and injuries are managed (logistics and maintenance), as well as moves are made to improve the effectiveness and composition of the roster through Free Agency (capital expenditure) and through the draft (native resources). Advantages are gained through scouting and analytics (intelligence, research and development), good management (leadership), and even tactical retreats (sitting star players while sacrificing individual games). On the unit level, planning and repetition are key in terms of success. Military units do military exercises continuously to ensure their units are at a high level of combat readiness. This essentially serves the same role as practices and regular season games, especially if you consider the play offs to be the most important portion of the season. It's only through repeating the execution of offensive and defensive schemes that teams truly learn them and move them from conscious knowledge to unconscious knowledge and from thoughtful action to instinct. Teams can never truly master anything in practice, just as military exercises are no substitute for actual combat experience. In the end, to truly excel on the court or in the field, you have to operate in a live game environment. It is in that live environment where individuals learn to adapt and react to living opponents, broken plays and pressure situations. So Yes, basketball is entertainment and people's lives are not at risk. However, the functional process of team sports is that every time that a player does NOT do the correct action on the court, it not only impacts the team's effectiveness on that particular day, but it impacts the team's learning curve and cohesiveness as a unit. To paraphrase Stan Van Gundy, the reason Why you have to be careful about letting players "free lance" too much, or allowing too many exceptions to participating in offensive and defensive schemes, is it undermines Team discipline. When you allow individual players to ignore their roles on Offense OR Defense, you risk creating a culture where it becomes easy for other players to excuse lapses and misbehavior. I suggest you check out this video, and listen to SVG from about 37:30 - 39:00. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NJNHZNnY4w This is why you want Harden to put forth effort the vast majority of the time. Turning it on/off undermines team systems, culture and cohesion. Team Defense is not built with 4 guys defending and 1 guy watching the ball.
I probably should not be weighing in with heavyweights like larva and torocan but ... There is the old saying that defense is 80% effort. And that is just not true. Defense is all about rotations and tagging and shooting screens and P&R defense. Young teams just cannot go out and "effort" defense. In the NBA if a player goes over a screen when they should have gone under it results in chasing down an untagged player from the rear. Never a good thing on defense. It takes time to develop the synergy necessary to play quality defense in the NBA. Boston was able to throw together KG and Pierce and Allen and have a great defense because each of those players had a decade of NBA experience. That is just not going to happen for the Rockets. It is going to take this whole season if not more to develop.
No need to worry. I think you're both right and not right. Working out the kinks of team defense is repetitions and learning. However, you don't get to that step if there's no effort to do it in the first place. I think when coaches say Defense is 80% effort, they mean that 80% of it is getting players to buy into it and put the defensive effort in for most games. The rest is more organic in terms of development and time. It's why I don't fret as much over late rotations, missed rotations or late contests as I do complete failures to try to rotate or contest. One gets better with time, the other only gets better when players decide to perform. It's analagous to shooting. You can't correct a shooter's mechanics unless they're willing to take a shot.
He's inconsistent thats all. Young player still learning. Atleast he finally started shooting midrange shots yesterday.
Sorry but effort doesn't come with experience or maturity. Either you put it into what you're doing or you're not. It's slike he's choosing when he can slack...yesterday he couldn't because everyone was onto him. But now when he shut everyone's mouth he can take another game or two off in D.
In an 82 game regular season _ no player has 82 great games. And as far as I'm concerned just about EVERYONE took the Utah and Phoenix game off... You guys are just focusing on Harden. You're just focusing on one player. This youngster has gave me A LOT of entertaining games to watch since he's been here and has won games and got us to the playoffs in the process so no way in heck I'm going to crucify him (and the rest of the team) for checking out against a scrub team. Young people F Up... That's the way of the world.
Sorry. The Rockets just are not going to be competitive without their third, fourth and fifth best players. Just like the Heat are not the Heat when Wade sits. Talent and skill trump everything in the NBA. Which is why without Harden or Howard the Rockets will win most games. Depth of talent. Which makes me wonder why people want Houston to obtain a third star. A third star almost certainly means no Asik, no Lin and no Parsons when his contract comes up for renewal. One injury away from not being competitive.
And here comes the fans that don't contribute, oversimplifying the issue as usual. Only on Clutchfans...
A max deal for Lin and Asik would been a four year deal in a 5/5/15/15 structure. So technically, they both don't have a max deal. So that's why no one is b****ing them about making the max.
So, what you're saying is more than 20% of playing defense is following the defensive scheme implemented by the coaches for different situations?
What's sad is that Harden can't just turn on his defense mid-game. He either tries or is in la-la, stripper land to start and that's the Harden get for the rest of the game.
I'm surprised by some of the posters here thinking Harden should get a pass on his defense or lack of it. He is our most valuable piece and franchise player, who is also paid accordingly. He needs to learn how to bring it on both ends of the court consistently. The good news is he is still young and I hope is learns this as his career progresses. If he doesn't the haters will grow exponentially as time goes on.
Absolutely. Without a doubt. The NBA is not the NCAA. But realistically NBA coaches do not implement different defenses for different situations. Other than things like out of bounds passes. The coaches teach a defensive system. For example P&R defense is dependent on the positioning of every player on the court. It is much to complex and fluid to try to map out what to do in every circumstance. The system however will change depending on the opposition. For instance a defense will be much more likely to go over a screen against a great pull up shooter like Kevin Martin than against a serious threat to drive like Chris Paul. They do not want to give a wide open look from range to KM, and they definitely do not want CP running free to the lane. But that is set before game in film and preparation.
