Most agree Harden is easily better than George.. and rightfully so. His shooting struggles since Nov are troubling. He clearly hasn't reach #1 option status offensively yet. Defense is still very stout though, is half the game, and I respect good defenders. Where does he rank overall?
What is your obsession with Paul George? He is a max salary player. He is an overrated defender, there are better ones out there, but he is still very good defensively and developing offensively. I put him in the top 10-15 in the NBA. The question is his off the court issues. He has gotten a stripper pregnant, tried to pay her off and is having other issues, sending photo's to men pretending to be women. Are his struggles a result of his personal issues? Will he improve IF he gets his life together? He is a lesser version of Scottie Pippen.
This season, 1. Durant 2. Lebron 3. Love 4. Griffin 5. Harden 6. Curry 7. George 8. Paul 9. Davis 10. Lowry Despite George's struggles, taking the season as a whole I don't see much separation if any between him and Harden. Pretty easily top ~10.
1) lebron 2) durant 3) chris paul 4) james harden 5) blake griffin 6) anthony davis 7) paul george <----------- 8) russell westbrook 9) carmelo anthony 10) kevin love
Paul George looked like a scrub at some points during this season. He had a 2 point game, didn't even score a field goal it was off free throws. He is no star.
I rank him around 10-14, generously. He is not even a top 3 player in the East in my opinion. 1. Lebron 2. Noah/Melo 3. Noah/Melo 4. Lowry 5. Paul George George loses a lot of credibility with his monthly drop. He had a great two months to start the season, but has been atrocious in his last 3 months. His numbers keep dropping every month.
Players id take over George without hesitation in no order: James Durant Paul Griffin Harden Howard Anthony Love Curry Westbrook Irving A. Davis Soooo George falls in that 12-15 range I guess
George was overrated early in the season and now some are underrating him. He is a top 10-15 player with the ability to break into the top 5 for a season or two if he puts his personal problems behind him. He will never be as good as James, Durant, Davis or Paul. With improvement he can be on par with Harden (unless Harden goes HAM in the playoffs... in which case Harden will be a superstar).
I don't think there's a better defensive wing when he's focused, but he took whole weeks off at times this year, so overall, fair enough. In general, there's quite a bit of laziness and entitlement in George's game lately. Settling for lazy shots, not bringing defense to some games, arguing for calls. I saw the same with young TMac and hopefully it doesn't turn into permanent bad habbits and define who he is. Re Harden-George obsession, I think it's a deeper issue of the Rockets fanbase being fractured, all these topics started in the GARM as a way to bash Harden -- just another thinly masked Harden-Lin fan clash. It's a shame it spills over to the Dish a lot, though.
I can't believe you guys are leaving Nowitzki off all your lists. He's playing with a bunch of scrubs and still in the thick of the playoff list.
I'd take all these players over him. Durant Lebron CP3 Harden Griffin Westbrook Curry Dwight Melo Ant Love
The only players this season that have been consistently playing better than Harden are Durant & Lebron. Griffin is definitely debatable. Love has been putting up stats but his team doesn't have a great record. Cp3 has been in & out of the lineup with injury, when fully healthy he retains that #3 spot. George is not only in a slump, he has been absolutely terrible since 2014 started. I don't even think he's the best player on the Pacers right now, it's Stephenson, but you have to take his talent into consideration.... So right now I'll go with: 1. Durant 2. Lebron 3a. Harden 3b. Griffin 4. Love 5. Davis 6. Curry 7. Noah 8. Melo 9. LA 10. Dwight 11. Cp3 12. Wall 13. Gogi 14. Lowry 15. George Consider that list sort of an MVP ranking.
Whoops. Misread your post. Thought you were talking about George and not Harden. My bad. You're right. Griffin and Harden are about 3a and 3b right now.
Harden is a superstar right now. No one in this league even comes close to being as scary as him in the Clutch... & that's saying something because Durant is pretty clutch. Harden is one of the craftiest, smartest players in the league. He knows what he has to do at certain points throughout the game & he executes 99% of the time. He's been going HAM for like 3 months now & if it wasn't for Durant & Lebron's little mvp competition he'd be frontrunner for MVP. He's also deceivingly strong & that's why he plays excellent post defense. That's also why he can get any call he wants because he raises his arms in such a quick motion & with so much strength that hacking him is almost subconscious for the opposition. But most of all, he does it effortlessly... He could of at least had 3 50 point games already if we weren't already blowing the team out leading to his benching in the 4th.
Statistically, yes. But actual impact in games, I would strongly disagree. Lance has been a below average defender for a long time, and his overdribbling puts the whole offense out of sync. He gets good assist numbers, but you rarely see him pass to a passer. In halfcourt, he either passes to an open shooter, or tries to score himself, or just dribbles and waits for someone to get open. If no one has an immediate scoring opportunity, the ball just stops in Lance's hands. I think part of that is on the coach, but Lance is not Steve Nash, he hurts the team by hogging the ball like that.
Right now, he doesn't even crack the top 10 right now. 1. Durant 2. LBJ 3. Griffin 4. Harden 5. Noah 6. Curry 7. Love 8. CP3 9. Davis 10. Gogi
