Can we start giving Harden props for his good defense lately?

This isn't the first time he has posted in such a manner. He did the same thing last season in the GARM concerning Lin and Harden.

His idea about "defense" is absurd.... Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas, Kobe Bryant and many others did not play hard defensively at certain points.... a certain shooting guard in LA stopped defending shortly after GW Bush was elected President.

 

The injured foot doesn't explain LAST season.

And I never said Kobe was playing great defense. However, Kobe is legendary in terms of work ethic to evolve and develop his game. Yes, he's not what he once was, but father time catches us all.

 

Is everyone else on a different frequency? I just read torocan's posts on the last page and I completely agree with him...or if shy of that, I at least know where he's coming from. Everyone is reading something else into it, but I think he was quite specific in his post. Stop reading things that aren't there.

Harden didn't really put too much effort into defense last season or the beginning of this season (arguable whether beginning of this season was due to only lack of effort or also bum foot; probably a combination of both). He's putting in decent defense now. I'm happy, but I don't know if that means I should believe Harden is somehow going above and beyond. He's doing what he was supposed to do in the first place...put in effort on defense.

This is different than saying Harden was not scoring enough now and being clutch enough, but now he is. That's more out of his control (in a way). Here we aren't even talking about defensive RESULTS...just defensive EFFORT. We as fans recognize when someone gives extra effort, and we applaud that. That's cool, but when did we start watching a guy put in lower than expected effort (at least on defense w/r/t Harden for awhile there), then applaud him when he now puts in adequate effort? Huh?

 

His defense in the first half of last season was far better than his defense in his second half of last season. It’s also not a coincidence that in the 2nd half of last season he suffered ankle injuries that also affected his offense.

Again, not excusing his poor effort at times, but not exactly fair to ignore context either.

 

Fail defense tonight and protecting the ball...

But it was also the entire team:

Lin was trash offensively
Parsons got abused by Paul
Asik got abused by Jordan
T-jones was - 20 in less than 15 min

 

Here comes the deflection.

Looks like Harden is the first target.

 

Nah just going down the line. From the kneejerk threads so far he will be the last to receive the blame.. First 3 were already bumped up, its only logical to explore reasons for why we lost.

1. Jeremy FaiLin
2. TJones/DMo
3. McFail
4. No PG depth
5. Har-en


But more importantly than all those factors. Clippers

 

Kind of shocking how someone bumped this thread. Harden was one of two players who didn't absolutely suck tonight for the Rockets. He played exceptionally well.

 

I would say the only good part about Harden's defense is the post defense. His perimeter defense is TERRIBLE!

 

who was harden guarding tonight? jamal crawford? willie green?

 

That back door cut by Crawford while harden was ball watching was the defensive blunder of the night. He completely lost his man and looked REDICULOUS.

 

The Harden has been good on D lately is just narrative crap because his defense hasn't been criticized/made fun of as much the media lately.
He's had a stretch of games where he tried a littler harder than usual, but for the most part his effort on defense is still very much pathetic.

You don't know what you're watching if you don't see him constantly give half-ass effort and constantly over-/under-help or get lost ball-watching. His transition defense is about as useful as a cone. He gets screened so easily, you'd think he's magnetic to guys settings screens.
He gets lost in the most basic rotations/coverages all the time. You could make ~1 minute defensive lowlight videos of his pretty much every game.

Dude is special on offense and I don't have strong feelings towards him one way or the other, but he's one of the worst defenders is the league and everybody saying otherwise is either blind or a huuuuge homer.

 

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/oLGdyqVoIYY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

CP3 wrecking the D.

 

Agree. Let's collectively stop making excuses for our superstar's effort on D just because some of his teammates suck.

I rarely hear a reasonable OKC/MIA fan say it's no biggie LeBron or Durant had an off night on defense because Chalmers or Thabo also happened to suck.

We missed Howard tonight but no more easy backdoor cuts allowed please.

 

Harden is not a good defender overall.

He has his moments where he can be a good defensive player (his issue is effort, not physical), however I agree that he overall is still not where he needs to be. I suspect he will never be a good defender, because he doesn't seem motivated. The only time he has improved has been when he has been humiliated.

Having said that, he is better than he was early in the season (if for no other reason that physical issues). He still ball watches, and IMO his biggest issue is that he is insanely easily screened... which as you know causes a domino effect on defense.

As far as him being one of the "worst defenders"... meh, when you start looking at other shooting guards, you realize that most of them just are not very good, unless they are defensive specialists.

I have been traveling a lot, so I have only been able to see about half the Rockets games, so maybe I have only seen select games.....

 

I was at the game last night and it was even clearer watching it in person than on TV that Harden is very bad on defense. No matter how hard Mchale tried to hide his weaknesses by putting him on poor players like Teletovic and Gutierrez, they were able to have success.

The whole "harden is a good defender but he doesn't try" argument is partly true but misguided. It's gotten to the point that so many people have said it that it must be true. I noticed numerous times how poor his defensive IQ was. Horrible stance, no attempt to shuffle his feet laterally, desperate attempts to give up good leverage to poke the ball away from behind, and not knowing when to go over or under screens. It's beyond maddening. If his fundamentals don't improve he could give 100% effort his defense would not improve significantly.

He puts the entire team defense in bad positions by forcing them to cover for his mistakes. The defensive statistics don't paint him to be as bad as he is but it's the same with the Bev vs Lin debate. We all know that Bev is clearly the better defender even if the stats don't make it crystal clear.

 

This definitely an excuse. What your essentially saying is his defense has went from non existent to just horrible in the 2nd half of the season. Horrible is horrible

 

Everything he did was wrong defensively on this:

-Had no awareness of where or who is man was

-Defensive stance was not right

-Was slow to respond when the pass was made

-Was WAY to far in and should've been closer to his man


Harden's defense is just bad bro. I'm not sure what's going through his mind sometimes

 

I would not really criticize his stance in this play: people cannot be in the defensive position all 48 minutes of the game; heck, even for 24+ seconds repeatly, can be difficult. He was also slow to respond because it was a creative pass. Give credit to Paul there. Points one and four are correct.

 

Harden being a below average defender is on him.
Harden being possibly the worst defender I've seen this year is on the coaching staff and their inability to hold him accountable.