Yes. Both Westbrook and Harden jump into players to draw fouls. I think these should all be no calls and be considered comparable to the Reggie Miller rule where he kicks his legs out to try and draw fouls. If you get the foul going in strong for a basket, that's one thing, but Westbrook and Harden intentionally jump sideways into people to try and draw the foul. They would not normally jump that direction if they were really just going for the basket. To me, it's just another form of flopping. In hockey, they have a rule called an embelishment penalty where you sit in the box for essentially flopping. They should T up guys like Westbrook and Harden for all their flop first style of play. I mean, it's smart of them to take advantage of the rules, but I'm just saying these rules need to be changed. The refs determine too many games with the many B.S. foul calls.
When homerism turns into stupidity. I've criticized WB a lot, but the dude is outplaying KD in the post season...can't even criticize him for being a ball hog at this point. Harden can have better stats than Jordan in the regular season , but if he doesn't play both sides of the ball and play with the intensity that all the great players bring in the post season...WB will always be a higher impact player. That being said, it's too early to give up on him, but next season will tell us a lot about what we can come to expect from James.
At least all Harden needs to do is give effort on D and he''ll automatically be better than WB. How do you fix ball hog tendencies, low bball IQ and a broken J? And let's get real here as well, WB makes a living being defended and defending PGs, if Harden took the easy way out like WB and said he'll play the PG position to get first dibs on shots and also defend 6'0 and shorter pgs all night long there will be no comparison between these two players.
You are on drugs. PG is the deepest position in the NBA right now, every team has a lethal PG, some even have two of them. SG is the weakest position in the NBA right now, there are a handful of good SGs the rest are garbage.
If Harden just gives effort on d he is automatically better???? Harden's offense is not nearly as good as Westbrook in the postseason when teams actually d him up. They are both ball dominating players. As mentioned, Harden is easier to stop. It is not even close who is better.
I'm happy to see people are not flocking to defend Harden. You can be a great rockets fan and still not be a homer
He's playing well, yes, but we've seen this before. My problem with WB is that he takes some of the dumbest shots, yet, they always (for the most part) seem to work out for him. I will say this much, whenever his shots aren't falling, he has the ability to bring something else to the table and that's infectious D. Can't say that for Harden.
harden takes a lot of dumb shots as well, not to mention he commits some of the worst/laziest turnovers i've ever seen.
Every star takes dumb shots. That comes with the territory. Their green light is ALWAYS on. I don't have a problem with that. My problem with him is effort on other parts of the game when his offense sucks. That tells you a lot about a player. Westbrook sucks on offense (and he has his fair share of bad shooting nights), he gives you everything else he has. When Harden struggled offensively v. Portland, I'm like man just sit your ass down. He has the Melo syndrome. When shots are off, still jacking it up, but don't do much else.
Of course PG is the deepest position but just because it is deep doesn't mean you have an easier time guarding and being guarded by them. With the exception of teams like the Rox/Raps with bulldog pgs like Lowry or Bev, most pgs are offense oriented and don't even reach 6'2 like Steph Curry, Daman Lilliard, MCW etc. On the other hand, because the SG position is so thin right now teams try to look for 3-and-D players to plug in the spot, and if they don't 3-and-D they settle for D with guys like Wesley Matthews, Courtney Lee, Avery Johnson, OJ Mayo and Tony Allen. The average height of these guys are 6'4, so even if you have the same caliber of guys at the pg and sg, guarding sgs and being guarded by sgs would still be tougher. At 6'3 WB is one of the biggest pgs, but at his "real position" of SG he'd be among the shortest sgs which is probably why he doesn't want to transfer positions. Anyway there's still a lovefest for WB mainly because he is still riding on KD's coattails till now, people say WB is playing better but they forget that all the D is focused on KD right now and you only have 6'0 Tony Parker trying to keep him in check, obv he's gonna play better. People are always falling for the hype here in CF, if you look at the regular season everybody was tripping all over themselves to discount the Heat and saying how their time has passed and it is now the Pacers who are gonna win it all in the East etc. Let's wait till next season when Harden gets his mind straight or if KD gets fed up and leaves.
People kneejerk and say whoever is winning now is the best ever. People can't think past 1 game or series.
The whole SG/PG thing is silly when it comes Westbrook, who is the size of an SG anyway and can easily play and guard both positions at a high level. You can play him next to Thabo Sefolosha or Jeremy Lamb just as easily as you can play him next to Reggie Jackson or Derek Fisher. Westbrook is easily a better SG than James Harden is.
