Why Rockets GM Daryl Morey claims he has let James Harden down

Tilman let down Harden.

Dismantling a 65 win team....unbelievable.

 

Daryl's interview sound bite has made the rounds for ESPN daily topics.

 

Or if Scott Foster was fired years ago as he should have been.

 

i didn't know they knew about PER on these shows

actually a fairly balanced take. his PER has really been 25 each of the last 2 years, but still pretty decent take.

of all the hate harden gets for all the different games, this is about the first person to act like he was supposed to beat the friggin' durant warriors without chris paul. could an epic performance have gotten it done? sure, but come on JW. most people focus on the paul injury or "omg, 0-27!" but not 22-53.

exactly

what people don't seem to realize, is lebron and kawhi are practically unique in this aspect. lebron wasn't even always like this (going up in PER) for a lot of his career. in fact, historically, almost no one goes up in the playoffs. do they drop as far as harden? not most, but some do. people like steph and KD have the same fall-off, just better teammates/less narrative to make it matter less (although KD still lost when he didn't have 3 other all-stars, his drop-off somehow went unnoticed).

even ignoring the ref ****ery that took away about 10 points and added about 3 misses, 22/53 is not a horrific shooting slump for 2 games. it's not great, but it's not unprecedented even for good players to shoot like crap at the end of a tough series (e.g. even hakeem shot 10/25 in game 7 against new york).

 

True! I think that is not the norm though. Houston hasn't had any issue running out a two -star team. It seems many of the veteran buyout or release players opt to go elsewhere. Carroll and JGreen were solid pickups but I would've preferred other players first.

I think this relates back to Daryl thinking he has failed Harden. Some of the the cap issues and lack of draft capitals causes us to lose out on some players that could really help the team.

 

what i wouldn't do for have KennethFaried back

 

It's not like you can force stars to play for you.. it seems that any star player who wanted to come to the Rockets came to the Rockets... SEEMS!... I could be wrong...

 

Personally I would have said it after retirement or at the end of a job.

If that is what he feels Harden wanted to hear, so be it.

They are literally in the middle of chasing one.....

 

What playoff team has Harden lost too....
That we should have beaten.
Not one game but the series.
I think in every series we were the underdog/lower seed

Rocket River

 

Replace harden with anyone in the league
Who goes further with these teams?

Rocket River
Damn sure no Klay fricking Thompson.

 

Morey did overtly alienate players by calling them assets multiple times.

I bet MDA told him not to do it as he is a player friendly coach.

 

At times yea I think that’s true, but let’s be serious and address the elephant in the room Harden contributes to the teams problems too

 

Exactly

 

It's not just that he didn't beat them. It's that he didn't beat them while playing worse. And he's got too many examples of that on his resume to avoid the fire. Look back and you will see plenty of examples of stars taking heat until they won. Even Jordan prior to beating Detroit. Yes, an epic MVP regular season type of performance likely could have gotten it done. He's capable of that level of play.

Exactly on the bolded. It's not great. You have a guy that is uber great in the regular season who plays worse when it matters most. Hakeem won G7. If he lost while shooting 10/25 he woulda caught heat too.

 

I've said it elsewhere and I am saying it again.

Harden's playoffs performance overall is not significantly worse than his regular season performance. However, there were crucial games that he played exceptionally bad and lost. Those games turned the momentum and we eventually lost the series.

To be fair, the argument that "we were the underdog every time" does have some merit. But the 1995 Rockets were underdog and were behind. The 2016 Cleveland team was underdog and were behind. Their leader pretty much willed the team to beat the odds and won the chip. That's greatness.

Harden has those "where is his soul" games every now and then. It's not about talent. It's not about effort. It's something in his head. I don't know if it can be fixed. Until then, we can only hold our breath.

 

LeBron and Kawhi.....They rest all season

Even the warriors take games off and let others rotate carrying the load.


Rocket River

 

He has problems, but he generally does trust solid role players.

 

Harden let me down in that February 29 Celtics game when harden ain't even score in 4th quarter.

Harden gave up that rebound after that last second free throw miss which led to jaylen brown hitting the game tying three pointer to send the game to overtime!

 

'Where is his soul and where is his mind'
I think things are not clear cut.

I think there would be a hidden aspect like the fact that he plays with asthma, I didn't know that until I read about it during this crisis.

Maybe it is a mental condition under too much pressure.

Or his minds shut off when things are getting too tough to overcome.

 

It's both on Harden and Morey. Owner signs the checks if he approves. It's silly to blame. We got unlucky in many respects and made mistakes. I think the historically good Warriors were the biggest road block.