What an MDA offense needs is a maestro. It needs grease. It needs that one guy that moves the ball efficiently by passing it and dribbling it without turning it over frequently. It needs one expert distributor who distributes and only scores secondary to his distrivution. It needs the guy that keeps the ball moving around the court instead of just pounding at the top with singular focus. It needs the guy with as assist to turnover ratio pushing up over 2.5. It needs the guy that can make all the passes, the little dink pass to the big in the lane, the behind the back bounce pass while looking off, the look away soft bounce pass to the big running through traffic, the beautiful lobs to the bigs as they cut backdoor which have very small windows, the 70 foot bounce pass to the wing racing down on the break, the perfect cross court skip pass, thrown before the receiver breaks to the corner that arrives as soon as his feet are set so he can simply go into shooting motion...........And yes the zip pass to the corner after penetration draws defenders. Harden is great at that last one. But not all the others. And that's why he is a secondary playmaker. He simply doesn't have the ability to make the elite smorgasbord of passes that a true ball distributor can make. Harden is a scorer who makes plays off his scoring attempts, like Kobe, like MJ. There's certainly nothing wrong with that. To be a champion he needs to defer primary ball distribution duties to a player who is a superior distributor to him. That way he can expend energy playing some defense and become even more ultra efficient offensively with even more staggering scoring totals..........while everybody else gets great looks and our turnovers melt away into more shots for ......the team.
This paves the way for quite an arousing backcourt duo. Harden and Gordon. HARDON! I can't be the first person to realize this...
There is one lying around now and the there will be another one lying around next summer. The James Harden/Russell Westbrook experience has been running in two different cities for the last 4 years. It kills ball movement, player movement, transition defense, and everything finally unravels in a cesspool of turnovers and missed shots. You can't win a championship playing that way. You can put up some ungodly stats. You can entertain the masses with the stare down crab dribbles and the electrifying finishes. But you cannot win a championship playing that way. Ball has to move.
All of this seems reasonable. I don't think James has the mentality to be a distributor, which is unfortunate because as an extremely-threatening scorer, he could draw all sorts of attention to himself. I was hoping that Lawson would be the distributor you describe, but that was really a pipe dream. Everyone wants Harden to have the ball all the time, but honestly, I think he'd be extremely effective NOT having the ball all the time. A true point guard could open up all sorts of ways for him to simply score instead of Harden having to grind his way to the free-throw line all the time. Sure, the guy makes A LOT of points that way...IF they call the fouls. If they don't, we are downright screwed and everybody looks lost from the moment they realize Harden won't be going to the line a lot. Harden as point guard/forward could also work if you have some people around him with good court awareness, good hands, and who are able to shoot, so they're threats when he's covered. However, I don't see any of this happening. We'll see what develops, but I think Harden needs to focus on what it takes to win a trophy and not what it takes to give James Harden huge stats. I'm not saying Harden doesn't want a championship, but I'm not sure anyone has explained to him what it takes.
I'd be much more excited about Harden at PG if I had any faith in Brewer or KJ. Having a 4th guy that could play alongside Harden, Gordon, and Ariza of similar size that could switch every matchup 1-4, take the 2nd toughest cover after Ariza, and add speed by going small at PF, would be huge.
I don't understand this thread. Gordon may start but it will be at "PG". Harden has been our point guard for the last two seasons, so I'm not sure what the point of this thread is haha. I highly doubt he makes an official positional change. He's been the de facto ball handler for years now. It's not like anything is changing.
Jopat deluded???? Nah, it just that he's trying too hard to prybar his lovechild/fetish/family member into the equation. Agendas and logic never mix well, especially when it come to Jopat and Rubio.
Son, the agenda is to win championships. Do you want to win championships? Or do you want to watch more reruns like last year? This team has to diversify its attack. It has to have much more offensive floor balance to have a chance in transition defense. And we have to go away from running everything through Harden to prevent 13 turnover debacles that drown the entire season away. We've got our shooters, $33 million worth of them. Actually $59 million worth of them with Hardens new deal. Its time to go get some ball distribution and defense. That is IF you have a logical agenda of winning championships. Now go back to your room and do your homework.
