Did Thunder provide enough evidence already a few seasons ago? Or you think Durant and Westbrook were not good enough as elite player? Be real, Harden is simply not the expected player that a team could built around. At least I do not know that any top player in a champion team had lower FG% than harden in recent NBA history.
if you can build around Curry, you can build around Harden. no one can win a ring with michael beasley as their second best offensive teammate
It's embarassing even trying to make an argument out of this, especially if you're a Rockets fan since you have no reason to troll about this, Klay vs Harden...lol, what's next? Draymond vs Duncan? Iguodala vs Paul George? Barnes vs Batum? Bogut vs Marc Gasol? Klay is a great player but he's just not in the same category of Harden.
The sad part is i dont blame the rabid warrior fanbase as much as i blame the media, they believe what they hear on tv. So when you have idiots on tv like ethan sherwood struass saying stephen curry is as great michael jordan, amin elhasson saying draymon green brings the same tools to the court as a LeBron James, and Charles Barkley saying that Klay thompson is the best 2 guard in the league. Then it becomes a problem the hype with the warriors would go away if nba refs were competent. And by that i mean not just calling illegal screens, but assesing technicals on guys like draymon green when they taunt opposing players. back to klay, its obvious he needs screens, and pick plays to get free. Almost all of his shots are spot up 3 point shots. James Harden was more effiecent as a 3rd option than klay is a number 2 to curry lol. Hardens last year with the Thunder is better than any season klay has had to this point
I don't think so. Shooting is a real skill, probably the most essential skill in hoops, scoring is the direct objective of the game. Their range in shooting can already negate most defenses. If illegal screens are called, they would simply adjust. Most times they're so open, the screens or the little advantage of the illegal ones don't even matter. The fact that u have to stay home on Curry, Thompson, and now Durant, no, screens, esp illegal screens, don't matter that much. The shooting ability of their elite players do.
Which player top player in a championship team can replace harden and guarantee a championship last year?
Lebron and Durant are the only one's I can think of that can improve our team with our system as-is. Both superior ISO players and better defenders than Harden (also playing a more important defensive position, the 3-4 forward) Curry and CP3 if you build new systems around them. that's about it though, no one star player wins championships anyway. The question is, if you were another star player, who would you rather play with? Lebron, Durant, Curry, CP3, or Harden?
remove durant( replace him with westbrook), curry is a scorer but not really the guy that the warriors need to win. Draymond green makes the warriors go, they won againist us and the first 2 games of the blazers series without curry so its really between cp3, lebron, westbrook, and harden. westbrook has better teammates than harden but they are at best equal players, i would slighty lean towards harden due to qb relying on athletic ability. LeBron is getting up in age and doesnt do it by himself either( he has kyrie) Im picking harden honestly
Are you trying to make up stuff or what? Spoiler CP3 in 10 years and with a better team did less than Harden in 3, Curry played with a way better team than Harden in these two years, and he still played pretty meh in two finals, i wouldn't build a team around him if i can pick these other guys to be honest, i mean, Steph is an amazing player but not everyone is brainwashed by the media and thinks he's a great defender and the best player ever. Durant wasn't able to do better than Harden even if he played with another superstar and a better team overall so yeah, i'd pick only Lebron over Harden, i would never pick Paul, Curry or Durant before Harden. Well, maybe a prime Paul... I would love to see Durant and Curry play with a 8 man rotation of Black, Dorsey, D.Mo, Ariza, Papanikolaou, Terry and Canaan for 40/50 games in the hardest division and conference in the last 10 years to see how much better than Harden they are.
Lebron and harden Durant can't get it done with WB Ibaka and Adams under donovan Cp3 can't get it done with Blake deandre reddick and Crawford under doc Curry can't get it done with klay, green! bogut, Barnes, igoudala, Livingston! Barbosa under Kerr What makes you think they can get it done under Mchale or jbb with pbev brewer ariza dmo/tjones and d12?
LeBron isn't a better ISO player than Harden. For the season Harden averaged 0.93 points per possession (ppp) on isolations. Lebron averaged 0.85 ppp in isolations. That's a huge difference. To put it into perspective, Dwight Howard averaged 0.82 ppp on postups. Lebron was bad in isolation during the last regular season. If you want to look at the playoffs then it's the same. In last year's playoffs Lebron was better in iso averaging 0.94 ppp which is a good average. In those same playoffs Harden was elite in iso averaging 1.16 ppp. BTW in last year's playoffs Durant was incredibly bad in iso (0.75 ppp).
Yeah, you're off thinking Durant is the kind of ISO workhorse Harden is. A much higher % of Durant's scoring comes off assists. Check this out, by my calculations off bball reference, these are %Asst for FG's for 2014-2016: Durant 48% 56% 56% Harden 37% 30% 32% It's not close. Harden has been a one man show on offense. Can create stuff out of nothing. I don't know where to look to see ISO rankings for the whole league. When you look at efficiency AND volume, I'm pretty confident Harden is the best ISO player in the league. He can do anything. People can argue about his defense - though I think that is overblown - but Harden's the dude I want on offense. He is the guy I would most fear at the end of the game - even if he has total trash for teammates.
stats.nba.com, your one stop shopping location for NBA stats. Here's the iso numbers filtered for players who take more than 10 shots per game: http://stats.nba.com/league/player/...G*10&Season=2015-16&SeasonType=Regular Season What's you'll notice is that nobody really ISOs a huge amount. Harden leads the league in ISOs and he runs it less than 7 times per game. The perception is that we run Harden ISO every trip down the floor when in reality the numbers show that we run Harden ISO 7/101 possesions per game. Other things that you'll notice is that Lillard was great in ISO last season and Westbrook was terrible in ISO.
Thanks. I kinda wonder how they categorize these possessions, because it certainly seems like Harden ISO's more than 7 out of every 101 possessions. I have felt Westbrook was a bit overrated. for a while, though I was pretty quiet last year as it was really an outlier on the positive side for him. I didn't realize his ISO numbers were that poor. Friends of mine often rank him as one of the best finishers, but his numbers are average there actually. Looking at those numbers, you can't rule out Harden as the best ISO player, though you can't definitively say he is. Some guys have better efficiency, but that efficiency would certainly take a dip if they had the volume of possessions Harden has. Harden is the whole package on offense IMO. He can score - he can pass. He's always drawing contact for easy points; yet, his finishing numbers last year were approaching elite numbers. Not many guys draw contact AND finish well. Only improvement on offense I might request is to not settle for covered threes so much. Maybe the offensive additions will help there. Bottom line is fans here need to appreciate him more. Same fans b*ching about Harden's ISO's were b*ching that Kevin Martin couldn't create his own shot. Always b*ching - they b*ch about Harden - I b*ch about them b*ching about Harden. Perpetual cycle.
That really puts in perspective what a bad year offensively Lebron had last year, by his standards. I wonder what his seasons prior looked like, as far as iso ppp. I think people combine ISO plays with plays as PNR Ball Handler. Anyway here is the list of ppp as the high volume ball-handler, basically the who's who of elite offensive guards, below it isolation. I think what you see here is that the other elite options (Lebron, Durant, Curry) get their scoring in a more variety of ways and I'm not sure if that's system, coaches tailoring the system to the player, players around them, or the player themselves... my main criticism of Harden isn't actually his defense and effort, it's actually his ability to thrive as an off-ball player. Which is why i posed the question, if you were another superstar who would you rather play with?.... You can definitely build a championship team the ISO way, look at Cleveland, but then you'd also need the most versatile player on the planet the last decade and a payroll that's over 200m. Ball-Handler ISOlation
One thing we know is the NBA stats for Play Tracking and Defense Tracking and Hustle Stats are created by video-analysis algorithms. http://www.stats.com/sportvu/sportvu-basketball-media/ We also know this is very new, because the nba.com stats for Plays Types has no history beyond 2016. You can't select previous years in the stats. So, the stats are computer algorithms of video data...which somehow turns them into Play Types. Also notice, none of the Play Types have Assist information...just FGA, FTA. And-1s and Turnovers. So, the algorithms are presenting the data as end of possession data that resulted in a Shot, FT or TO. (Question: Can we tell from those stats for ISO how many times Harden passed?) The issues with that are obviously how do you show plays that evolve. A Harden ISO can evolve into another play (a pass), but does that wipe it out of the statistics as an ISO possession...and converts it to a Spot-Up shooter stat, for example. bottomline: nba stats is not showing the original play calls but rather the ending play of a possession. It is wrong to use it as a measure of all Harden ISOs play calls, but it is good for showing ISO relative to other players, since the algorithm works the same for all.
Thanks, hp. I appreciate that. I always question NBA.com's stats, because the Defensive stats they tout (Diff in FG% when certain player is guarding) always seem to not pass the smell test. I was real pumped about those at first, because it's so hard for me to judge players' defense. Bummed they haven't been that helpful.
HP, You're drawing conclusions based on assumptions that I don't believe are true. If you look at the play type stats on the NBA.COM site, they are clearly marked as being produced by synergy, not stats.com/sports-vu cameras. It's not an algorithm, it's not new technology. I had the personal level subscription to synergy back in Harden's first year here so I know that they are at least that old. Look at the header for any of the play type stats and you'll see ("provided by synergy") next to the name of the play type. You can also search cf.net to see where I've been posting play type stats for several years. You are correct that you can't query prior years from the NBA site but that is a licensing issue. Synergy still sells licenses to their data and they have to provide something over and above what's available on the free version on the NBA site or nobody would pay for it. Being able to query history is one of the features that you have to pay for. The fact that assist info isn't included in the free version available on NBA.com also doesn't mean that that data isn't tracked. It just means that it's not included as part of the free feed on the NBA site. My understanding of synergy is that they have actual people that break down the game footage and classify it. I really don't know how else that they would do it.
