there are still a few kinks in our iron suit.. and the part that gets to me is they are addressable. Harden needs to except that Paul is on a different level and needs to differ him the ball and be the secondary ball handler and primary scorer. There were times that he would see Paul do an amazing trick, then almost feel compelled to match or outdo him ending up turning the ball over or make a bad decision. This resulted in having 4 minutes in first and third quarter of total scoring drought, when both our maestros are in together playing the bulk of minutes with each other. there were also moments where Harden appeared frustrated at not getting the ball as Paul bought it up the court. Harden is the alpha dog here, no doubt, but Paul has been an alpha dog for over ten years, and Harden should make him feel welcome. Its good to know our offense is so potent that we still destroyed them, but I dont know if we would survive these type of droughts against Warriors, Spurs, Cavs or celtics.
Harden and paul are figuring out their synergy pretty well so far. This armchair psychoanalysis of harden seeing paul do cool stuff then getting jealous so he tries to one up him is ridiculous. None of us know what is going on in either of their brains.
yeah I was reluctantly to make this thread, because results don't lie.. but the opening first quarter and third quarter droughts got to me.. It appeared that there were times he tried to hard to keep up with Paul..
'Accept', and 'defer'. I'd rather they are both wanting the ball and being aggressive and trying to dominate, rather than the weird passive/aggressive thing going on in OKC or even between James and Dwight back in the day.
he's already deferring but it's impossible to totally defer especially if you're simply the best player on the team plus averaging 10 more minutes than the player you're deferring to
its perfectly normal, i mean there were times when i got irritated (perhaps irrationally) with harden handling the ball when cp3 is in, then its perfectly acceptable to me that harden could had such thoughts and even act on them...
I may frame this discussion (in my head lol) as a discussion on how to improve chemistry on court for both Lob Maestros. While I´m not as acid as you, I believe there was some effort from Harden, but I agree that yesterday game did not show two man action form thos 2. I think it would be amazing to see some of the things we had with Lin-Harden altough that was not particularly brilliant.
OP may be talking about the last possesion in the 1st of the last game where Harden asked Paul for the ball to end the quarter. We were up big & if it would’ve been a closer game I believe Harden would’ve deferred to CP. Harden’s been shooting the 3 ball a lot at a high percentage & he’s made his share of buzzer beating 3’s to end quarters and halfs, he probably wanted to get it going. It’s no big deal, Harden’s been deferring a lot to CP3. Our biggest issue right now is staying healthy & to get a good seed for the playoffs.
nah, Harden is just a risky passer while CP3 is a safe passer. CP3 always makes the right move, he rarely forces the shot unless he's trying to draw the foul Harden meanwhile, plays at his own pace. He tries to dictate what happens but it results in TOs when the refs don't give him the call.
The thing that gets to me about your post is that you don’t know how to spell the words you were trying to use and instead typed out words that sound similar but unfortunately are entirely inapplicable to the context you tried to use them in. Similarly, like the issues you have with the Rockets, your issues are ‘fixable’ too, which, ironically, is what really gets to me.
Not only is that true, but if we look at history Harden just wants to get paid, get recognition, and enjoy this. He's not looking for more than anybody else at that, just the max he can get. He's a cool dude. He's not gonna Kyrie our LeBron. He's not that kind of guy. He's cool provided he's getting paid and recognition. SIL