[NY's Alan Hahn] Is James Harden an entertaining player?

YAWN

When was the last time the Knicks were relevant in this league? Oh yea, 1993

 

Lowe is the ultimate "cover my bases" kind of guy. He has been at the forefront of the "Harden is unwatchable" for years but then covers with some sort of compliment.

 

Also, Kawhi over Harden last year was part of the "Anybody but Harden" movement that exists this year. That group has decided that Harden offense the basketball Gods on some level and so are in constant search of someone to put above. Yes they will acknowledge he is great, but they have a NEED to vote someone over him. Kawhi! Giannis! Kyrie! Oh here comes Lebron to save us from Harden!

 

Eurosteps are not boring

Amazing body control/change of pace is not boring

All-time great court vision is not boring

Step-back 3s with attitude is not boring

Idiot writer is an idiot

 

when you can't refute the stats or wins, the next logical contention is that he's just not pretty enough. fuking pathetic faux journalists

 

I just googled 'Zach Lowe James Harden' and 95% of them are positive articles about Harden and the Rockets, so I'm not sure what you're alluding to.

https://www.google.com/search?q=zach+lowe+james+Harden

I mean in the past Lowe may have had some negative things to say about Harden, but I think he changed his tune recently, because that's not the vibe I get from him as of late. Although I can clearly tell that Lowe doesn't like Westbrook's game.

 

Harden was my favorite player to watch. It was a toss up between him and Lowry, who I really liked and played for my rockets, as to who actually was my favorite player in the league.

He is just magical to watch. If you say otherwise you just don't watch basketball enough.

 

You can look at it that way, but from an analytics point of view Kawhi was crazy efficient last year, even more so than Harden. And also Spurs won more games than the Rockets. Harden had advantage in counting stats, but so did Westbrook. So it was not an easy decision as some people here seem to think it was. Harden was kinda stuck in the middle of "efficiency and team record" argument and "individual numbers" argument.

 

Stupid article by stupid people. Almost every game he has a highlight reel set of passes and plays but they don't put it on because media biased.

 

all the “Harden is boring” people can ever point to is free throws as if that’s all his game is or as if many other superstars also didn’t get 10+ free throws a night throughout NBA history

a guy like Westbrook isn’t fun to watch for me...other than the occasional nice dunk and energy that he plays with, I don’t enjoy watching him play...his jumper is ugly and he’s not a great shooter, his handle isn’t impressive, he doesn’t toss the type of dimes that Harden, CP3, or Lebron can, and he makes boneheaded plays constantly...but he is universally viewed as fun to watch while Harden is boring, it’s crazy

 

Harden and Kawhi won the same amount of games last year.

The Spurs without Kawhi won the additional games, while Kawhi got scheduled rest.

 

Also, the media is always gonna blow it out of proportion when you're game is classified as an "old man's style". Does he dunk all over everyone like Westbrick, no. Does he shoot threes from 40' away, at times but not regularly. Does he attempt to break people's ankles on every other play while taking 40 shots a game, almost never.

Those guys are going to get overhyped by the media because they're the "dazzling" plays. We'll take the efficient old man's game any day over bricking jumper after jumper the way OKC has seen the past 8 years.

 

Guys like Zach Lowe like to look at analytics and efficiency, so if we were to be consistent, Harden was not exactly as impressive on that end as he is this year. The reason is Harden shot his career low 3PT% and turned the ball over at an extremely high clip. You're right that the Spurs was a great team even without Kawhi and he probably didn't deserve to be MVP, but I can also see the reasoning if the criteria was efficiency and team record.

 

You should add James to that last sentence. When (can't bring myself to say "if") Harden wins a title or two with the Rockets, the perception of his game will change dramatically. Guys like this hack will be declaring what a genius he is. OK, maybe this particular chump won't. He'll say it's all because of Chris Paul, dismissing James anyway. Most of the "dial it in" scribes will suddenly sing his praises, in my opinion. It's not fair, but when did being treated fairly by the media happen to the Rockets? In general, I haven't seen it since the 1980's. The Twin Towers, and beating the pants off of the defending champion Lakers, made us the darlings of the media. We were declared the next dynasty. There was no doubt. I'm tempted to say that the implosion of that great Rockets team turned them all against us, but I guess I won't.

 

Opposing players are conveniently sitting or claiming injuries prior to the Rockets game.

They expect the loss and don’t want to run doing it!!

RESPECT the ROCKETS or just go watch LeeeeeBraun

 

How can anyone like watching Westbrook brick 15/20 shots a game over harden?!?!?

The harden hate is real

I don't get it harden is a genius on the court his reads both scoring and facilitating is only matched by Lebron.

It really doesn't make sense at all.

 

I like watching Westbrook take 40 shots and making 15 of them. He dunks good.

 

What an awful take. Good lord.

 

it will make perfect sense once you grow a long beard ...western people dont like the beard...its an offense to civilized people..its repulsive...

 

I like watching James Harden play basketball