[The Ringer] Kevin O'Connor Mad At Harden, Thinks MDA Sucks At His Job

what dumb about it? Have you seen anyone on this team that can realistically be relied on to pass. his robin can't even dribble and turns the ball over constantly. plays out of control basically all the time and only knows 1 speed. lets rely on that. look where its gotten the rockets. you're really acting like WB hasn't been absolutely garbage. stop it.

dude is sitting at the far left bottom in contributions next to rivers. lets that sink in. this silly idea of off ball action is what the rockets need to do to solve their problems is definitely ymca basketball. just stop

 

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Harden apologists keep trying to argue that Harden not moving off ball is a good thing for the team. Only Harden fans would do that for a basketball argument. I am pretty sure if Harden wasn't a Rocket, people here would say all the funny things to ridicule him. This is intellectual dishonesty.

Another common thing Harden apologists say is that Harden is not predictable on offense. They say that he has so many different moves that it is ridiculous to characterize him as predictable. These people, or probably Harden himself, think only from an individual point of view. If you look at things from the team point of view, he is extremely predictable. The guys made a point that is so obvious. Harden is one of the greatest scorers of all time. Few people have more moves having the ball one on one. But comes playoffs time, teams only need one game plan. (The Lakers were actually dumb for not doing that from Game 1.) When you have the personnel to execute that one plan, Houston has no other options to adjust.

While MDA doesn't provide the solution, he is not the main problem. McHale did the same thing. I am pretty sure JVG would have done the same thing if he was coaching Harden. Give the damn ball to him and let him do his things. I think the majority of NBA coaches would do the same.

Harden has to initiate the change. He has to say, hey, I'm not just gonna work on improving my game, but I want to improve the team game. In Harden's mind, variety means giving the ball to somebody else and let him do the work. That's tunnel vision. He has to think, how do we have multiple ways to play in which I am part of all the ways?

 

no he cannot pass. he's always been a terrible decision maker and a poor ball handler. There's a reason why his iq has always been so low and one of the dumbest players in this league. just bc okc stuck the ball in the hands bc they were pretty much forced to because he's a ball dominant guard doesn't mean he excels at passing. he doesn't.

So now something so small as you have just said is supposed to be the difference for the rockets. how does that make any sense at all.

 

Just so you know, Westbrook has a higher assist/turnover ratio than Harden for their respective careers and it's surprisingly a bigger gap than I would assume.

 

This is something that any Rockets fan can agree on. You can't tell me that a high trap will break you down in the playoffs when you've been seeing it two years running.

 

Just so you know, one has a higher impact on winning than the other. and that's crystal clear. so one is doing something right while the other, not so much

your counting stats logic is the same dumb logic that got wb the mvp over harden for averaging 2 rebs more.

 

I like KOC but this is the same guy who said Lakers best chance in this series was to play big.

As we know, Lakers stopped playing big after 2nd game, and even that game was only 13 minutes. And Dwight has not seen floor since first game.

So take this guy's opinion with a grain of salt.

 

You won't because reality is enough for me. ive known how this wb thing would play out from day 1 and who hes been as a player. cf's is known to believe so many things are true and yet are proven wrong time and time again.

 

Stop moving goal posts. The claim now from multiple posters including you is Westbrook is an incapable pg... Who just happened to win multiple assist titles plating that position.

Harden is more of a winner than Westbrook. I'm not debating that. I'm debating whether Russel Westbrook is a competent NBA pg who has the ability to pass the ball to Harden when he's moving off ball.

Yes a MVP level pg can do that.

 

Yea a bunch of couch coach's on CFs no way more about NBA offense than Mike Dantoni lol. This is really rich. The whole being called an apologists when there are clearly bigger problems is the place in a nutshell. First to point the fingers is at Harden, wether he plays good or bad. If we lose it's Harden. Move off ball Harden, it's not so hard look here's a MJ video.....*video shows no MJ off ball movement, see there you go James.

 

2-11, giving up the ball after a double and standing at the top of the key isn’t “carrying” anything.

James Harden allows that double to be such an effective strategy against him. MOVE!!!

 

Again making an argument that essentially asks to cease any discussion of tactics. Having a discussion of tactics implies you disagree with the coach is currently doing. This is extremely common and is the vast majority of GARM discussions or any sports discussion.

"The coaches know better" isn't an argument.

 

Did you miss the first three games of this series? Or did you miss the fact that despite going 2-11 the guy drew 20 FTs.......

when you have 4v3 you should be able to capitalize on that...oh my god.

 

so now its moving goal posts. nah. wb is an incapable pg. yeah i know that already. any team trying to actually win its true. now if you don't care about that then yeah put him as your pg.

again the counting stats mean absolutely nothing if you don't contribute to winning basketball. seems a lot of you are still fooled by that and don't understand that aspect