What changes will we see from Harden in the Silas era?

Silas was not brought in to make Harden better because he's historic. He was brought in to make everyone else not appear useless when Harden is taken out of the game either for rest or by a trap at half-court.

 

I just hope the GM doesn't tell him where to shoot and when. I hope the 'just win' mentality sets in for years to come for all current and future Houston Rockets.

 

I love Harden, but the man is human. Give him support when he has an off quarter or an off night, and we're halfway there to the finals.

Harden does have responsibility playing off Wall and feeding Cousins, but making the 2nd lineup smell like roses is not his job.

 

The changes James makes will probably be due more to Wall and Cousins and Wood than Silas. James will take more assisted threes as Wall is a better passer than Westbrook, which might up his 3 point percentage. This will probably encourage James to move more to get open. James will have the lob again between Wood and Cousins which will also make it harder to double team him continually, especially when he drives.

 

I think we will see more wall bringing the ball up to stop the double teams that usually teams commit to harden when he brings the ball up. No one will double wall when he brings it up because he is no James Harden with the ball. So Silas will let wall bring it up and let harden do his thing in the half court and most importantly it also helps Harden conserve energy for the fourth quarter.

 

Changes? No, he will not be changed. Request a change from Harden, and he'll request a trade and pout on the court until it happens. No, you don't change Harden, you let Harden be Harden.

 

Pout on the court? So far he is playing the right way

 

Hopefully this will become more how we play verses how we play with our better off ball shooters out. Obviously, Wood is making a difference in how we play too.

 

But , but harden was made in Dantoni iso plays? But, but...

 

I’ll go on record saying we won’t see a change of teams

 

Harden's increase in PnR is because of the currently personal rather than any strategy by Silas. He 's making Wood better.

here's the numbers after yesterday.

He's run 9.3 pick and rolls per game and is scoring 1.18 pts per possession. That's the 14th most pick and rolls per game. His ppp is 5th in th league.

He's running isolation 8.3 times per game and is scoring 1.32 points per possession. Both of those lead the league.

Harden is always going to be more effective from iso. He doesn't need the pick in order to get open. It also makes it more difficult to double him. The PnR is mostly for the pick setters benefit.

Here's the really crazy numbers that show you just how hot of a start Harden is off to:

harden is shooting 57.9% on step back threes.

less than 5 ft 68%, midrange 0%, 20-24 ft 50%, 25-29 ft 45%

In clutch time (2games) he's scoring 13 pts (leads league, next highest 8pts), 63.6% fg%, 100% 3pt%, 89.5 TS%

those are crazy numbers and obviously not sustainable.

on the flip side, the team is dead last in the league from midrange shooting 28.1%. Our midrange attempts are just slightly lower than last year so that is good. We are not shooting a shot that we suck at.

 

Posted in another thread but probably deserves to be in this one.

1 game sample size alert

Time of possession

Wall : 6.9 minutes
Harden : 6.7 minutes

That’s down significantly from where Harden has been these last years.

Haven’t found the most efficient way to look this up yet but I’d imagine the number of games as a Houston Rocket where he didn’t lead the team in time of possession is slim to none and it happened on the very first game with Wall.

His touches and passes per game are also up a fair amount. Though they were always top 10ish to begin with.

 

Not sure why this play was particularly highlighted for 'ball movement.' It was just players passing to other players on the perimeter before Wall decided to drive in...from the perimeter.

There were probably better plays than this to highlight lol.

 

Becuase it has become a noted gripe by some that Harden stands around far away from the action when he isn’t involved in an iso or pick and roll. This play shows him giving up the ball multiple times and attempting to screen away for Wall to get open.

 

Probably more ball movement for the first 3 quarters switched to the good old fashion Harden iso but with the PNR with wood now in the 4th. The iso game is still probably the most effective way to score but if you do anything for 4 quarters people adapt to it. If you only do it one quarter they have less chance to practice against it.

 

A big portion of that was Wall bringing the ball up the court on most possessions.

 

Well I did say it beforehand

 

gonna take harden to the next level with half court shots. force teams to really spread out their defense