He’s James Harden, wtf are you talking about? Also you don’t just give him that little time to see decide. It was a poor way to handle the situation. Sheesh
exactly. very few people are truly great playoff performers. harden had some really bad games years ago but has been as good as you can expect for the last 3 years. lebron and kawhi are some of the few from this generation who have really elevated at playoff time. people don't realize how much steph and KD usually fall off in the playoffs. it's just that the warriors have been so good, that when steph falls off, they just go from "far and away the best regular season team in the league" to barely scraping by an injured lebron team or an injured harden team. and hell, they even blew it in 2016. and most of the guys who really perform well like hakeem, jordan, lebron, shaq, duncan, kawhi are physical freaks in some way or another. guys like steph and harden simply can't do what they want without a tremendous amount of skill and the playoffs have a way of taking those things away because defenses that can't prepare during an 82 game season can hyper-focus on your tendencies in a 7 game series. you mentioned bird, but if people ever really looked at some of his playoff performances they would be shocked at how bad some of them are. not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 different series he lost with a true shooting percentage of 45%! for reference, westbrook last year was 46%, and i almost gouged my eyes out so i wouldn't have to watch anymore. 3 of those bird series were with homecourt advantage during his prime. those are horrible series. from a legend. and again, bird was not a physically dominant player. you could get into him in a playoff series. just how it is. nba history is littered with all-time greats having mediocre playoff performances from time to time. the fact we damn near beat the warriors twice puts harden up with any of the non-title winners like malone and barkley who also lost to some great teams (though not durant warriors great). unless people thought we had a way to trade harden for lebron or kawhi, you usually just ride it out with a guy like harden, hope you have some good luck one year (as opposed to terrible luck like the cp3 injury), and win a title somehow. and if you don't, well...it usually ends like this.
this is why it was so important that james come in fat and tank the team for the first 9 games. those were valuable losses we racked up. imagine trying to catch up to detroit if we were 5-4 or 6-3. we thank you for your service on the way out, mr. harden.
Kyrie the mastermind. Sits out and creates chaos to force Houston to trade Harden to BKN. Rejoins the team shortly thereafter. All part of the plan. Surprised (yet not really) that Boston didn't pull the trigger on this, especially since their star guard situation is even more worrisome than Brooklyn's. Irving is just a weird dude, but Kemba's injury might be way bigger than reported. A Harden/Tatum duo is really damn good.
Not sure why you seem so antagonize about what I'll associate with Harden and his postseason performance. If your thoughts are different, good for you... Memories and association aren't always a conscious reaction. For example, I refered to the 13 turnovers game, but it was really 12, I just randomly associated it with his number. After looking it up, I realize it was 12 tos and the game was a blow out, Harden was 2-11 fg, so not sure what shootout you're referring to. As for scoring 30 in the game 7. It's true Harden put up 32 points in that infamous game 7 vs the warriors. But I can't help remember him doing so on 12-29 fg and 2-13 3pt fg. Personally I didn't find that performance impressive but your mileage may vary. As to if it sucks that I remember more negative than positive things about Harden in the postseason... I'm less thoughtful of judging how positive or negative my sports memories are, but rather how accurate... Lol.
All I know about this trade is that it will either cause Bill worrell to retire or he will have to learn about the first round and the order of the draft rockets bout to have 3 number 1 picks every year
You are not understanding or dont want to understand. Harden is almost on McGradys level on what he did at the end of his tenure here.. Dude disappeared, pretty much **** on the org and all in all failed at the end... I already said, Harden is more accomplished, not even close
Don't sweat the participation trophy people - you are right, he quit on a team that he basically built himself. It is ok to recognize him as an amazing offensive player and a quitter - they are both true. DD
Yeah I think his adidas deal has a "big market" kicker and seeing as he's in the biggest market in the country he'll be fine
I'm really, really surprised some other teams weren't willing to pull the trigger if the BKN deal was the baseline. Did James really tank his value that hard?
You exaggerate/joke, but yes the rockets playoff run prior to Harden was pathetically short. I still sadly yet fondly recall Yao and tmac taking the first two on the road vs dallas. They were being called magic kareem like by magic on tnt. But only to ultimately get blown out by 50 in game 7. I recall thinking tmac and Ryan bowen doing a good job of guarding dirk before we knew how great dirk was going to be. The jazz and boozer. The lakers and injuries. Lots of fond yet frustrating memories. Those rockets team were easy to love as Yao and jvg were my favorites but also easy to hate lol. For they constantly fell short.
This is interesting. The Lavert for Oladipo swap is being done as a separate trade so it is not official yet. Will also create a trade exception of $15 mil if it is completed as originally planned. However, it would be nice if we can go ahead and flip Oladipo now to a 3rd team while we can still add salary, etc. to him. Otherwise, I believe we will have to wait until March unless we just flip him by himself without any other players attached. Not likely that anything is done especially if we are trying to continue building his value back up closer to the deadline when the arms race starts to heat up.
when's the last time you saw a package with this many picks all unprotected. I'll answer that for you. never because its unprecedented
