Harden is in the same next tier as Melo and Kyrie Irving. High volume shooters, great offensive players who play zero defense whatsoever
Never take too serious of what Morey said about PG's. He thought Rubio would bring us a championship and wanted to trade half our roster for him. The greatest PG of all time is Magic and Paul is not even close...at least not until he wins a couple of championships!
#1 Harden isnt really a high volume shooter #2 If your criteria is high volume shooting and poor defense, I am assuming that you accidently forgot to include Kobe Bryant.
Harden, a volume shooter?? Laughable...Harden in one of the most efficient shooters in the league! He might be a bad defender at times, but nothing close to as bad as Kyrie, Melo, or Nash. Stop hating dude!
Harden is a high volume scorer like Kobe, Melo, Irving. They are also in the same mold of being the worst starting defenders in the league at their positions. Harden IS a high volume shooter, like the other guys mentioned he needs the ball in his hands a lot which disrupts his teammates flow and ball movement. Harden's total shot attempts are masked because he draws so many fouls. It doesn't change the fact he dominates the ball like those other players do
I could see the Twovles NOT trading Love to Houston just to spite McHale. But outside of d12, it makes too much sense not to go after him.
You really show your knowledge with that statement! If you do not know what True Shooting Percentage (TS%) is, I suggest you to look it up. Harden is 10th in the league in TS%!
Nothing I wrote is untrue. I never said Harden is inefficient. He's one of the most efficient players in the league. A better offensive player than Melo in my opinion because he's so efficient and can draw fouls even on off nights. But it's still true that Harden is a high volume shooter. If you add up his FTA's and FGA's, he needs the ball just as much as other players like Melo, Irving, Kobe. It also has a related impact on teammates like Nash or Lin (or Derek Fisher before). It's really not controversial at all. Anyone who watches Rockets games clearly sees that Harden dominates the ball.
Um, not to interject but TS% only shows the actual point production per possession, not the number of possessions. A jumper is a fg attempt. A dunk or lay up is a fg attempt. However in the basic box score a foul off a jump shot, lay up or dunk is NOT counted as a fg attempt even though without the foul it would be a FGA. So, add up his FGA's with his number of FT's - And1's and divide by 2 and you get the true number of shots he attempts. So, let's look at his per game stats...http://www.hoopdata.com/player.aspx?name=James Harden 17.0 FGA/game 10.2 FTA/game 0.93 And1/game True FGA = 17.0 + (10.2-0.93)/2 = 17 + (9.17/2) = 17 + 4.585 = 21.585 FGA per game 21.585 FGA per game is volume by most definitions... Here's a comparison with Melo for example (an acknowledged volume scorer and the highest FGA/game in the NBA) 21.6 FGA/game 7.8 FTA/game 0.58 And1/game True FGA = 21.6 + (7.8-0.58)/2 = 21.6 + 3.61 = 25.21 So no, he's not as volume as Carmelo Anthony, but I'd still say that's a volume scorer....
Incorrect. You said he disrupts the offense. Rockets offense is better with him than anyone else on the team with the exception of Greg Smith. He is a volume scorer and a volume shooter....but if a player is efficient...that is a very good thing. Harden is 8th in usage in the NBA. Every player you listed uses more possessions than Harden.
Technically you can do both. A single player can produce significantly enough to have a net improvement in the offensive numbers, but still disrupt the offensive production of the players around him. Wilt Chamberlain is a classic historical example of this. He got his numbers, but he himself admitted that his teams performed the best when he stopped trying to do everything himself. The real question is whether the offense can be even better. I personally believe that the team could perform even better offensively with some tweaks to how Harden plays.
I guess I'm too team oriented to understand this. If getting the ball to Harden a lot is best for team, the only way for Harden to disrupt flow of offense of his teammates would be to not let them pass him the ball. Yes, their individual stats may suffer, but it is a team game. It is his teammates job to keep moving. It is not Harden's fault they get complacent when their chances of getting ball go down.
The Rockets offense was EXPLOSIVE the past 2 games without Harden. Harden is their best offensive player by far but this offense is still awesome when he's hurt. Also, Torocon who might be the best poster on this entire forum, just showed why Harden is both an extremely efficient offensive player but ALSO a high volume shooter who dominates the ball like Melo, Kobe, Irving, etc
