I think at this point in his career Harden is somewhere in between what the Rockets believe he is and what OKC believed he was.
As true as that may be, Goran is the one killing the Rockets. Is Harden holding him. What about Scola, is that his man too... Back to back games. They'll pick it up in the 3rd.
TJones is going to see a lot of minutes in the playoffs. Smith is a fouling machine. And I just realized that TJones has 4 blocks tonight already.
They are pretty even imo. Dragic gets screens set for him, he blows by Lin. When Lin gets screens set for him blows by Dragic. Pretty even imo. Difference is help defense, and the fact Lin gets less screens run for him and plays PG less.
To all of you who miss Dragic and want him back badly, I'm very very happy to see that you're suffering a slow death because what you want is not going to happen. I'm also very very happy to know that you're not having fun watching the Rockets. DIE.SLOWLY.DON'T.RUSH.
can't really blame Harden here, he's got a bumped knee. I say rest him, don't want to risk an injury on our best player.
I think Lin is better at pick n roll thats kinda his bread and butter (dantoni) I think of Harden is more of a shooter/cutter/creat space for himself BUT Harden can play pck n roll don't get me wrong
From what I've observed, Harden isn't really a poor defender, he does have certain strengths weaknesses that probably add up to a bit below average. Harden is a pretty decent on ball and post defender, but his team defense and positional defensive awareness is problematic. He tends to drift a bit too far from his man, lose track of his man on switches and rotations, isn't very good at steering his man into secondary defenders, and it seems like he isn't aware of where his help man defender is at a given time. I think the problem is when you get 2 of our weaker team defenders on the floor at the same time, or we have Harden and don't have Asik in to cover the back side of the rotation it distorts the defense as other players are forced to move to cover the slippage. I'm hoping this is more of an experience and practice thing that will improve over time versus a raw ability thing. As for the "hustle" stuff like closing out, putting his hand up, etc, those are simply bad habits that he'll hopefully improve upon.
