Every game counts. The games where Harden plays a lot of minutes are the games where we look like crap when he's not out on the floor.
I caught the sacramento feed and those broadcasters were ragging on sampson. They were asking why the hell would we risk Harden to even bigger injury and a meaningless game.
I don't know if you win more games by playing half healthy star players and have them sit out more games later on, or win more games by sitting out star players and playing 2nd tier healthy players. But at some point you gotta trade some short term gain for long-term security.
it's always foot and ankle injuries with james harden. very unfortunate. Guys should get out of his way while he's driving.... haha. This might be a while until harden is moving well again. The good news is that it isn't a terribly serious injury, but it will linger and bother him for a while.
Rockets won all 3 games Harden was out. No need to play him 39.9 mpg when he was injured since training camp. So early in the season you don't do this to a player when you have a superstar teammate (Howard) to pick up the slack. That's a recipe for disaster where Harden suffers a serious injury that ends his season.
Blame the coaching staff, for riding him so hard and making him 40+ min, more often than not. They should be utilizing the other players more.
Bad idea, you want to give up a young player that is getting better and has many years left in the league for a player that already has ten years in the league. I like Deng a lot and would love for him to be on the Rockets but what are you going to do, send Parsons to the bench?
yep Patrick Beverley is the perfect "fit" for putting more loads on Harden and lead him to injury. everything evolves as we expected in open season and those scrub coaches never learn. no matter how many stars Daryl bring in, those scrubs would only care about their records for the next contract, ride the starters into ground and leaving young picks rot in the bench, it happened last season and Daryl solved it by trading away some guys he doesnt want to develop and now it happens again. SMDH.
Harden is vital for our playoff run. Let him fully recover, take 2-3 weeks if needed. When he returns, keep him to under 30min. for first 6-7 games and then increase to 35min. maximum. Playing him 40min. is going to shorten his lifespan as an NBA player and jeopardise the Rox future. He should never play 40min. in a regular season game.
There was confusion It is not a high ankle sprain as Harden suggested. Friedman clarified that on the radio this morning.
this reasoning is so sound, simple and logical that there must be some secret reasons why they dont use him like that...
Coaches tend to be short sighted in general. Most of the time they are thinking in terms of the game in front of them versus a long term view of the season. This isn't helped by the fact that most NBA coaches feel like they are fighting for their jobs every season. To many head coaches, they're not worried about a player's body in 3, 4 or 5 years. After all, most of them will be working somewhere else. The players are young, players get injured and old and move on and it's someone else's problem. Sure, there are coaches like Pops and Doc Rivers that think about long term minutes use, but it's not a common attitude.
Agreed. Coaches care about the W that night, for the sake of their job. Most are short term tacticians, not long term strategists. Pops and Doc are different, and interestingly enough, are seen as two of the best coaches in the nba.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Harden says he'll be ready to go tonight.</p>— Jason Friedman (@JasonCFriedman) <a href="https://twitter.com/JasonCFriedman/statuses/413353425351348226">December 18, 2013</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Harden said he will be ready to go.</p>— Jonathan Feigen (@Jonathan_Feigen) <a href="https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Feigen/statuses/413353428899745793">December 18, 2013</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>James Harden says he will play tonight.</p>— Mark Berman (@MarkBermanFox26) <a href="https://twitter.com/MarkBermanFox26/statuses/413353482297434112">December 18, 2013</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Rockets&src=hash">#Rockets</a> James Harden says he went thru shootaround w/o a lot of pain. Said he thinks he'll be good to play</p>— AdamWexlerCSN (@awexler) <a href="https://twitter.com/awexler/statuses/413353548873994240">December 18, 2013</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
