Harden played the wrong way when Rockets was leading by 8. At that time, Rockets should control the pace, defend and make each possession count, but instead, he risked to score, and created opportunities for the Kings. I can say what was going on in his mind, but it looked as if he only cared about his scoring. Where is the coach, that is a question. He demanded the ball, the rest of the team watched mostly. It's a sad ending for 2013. God Bless Rockets!
a true point guard to run the offense would help In this case. maybe the coach doesn't utilize the point guards right.. and the coach cant even keep his players accountable.
The coach is afraid to call out individual players (i.e. Harden) for defensive lapses and iso-play. Coach is coaching to keep his job and appease the superstar egos, rather than win games.
Those stats mean nothing because they don't include the important parts. What are Harden's TO stats by quarter (and in the clutch)? Most importantly, what are his opponents scoring in the 4th? Specifically during crunchtime? Those stats would be more telling.
Harden gave up 2 wide open looks to McLemore in the last minute or two of the game when he was supposed to be clutch. He hit one of them for a 3. Then Harden jacks up 2 shots without even running plays and missed both. All when he was supposed to be clutch. Clutch is on the offensive and defensive end. Then he has the audacity to try to call out the whole team for not playing D??? Not clutch- that's douche.
Harden is not horrible in the Clutch, he's just inexperienced and he's not athletic. To be great you have to have one or both to be good in the Clutch. Because of Harden's style of play, he can not get past his defender, so he has to resort to either one of three things; trying to draw a foul (which rarely happens at the end of games, just ask Kevin Love), he's famous step back move (which is hard to do against the Paul George types), or going to the rim (which he can't do at the end of games because the lanes are blocked). The Rockets need to strictly Pick-N-Roll at the end of games between Harden and Howard, similar to Malone and Stockton, to close out games. Harden is not a Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, or LeBron type of player. He needs help to beat a team.
Lin had 6 assists, Harden 1 (and Harden played 4 more minutes). E'nuff said about who is more of a team player.
I don't think people are saying that they don't want Harden taking the shots at the end of the game. I would prefer either Dwight or Harden to be our first options. HOWEVER, I would like to see him pass the ball around and create some spacing or make the defense react instead of just dribbling it up and trying to iso or jack up a shot when we still had 20 sec left on the play clock. I don't think you can disagree that that would open things up some more and then when he takes a shot he has a higher probability of making it.
i don't think harden is terrible during clutch situations. he just loves hero ball way too much for his own good.with hero ball in rare situations you'll get good results eg the Spurs game during the 4th, but the more likely outcome is probably what happened last night.
Knee jerks for almost one and a half seasons is not knee jerks any more. We are who we are for playing exciting attacking basketball. But we won't win anything because we play even more "exciting" defense.
harden New poster here. As for James Harden late 4th quarter meltdown, I think Harden actually was having a really good 4th quarter until 1:39 left in the game, right after he hit a two point shot to give the Rockets a 3 point lead. And then I think his play was compromised mainly by lack of concentration caused by fatigue, from playing big minutes in the game and big minutes in the past two weeks. At 1:39, after Harden hit his shot, two timeouts were called, one by the Kings, and then the rockets called a full time out. I know this may sound weird, but I think the timeout and brief "rest" actually sucked the last bit of mental and physical energy out of Harden, and he played the last 1:39 like he had a concussion. Having played team sports, if you've played hard the whole game and are starting to run on fumes as the game nears the end, the last thing you want to do is stop and "rest" for a minute or two. Because whatever flow you were in is going to evaporate, as the adrenaline you were running on starts to dry up, the pain and tightness starts kicking in, and then it's hard to "get it up," figuratively speaking, and get back into the flow immediately. If Harden wasn't so mentally and physically fatigued at the end of the game, no way he turns the ball over and commits an offensive foul. Those are mental mistakes, not physical ones, and mental mistakes are actually the best indicator that fatigue is compromising a player's abilities. But, of course, there is no such thing as fatigue in basketball, and Harden's bizarre meltdown in the fourth just means Harden isn't clutch and/or he sucks.
My knee doesn't take 2 seasons to jerk. Just because you haven't heard of something doesn't mean it didn't exist before you were made aware. We've been calling for a new coach, and every game we lose because of bad coaching, further drives the point home.
I really don't think that tells the story because plenty of games Harden has more assists than Lin and he probably has more for this season. Selfishness on Harden's part is trying to do everything himself in consecutive possessions while ignoring his team mates and making his team mates do most of the work on defense. He doesn't always do that but does it too much.
He has been VERY inconsistent this season, but don't give up on him yet....I have a feeling he will regain superstar form soon.
He was never a superstar to begin with lmao. IMO Dwight is our only star we have right now and he's getting ignored in the paint
