Yo Harden, are you watching how San Antonio actually try on defense...

Frankly, Rockets haven't played good defense since 2009/2010. Initially because we didn't have a center, and later because we forgot how to.

 

Yep. It's over two year old after his first year in the league.

Another garbage thread by none other than Carl Herrera.

 

He did not care a s__t about defense for this serious and entire season.
And everyone give him a free pass. And "wait" until next year to see him
doing the same thing over and over again

 

Pops is the best coach in the NBA it's not even close

 

Harden would be a bench player in San Antonio . danny green better shooter and defender . he also moves without the ball while harden won't come inside the 3pt line unless the ball is in his hands

 

Scola was bad too...but he actually tried. Harden is just on a whole new level.

 

SA have everything that the Rockets don't have...

I still hate 'em.... still have no title in the last 5 years

 

championship team is championship team

 

It is this simple. Harden just has to take pride in defense. Harden doesn't just get occasionally beat. He gets beat often, and occasionally embarrassed. That he just gives up points due to in attentiveness should not be tolerated. A new coach might not solve all problems, but the coach should chew him out and bench his ass. That is what a better coach would bring.

In game 6, Harden actually committed to defense. He disrupted things, got some steals, impacted the game. And that just disgusted me because Harden could do that every game if he so desired.

I hope he spends more time on his conditioning and shows up ready to play both ends of the floor.

 

It's one thing when he shows up (for lack of better terminology) for a game looking like he spent the past night getting his drink on. That's bad enough. It translates to his whole game. He looks lethargic, tired, easily distracted.

But then when he plays swinging-gate D on the perimeter and gives that childish helpless-kid-arm-shrug at Dwight, as if to say, "I let him go only because I thought you had him."

I was something of a Harden apologist with my wife. She's become a Rockets fan but she cannot stand Harden. She's going to visit her family in Brazil and we're gonna get her nephew there an NBA jersey (which he probably won't even be able to wear outside the house, unless his policeman father is with him at the time); but I came to agree with my wife. The nephew's getting a Howard jersey. No way am I buying a Harden jersey for the kid.

I saw the flaws in Harden (lazy, apathetic) but then he'd come back with a brilliant offensive game and all was forgiven. Then he'd let the other team's D-Leaguers take him to school the next game...and here we'd go again.

But I started to look at the same things my wife pointed out as part of the big picture. Where was Harden during the Howard recruiting process? Why couldn't he be bothered to show up with the rest of us on that hot July Saturday at the Toyota Center to welcome Howard?

Then Harden's still-inexplicable disappearance in the first five games of the playoffs.

I'm not the extremist that my wife is; she was saying Harden wants to be traded from Houston because he can't share the spotlight with Howard. Me? I can see that in part but I can't quite think he wants a trade, you know?

Harden better get his act together fast. It's bad enough we kept Kevin McHale and his clue-free laissez faire coaching "style" (or is it "coaching" style, with the quotation marks moved to the proper word?)

If 2014-15 Harden shows up playing some D and averaging 18 ppg and 11 apg (the latter numbers being mentioned by none other than James himself back in the regular season, I think), then great.

It would help massively if Morey succeeds in upgrading the team, because in fairness, McHale (argh, there goes my blood pressure again) playing Harden and Parsons so many minutes was grotesque.

Even if they both wanted the minutes because (a) Harden needed them to meet the requirements to fully guarantee his contract's 5th year (b) Parsons wanted sexy stats to make good money on his next contract.

Which might also add to two young players wanting to be "the man" instead of really focusing on the goal of advancing as far in the playoffs as you can.

As Dwight Howard stated: We can't have agendas. If you're not here with the goal of championship in mind you shouldn't be here.

*Asking forgiveness for my post being all over the map but anyone (all three of you?) who bother to read my posts should be used to it.

 

The Spurs are special for having Timmeh.

Anyway, I have wanted to see McHale take a loss to send the message to a Harden. Bench him for not playing "the right way" and roll with Lin and whoever.

I agree that so long as the a Rockets have no other real offensive options, then benching Harden is too costly a move to make. But I also remember games in which Pop has benched both Timmeh and Parker for screwing up and just took the L.

 

That's the difference between a coach who's just trying to win games, and a coach who's trying to prepare his team for the postseason.

 

I hope not.

 

every black and white player not on the rockets hated to go up against Luis. They saw a beautiful man with even more beautiful hair and they thought going up against him would be a piece of cake.

But they would find out the truth, Scola on defense irritated them with random accidental bumps. poke arounds, pushes, pulling out the chair and his theatrics. Scola always gave his best effort on D.

 

Maybe that Game 6 performance means Harden had an epiphany? I sure hope he did.

They can go for another playoffs but seriously, NBA is so unpredictable. Who's to say they will still rank #4 next year?

Isn't it also more noticeable how players are so driven to get rings nowadays?

Especially those who leads their teams, you don't often see them muck around or look unenthusiastic, they'd always show how fiercely they wanted to score and play team ball.

It's playoffs time too.

I really wondered how or what went through Harden's mind while every major players in the league were working harder and pushing themselves more just to propel their team to win.

 

Yea watching Harden playing defense is embarrasing sometimes. Even HE KNOWS it as he scratched his head one time when he forgot to guard his man moving to base line for an easy 2. The thing is this is something you can't teach and be good at. Just as you can't teach talents, you can't help being lazy and lacking awareness. You can try to be good but then the next time around...you go back to the same old habit again. If it's not in you, it's not in you i guess. That's why we need to upgrade to a better defender at the 4 and just hope to improve the overall team defense because we know we can't do anything about the SG position.

 

Exactly. And I know that this might scare some fans, but if the rockets don't even manage to win one playoff series in the Harden era, it will be looked back at with the same disdain the Stevie era was for the "Dribble dribble--hog the ball" style.

The only way we can put up with this is if Harden somehow transformed his game into the Manu 6th man off the bench type (they already play a very similar style).

 

Oh, so this is not current. I know we can't really dictate these players how to conduct themselves, we can only hope and pray that they don't embarrass themselves in public hahaha, but there's also this side of me that hopes that no pictures like this ever surfaces from prominent NBA players.

I will seriously get a heart attack if I saw MJ going to clubs and got caught in this situation. LOL :grin:

Harden can do this in private and b**** like hell if the establishment can't even ensure that. hehe