It's dumb to criticize Harden's offense. Criticize his D all you want all day long. As far as shooting below 37% from the field over a stretch of games, no **** it happens. Players esp SG's go through slumps during the course of a long season. At the end of the day, a great player will find ways to have more good days than bad and greater periods of sustained high level play which will reflect at the end of the season over a substantial sample of 82 games. Case in point, Harden started the season shooting about 30% from 3 point land but eventually brought that number back up to his career average.
Terrible article - that said, I really am indifferent to the Curry vs Harden vs Paul case. You could rank those three in any order of deservedness and I'd be fine. Harden is the best offensive guard in the NBA. His defense is underrated by virtue of being so ridiculously overanalyzed. Teams (notable exception: Blazers) don't typically change their gameplans to go at Harden. He can handle himself in the post, and is an above average positional rebounder. Statistically, he closes out on spot-ups at a perfectly acceptable level. He's crap in isolation and abysmal off-ball. He's a damn bad overall defender but the criticism lately is like he's directly giving up 40 a game. He's a poor defender whose defense gets overblown because of his offense and because of his occasional very noticeable mistakes. Could have been first team or second team but to act like he's total trash is crazy.
you falling into the daryl morey way of basketball. Efficient shooting SHOULD mean shot% not the spot of the floor that he shoots in. Harden plays that way because he isnt athletic as other shooting guards. He isnt "ELITE" at it, he became predictable and got locked down easily by good defensive teams leaving him only with contesting step back 3pointers ( LOW EFFICIENCY SHOTS) You wanna see a good versitile player look at LBJ. Mids, 3's, post up etc
The Blazers didn't target Harden, heck, Matthews had a higher load of the offense against the Spurs than he did Houston.
Harden has earned the criticism he has received as well as the praise. He's clearly and explosive scorer but he's sort of too good to be a role player but not good enough to be a star that anchors a contender. If you were to re-rank the playoff teams in the West with the benefit of hindsight, Houston would be #8, not #4. They were not a better team than GS, Dal, Por, or Mem. If you're going to look for a reason why, you'd have to start with him.
Iggy and Thompson would be on 1 and 2, Curry would be on the weakest player, even if it was the SF (Iggy is a huge boon because he can crossmatch so well). However in regards to the article. Curry garnered 2.5x the votes for the all star game than Harden, it's a pretty safe bet for hits claiming what he did.
Do you just make this stuff up? You do realize that we have access to the internet, right? going long stretches of taking garbage shots and shooting below 37% from the field What exactly do you mean by long stretches? Here's Harden's FG% by month: Oct 43.8%, Nov 45% Dec 43%, Jan 45%, Feb 47%, March 50%, April 41.2% In fact Harden only had 13 games the entire regular season where he shot under 37% for the game. In comparision Curry had 18 games where he shot under 37%. Care to identify when these long streaks were? 25 points on 25 shots? You do realize that Harden is one of the most efficient scorers in the league and that he takes less shots than the other leading scorers? Care to guess which of the league's top 10 scorers takes the least number of shots per game? Yup...Harden. Are you really complaining about him scoring 25.4 pts/gm on 16.5 shots? If so then you must hate pretty much every player in the league too. How many times during the season did Harden even attempt 25 shots in a game? Answer twice during the regular season and twice in the playoffs. Harden's scoring 25.4 per game on 16.5 shots. You're going to complain about that?
Let's refute your made up statements one at a time please. First you said that he only shoots top of the key 3 pointers. That chart shows otherwise and in that case shot attempts is the relevant stat. Your statement was incorrect. Now you want to use FG%? Really? Guess what spots Harden is really good from? Any guesses as to why those areas are colored blue in the shot charts? I'll tell you but I'm pretty sure that you're not going to like the answer.
Regarding your clear history of Harden criticism I'd like to offer some friendly advice. Stop. You're not going to win this debate and Aelliot is taking your lunch money. Even if you're trolling you're getting slain.
I agree; this is the frustrating part. He CAN turn it on if he's motivated. You can see the distinct difference in his defense when an important or emotionally-charged game is on the line. And his extra defensive energy in those cases IS effective. It's the effect of a mentality that unfortunately seems to pervade the team: "give just enough effort to get it done." Obviously, there are exceptions, and we know who they are. But it's frustrating to see them sweep the Spurs this year and lose games to the 76ers. It's the mark of a young, undisciplined team, and that's why they give up so many leads or don't establish them when they should. Contrast them with the Spurs. Almost all the Spurs losses were to the best teams in the league. Conversely, they beat almost every team they were supposed to beat, ended up with the best record in the league, and are now in the finals yet again. It's the mark of a team going out there every night and maximizing what they have. It's easy to see the instances where Beverly's energy has made everyone else on the team play with more energy. It's harder to say whether Harden's lack of energy at times brings everyone else around him down to the same level. He IS a team leader, though, so it's possible. Also, in those memorable games this season when he got really fired up and passionate, amazing, improbable things happened for the Rockets. Can you imagine what this team would look like if they played at 100% every night for the whole night? Well, I wouldn't be surprised if they looked like they were about to start game 1 of the finals tonight.
A little biased but I don't see anything wrong. As a matter of fact I always saw the 2nd guard spot for the 1st team coming down to Curry and Harden. Harden won, so of course that's great being a Houston fan. If Curry were to win it though, I wouldn't be upset because he did have a great season as well.
WTF are you talking about. Talent alone we are a top 5 team in the league. We were held back by poor coaching throughout the season and playoffs.
LOVE THE ARTICLE! SOMETHING has to light a fire under Hardens lazy defensive butt - maybe being called out nationally like this will do it!
Err Harden as in: "Got me a new pair of Err Hardens!" :grin: But seriously, like Steph Curry plays defense much better?
You don't think he's completely tuned out the irrational bull**** yet? If the criticism was targeted and somewhat rational sure, but the narrative has the sheeple believing things like Curry and even Nash are better defenders and that taking plays off is suddenly unique to him.
Author is from Oakland, CA. https://mobile.twitter.com/SherwoodStrauss You can use all the stats you want to argue both ways, vur harden was a better closer in the regular season.. his lack of effort in d is still as effective as curry trying. Next year will tell us who the more effective player is but based on the past reg season, harden beats out curry. And of course an ESPN writer from Oakland will be crabby abt it.
