You people all keep talking about getting pumped up and angry and showing emotion....blah blah blah. Getting overly excited doesn't matter one bit. The issue is Harden's skill set. He isn't a defensive player and we certainly don't have a great defensive coach that runs a great team defensive system. Hell he isn't even that good of an offensive coach. What was the stat posted earlier? Something about us setting by far the lowest screens per possession. The coach is dumping the whole offense on Harden and we don't have another player who can create. All this Harden bashing is getting beyond ridiculous. The problem isn't him. The problem is elsewhere.
You don't have to be some crazy angry dude to have enough pride to come out and make a statement. Look in your own back yard--Hakeem Olajuwon went crazy on Robinson after Robinson got the MVP. Jordan used to scour the papers for any reason to get motivated and go off on a team. You might say, "well Harden isn't Hakeem or Jordan." You're damn right he's not. The dude looked like he was ready to go out clubbing in LA after the loss last night. He has no heart. He's basically another TMac--a guy with all the gifts in the world, but lacking the discipline, focus, and drive to win at the highest level. And don't give me that "Tim Duncan won the finals" crap, because 1) he has Tony Parker, and 2) he has Popovich. It's not about Duncan going out and setting the pace for the Spurs the same way Jordan, Kobe, or Hakeem did for their respective teams.
8 playoff games averaging 27/4/8 on 46fg% and 40 3pt% and 1.4stls. he and dwight are doing good. his team is sucking ass, mainly defense.
I don't know what people expect of him, he was like this some games in the regular season too sure he can sometimes pour on a lot of points on weaker teams, but it's stupid to expect him to do that against any team in the second round of the playoffs. Our offense system is a classic beat up on weak teams but stagnant vs better team system. Putting all the eggs in Harden is not going to work at this stage of the game with so much more scouting and preparation. On top of that our defense has been ass too and are affected by our offense. Remember when Lebron's Cavs got knocked out by Orlando and then Celtics in back to back years and then people are like "WTF lechoke so passive no take over mentally weak blah blah". This is kind of like that except Harden isn't as good as Lebron.
It reminds me of Yao and T-Mac a little. They've just got no consistent support on this team right now.
No they didn't. He had 8 points when the game was out of hand. At the end of the 3rd he had assisted or scored on 40 of the team's 76 points. But of course people aren't happy enough with him generating 52% of the offense.
So why are we blaming Harden? He can't do it all himself. If he had an actual team around him 25 & 11 on 50% shooting would be great, but it's not so great when you have to put up stats for the whole team. Harden isn't the issue, a team can't go anywhere with one ball handler and no post options. Maybe next year...
Funny how people keep bringing up stats, especially from the Dallas series. You know who they used to do that for whenever people questioned his determination? I'll give you a hint: Tr.....
