This, and also he needs a certain type of team around him. The 2 types I think that would work are: 1) If you load 4 defense first players around him and let him just control the offense and be have his bad defense hidden, he'd likely be thought of as better (think AI with the 76ers). 2) A 2nd star player with him who can help take away some of his offensive load and let him actually have energy on the defensive side. This would obviously require him to be willing to step up on defense, but I'd like to think he would.
Harden put up 34, 8 and 8 tonight. His plus/minus was a whopping +2, which was the best of the starters. DMo was -1, Ariza -2. Harden put up 32, 11 and 13 vs Toronto, and had the third best plus minus of the starters at an underwhelming +2 with that line. Dwight at + 1 was worse, and Ariza at -1 was worse. Beverley was at +9 and DMo at +7 Harden put up 26, 7, 10 vs Utah with 8 steals and was a -8 for the game, 2nd best of the starters but the three guys behind him were -9, -9 and -10. DMo was best at -4. So for all the gaudy numbers Harden puts up, he's not impacting games in the plus minus column as you might expect, at least within the last week or so.
I'm not advocating plus-minus as the end all of statistics because it is teammate dependent, but if players put up those numbers from each of Harden's last three games, you would not expect their best plus minus for that stretch to be +2. Especially not when he's scoring or assisting on over 50% of his teams points in that stretch.
I have to say the style of basketball we play is not sustainable and not really a formula for success. Harden iso'ing while playing 44 minutes a game is just downright stupid, I really want someone like Adelman to come in and make Harden play a different style of basketball on offense. whether or not Harden can still put up MVP numbers without being iso'ing almost every possession is another question. We saw this last year too, we played a lot of close games with very bad teams because our style is predictable and falls entirely on Harden's style of basketball to give us anything on offense.
Harden's plus/minus for the season against teams with a .500 or better record is a whopping -129. Put that in your pipe and sssssssmoke it.
But you're using to determine Hardens impact on winning or like you said plus/minus. RPM on the other has has Harden #1 at SG and 17 overall. And his win shares are on par with Durant and George. To say Harden doesn't contribute to winning is just not true.
You'd have to account for a lot of extra things with plus minus, which I believe is what they try to do with ESPN's Real Plus Minus. Harden's killing that one though. Thus, I don't think your case is convincing.
I never said Harden doesn't contribute to winning at all. I'm saying his stats don't contribute to winning as much as they should. Harden is averaging 28.5 points, 6.4 rebounds, 7.5 assists and 1.7 steals a game and yet his real plus minus puts him 17th in the league. That also shows that his numbers don't translate to winning as much as they should, because I'd gather you could count on one hand the number of players putting up a season line like that across the board.
Why are you hanging your hat on that stat? We lose to the best teams as we are mediocre and Harden plays ~37 MPG, so why do you think we should be surprised he has a bad plus minus against the best teams? That's just common sense, not a revelation.
I don't care whether you find my case convincing or not, frankly. Blurr#7 just said Harden, with averages of 28.5 points, 6.4 boards, 7.5 assists, and 1.7 steals a game, has the 17th best real plus minus in the NBA. I bet you and I couldn't name 5 guys putting up a line across the board like that. Yet he's 17th in RPM.
Well duh! Have you looked at the shooting percentages of the rest of the team from this year to last? How about rebounding numbers? Harden would literally have to average a quadruple double. He can't do it all by himself. Yes his defense is laughable at times but with that said (I'll put it here since you conveniently omitted it) His win shares are there with Durant, George and higher than Cousins. That's not to say RPM doesn't have flaws, Harden being ranked 17 isn't as bad as you'd think once you see that Nicola Jokic is number 9.
17 overall is not that great considering his MVP worthy offensive stats. I am with DVauthrin, somehow Harden's elite offensive production does not translate to outscoring the opponents. One can blame all his teammates. But plus-minus is supposed to measure how much drop off when you sit. Earlier on, neruto used the Harden on/off ORtg and Drtg to prove that his defense was not really that bad. That was basically the same argument DVauthrin uses. If DVauthrin's argument is wrong, then so was neruto's. You can't have it both ways.
So essentially its come down to a people trying to do mental advanced stat gymnastics to find a way to discredit Harden, and frankly it's pretty laughable. Harden is a top five player in the NBA. Our team outside of Harden is mediocre to terrible. That's why we are not successful. It's really not that complicated.
Are you seriously attempting to blame his 17th best RPM compared to top 5 offensive production on his teammates shooting struggles when the Rockets give up 106.8 points a game? Come on. Defensive rebounding struggles, I can buy to a degree. Also, I'd hope he'd have comparable win shares to George and Cousins, considering his overall line is better. As for Durant, he has played in 65 games to Harden's 73, and has 12.9 win shares to Harden's 11.3.
Is anyone arguing he's a good defensive player? The argument made is that his offense far exceeds his defensive shortcomings. Nobody is saying he's better than Durant or LeBron. We're just saying he's not the reason the Rockets are mediocre.
Strike that. He is the reason we're mediocre. Without him, we'd be looking at the Sixers' record enviously.
I do wish Harden would stop the show-off dribbling - always gets him into trouble. He takes way too much time on that.
How many more assist do you think he would average if the team shot a decent percentage? Wouldn't that corollate to a higher +\- and RPM? I mean common it's not that complicated. He's 7th in win shares and without him Oakdogg is absolutely correct, without him you're the 76ers.
His plus minus is so low because this team is mediocre without harden we would be the worst team in the nba.
