Ignore this guy. He's either a troll or he just hates Harden. I honestly believe if Harden joins another team, he'll join that teams' forum and hate on him there. He seems to be that kind of guy. I've never liked House.... but even I've admitted he's played well in the playoffs. I thought Gordon has been poor for the last 12 months.... but even I admitted he's done well in the series games against the Lakers. That's the thing about me, I can praise players I don't really like or rate. This guy can't even give any praise for Harden. As soon as we lose a game, he's on Harden's neck.
It's so refreshing to see how wrong you are where I know you are being irrational. I'm a die hard Houston sports fan. That's all. There is no other ****ing agenda you snowflake.
Lies we couldn’t beat the warriors without KD. Another thing stop the CO3 lies Dennis Schroeder was Thunder best player during the playoffs
Becoming a better defender is LAZY? Have you ever played defense? It's way more tiring than offense, requires a lot more focus, attention, and energy. And this is the part of his game he worked on LAST. And he's always been leading the league in free throw attempts and makes on top of all this. Do you know what that takes? Skill AND effort. He has to drive down the lane and get smothered/hammered and the refs swallow the whistle on a lot of those, and you STILL need to find the motivation to do it again. How many times have you given up on something at work or life because it didn't go your way? Well Harden has to do that every game because the entire league and the fanbase hates him for having the will to run to that rim.
Other superstar greats have relentlessly driven to the rim and still can play off ball and not be so stagnate and easily doubled and denied the ball in late game situations. Jordan and Wade come to mind. Kobe in his younger days in his number 8 era also relentlessly drove to the rim and still had the stamina and energy to .I've quick without the ball.
I mean you're talking about this after Harden had 20 free throw attempts in the loss... Harden has shattered the records for free throw attempts in a season, so I'm really not sure what you're talking about here. Not only is it mind-blowing you're here to compare Harden to some of the greatest to ever play in the NBA which proves my point more than yours, you're also forgetting the kind of talent these players were surrounded by. They played with some of the greatest players of all time. This off-ball argument is just completely ridiculous. Harden is literally off-ball as soon as he gets doubled. This is clearly MDA's strategy, thinking we have enough to play 4 on 3 and score, which doesn't happen because our role players suck ass. The next strategy is get Harden open enough to receive the ball. Whether that's Harden moving around without the ball, or him coming off a screen, which he does quite often, he's often guarded by the youngest, toughest, best defender on the opposing team. Not only that, if you haven't noticed, our role players aren't that great at passing the damn ball so Harden has to avoid ALL passing lanes to receive the ball in order to mitigate a turnover. Also, if you know your player is going to receive the ball, that's the ultimate advantage, and because the rest of the roster is straight garbage, everyone knows Harden is going to get the ball. If you're wanting something like the Pistons of 2004 season, that ain't happening. Rip Hamilton can come off screens and depend on motion because he was undersized, agile, and also played with some ****ing great players who were all threats to score 20 on the night. Not only that, they were the best defending team in the league at the time so they can score 80 in the playoffs and still get wins, which they did quite a lot, and also did so to beat the Lakers in the finals.
No this does not happen enough. What do you watch? Harden is one of the most stationary off ball guards In NBA history.
Let me know how he's going to play off the damn ball when no one can pass the ball to him while he's moving because they're bad passers and Lakers have all the passing lanes covered, or when everyone knows they're trying to give Harden the ball. It's so frustrating that you on your couch think you can point it out when these players and coaches are getting paid millions to just talk about this kind of ****. Move your feet is the kind of low-level middle/high school basketball shouts you throw at your son in a JV game. I'm quite sure I told you all this before.
Stop pretending that NBA players like Westbrook Rivers and Gordon can't pass the ball to a moving Harden. They are proffesional NBA players, one of them won the god damn assist titles. The one thing I'll say is that implenting this now is impossible. The entire off-season of training for these schemes is the only way to change it.
True. Let’s not be disingenuous though, he’s also the most dominant ball dominant guard in NBA history with historic efficiency for the volume and rate of usage. That tends to take a toll physically, especially when you’ve missed less than 50 games in your entire 10+ year career.
I can't believe you still think you're right after telling you moving your feet is a stupid shout you throw at a JV game. 1. James Harden is guarded by the BEST DEFENDER on the opposing team at all times 2. Lakers are guarding all passing lanes so Harden can't receive the ball 3. Lakers KNOW that everyone is trying to pass Harden the ball 4. Rockets are paid millions of dollars to strategize and play basketball games, I'm quite sure they've entertained the idea of "what if we move Harden off the ball". Unless you think you deserve a million dollars to strategize for the Rockets. Considering you're on a fan forum arguing about this on the internet, I can easily say you're undeserving. Your only argument to all of this is "Professional NBA players know how to pass the ball." If you listen to yourself and think for a freaking minute, you'd kind of understand these are terrible terrible arguments.
The best defender in the NBA still had to abide by NBA rules which means when Harden doesn't have the ball in his hand, he can any time he chooses to sprint and call for a screen and run a simple curl action. A defense can't impede him from doing that as it would be a defensive foul. But no Harden just walks or stands off ball. The moment Harden starts sprinting the defender can't hold on to him. They have to navigate through screens and have great team defense and communication to counter off ball action. In most cases it's just going to discombobulate the defense especially against the Rockets as NBA defenses aren't used to a off ball running Harden. It's just something they don't expect from him.
Is that what he needed to do? Every possession he doesn't have the ball is like that and it's been that way since Chris injury in the middle of the 18-19 season. Harden suddenly became ultra heliocentric not giving a **** about anything else
Harden love averaging 35ppg. He like why would I switch up?lol Harden love Mike D All joking aside. I’m dead ass surprise we never heard any inkling of Harden wanting to try something else. One would think being he is a god tier star he would want better
this is dumb. nobody wants him to run around like a mad man. we're just asking for off ball movement. when you're an MVP and think you're the bomb, YES, YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO CARRY THE TEAM AND PUSH YOURSELF TO CONSTANT FATIGUE WHILE STILL HITTING SHOTS AND PLAYING TOUGH DEFENSE!!! If you're watching Rockets games and don't think Harden's mentality which is "I'm getting doubled, SOMEONE should be open and scoring, so I'll just chill here 10 feet off the 3 point line" is a problem, then you're not paying attention. It's a problem for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which is it gets easier and easier to guard him late in games. The Lakers WANT Russ open. They WANT Austin Rivers open. They DON'T want Harden open. Pretty simple. There are 2 ways to guard top heavy teams. Let the best players get theirs, don't let role players get any. See Rockets vs Mavs playoffs with TMac/Yao. Or double the top players, and make the role players beat you. In this Rockets case, option 2 makes way more sense and is way easier. Why? Because Russ currently sucks. EG is just "ok". And the rest of the role players are incapable of doing anything that doesn't involve catching a pass when open and scoring... .... EXCEPT ... For Jeff Green. Which is why, a dude off the waiver wire has been one of our better players in the playoffs [also why DM sucks, he's a WAY overrated GM. Great that he picked up Green, ****ing embarrassing as **** that in year 8 of Harden and year 13 of DM he has to]. In any case, it's simple defense, get the ball out of the hands of the only guy currently capable of making the entire offense go, and even simpler because you know when do that to Harden, he becomes disinterested. If Harden wants to get up to the podium and pull a "I know what's wrong", "I need more help", etc. again... just because he might be on the right track won't prevent him from getting back up there. MOVE WITHOUT THE BALL. TRY IT!! You never know!!
Can't help but write more. Harden likes to think he's the best scorer since Wilt. Or DM does for sure. He scored 2 buckets last night. TWO!! Guess what, that's the 4th time as a Rocket he's only scored 2 buckets in the playoffs. MJ never scored fewer than 3 in a playoff game, and that was a tough 3-18 night in a 20 point win. Hakeem was the king of double teams... he never scored fewer than 3 buckets (one time) in the playoffs until a first round exit in 1999. This is the FOURTH time for Harden. In his prime. Usually not just in a playoff game, but a pretty important one. That was as close to must win as possible. His last 2-11 game was the elimination loss against SAS. ANOTHER 2-11 game (****, how does he keep going 2-11 lol) in the elimination loss against the GSW in the first round (also a 3-16 game in there). His only bad game that didn't matter as much was a 2-18 game against TWolves in the first round that was a 20 point win. But mind yo, he had a 3-20 game last year against Utah, 4-15 in game 7 against OKC here, 3-17 in game 2 against the Spurs. This is a well know FACT of life now. His performance, in the playoffs, goes down, way more than most stars (some of whom actually have performance in the playoffs go up!). So that we are asking for SOME off ball movement might actually mean we are very smart, lol.
