I agree about Harden improving his conditioning. At the start of the season, I don't think he had anticipated being traded and becoming a starter immediately. So I can totally understand him running out of gas. He's a very hard worker and I'm sure this is going to be on his bucket list :grin: Lin is in the Bay Area (Northern Cali) Greg is in Fresno (Closer to Northern Cali) Harden (Southern Cali) I'm kind of excited for next season to begin already --- was only sad for a few days. But these positive threads makes me look forward to training camp and next season. Can't wait to see what everyone on this team has done to improve over the summer
I agree. I also don't think he should drive to the basket when their are three opposing players waiting for him. Also the iso-ball sometimes isn't the best option and he has to stop making late shot clock passes. Once he refines his game, he will be the best SG in the league.
That Asik can't catch and shoot in one motion, pretty much means that a help defender doesn't need to slide under to prevent an easy basket. What teams were doing were zoning back on Asik whilst cutting off Harden's driving lane (or at least that's what the good teams did), if he did it with say Howard, it would become a wide open jumper or drive for Harden, a dunk to Howard, or an open corner 3 to Chandler (if his man slipped under Howard to prevent the easy dunk).
You and durvasa mentioned earlier that fatigue, and an ankle injury anyone paying attention would know about (and a lot of folks here seemed completely oblivious to the problem, based on what I read in the GARM)), might have affected Harden's play the second half of the season and in the playoffs, and I think it's obvious that that was his biggest problem. One of my biggest problems with McHale's performance this year, and it's a problem almost every coach has a blind spot for, except Pops in SA, is playing your best players too many minutes, and he sure as hell did that with Harden. Coaches naturally want their best player on the court, and a quality shared by top players like Harden, Bryant, James, and Durant is wanting to be on the court competing. So one off-season problem that needs to be solved is a good backup for James, and a concerted effort by McHale to play him fewer minutes, especially later in the season, so he'll be fresh for the playoffs. We should be a perennial playoff team for the next several years, even without a big change in personel, in my opinion, so the minutes do need to be addressed. Does James have several aspects of his game that need work? Of course, and I don't doubt for a second that he'll work hard this off-season to improve in those areas. Things like his defense, obviously, his conditioning, and his decision making are all things that jump out at me. I think he's already an excellent shooter from just about anywhere on the court. I just believe that he had dead legs far too often, which had a big impact on both his jumpshot and those drives to the basket that had us so excited early on. So Harden does need to make adjustments, improving his game, continuing to bring it to a higher level. So do several of our other players, and the coaching staff, too. I expect that to happen, and I expect a much better Rockets team next season. That has me excited. It's nice being excited for a change, instead of morose. This summer might turn out to be pretty wild, with changes to the team, but should we largely stand pat, waiting for that big acquisition next year instead of this summer, I'll be OK with it. The Rockets have a future, people. We matter again, and I couldn't be more pleased.
i feel the exact same way. ive been saying this all year, this is nothing new and it makes me uncomfortable when he goes for the foul.
Harden has superstar potential and absolutely should do a lot of isos just to sharpen his skill. That being said, one trait he showed is extremely bad for the team offense: he often holds the ball for 10 or more seconds around 3pt line, decide to not continue the iso due to tough defense, pass to a covered teammate with 5 sec or so left on the clock that normally ends up in a bad clock-beating shot by others. He should have a better option for this situation and signal a PnR for example to at least reactivate movement that went to a halt due to his initial iso. But I'd blame this more on the coach than Harden.
Realistically, the things Harden needs to improve the most are strength/speed (so he doesn't have to rely on the whistle as much) and defense. Even here, if he only makes marginal improvements, that would have a tremendous impact on his game and on the team (particularly the defense). Everything else, like holding onto the ball too much or passing into traffic, should improve just by virtue of having a real training camp with the team.
Not only do I fully agree about him needing to stop assuming the ref will call a foul in a game in which they are letting most things go but I think there's more to say about his need to adjust more mid game. The thing is Harden passes the ball a lot but when it comes to the end of the game he way too often goes for a quick shot without taking much time off the clock even in a game in which he is struggling shooting the ball. In those situations he needs to move the ball more. If not then he at least needs to knock more time off the clock. Those bad decisions almost cost us one of the games that we won in the playoffs.
Different year, same player. Ridiculous flailing "shot attempts" and horrible hero ball decisions at the end of the game. You had two chances to tie/win the game with the ball in the hands of your best player and you got two god awful decisions that blew the game.
Blazers were licking their chops with a game plan to attack Harden with Matthews. You have to give Harden credit, the way he shut down Matthews. Kudos to Harden for picking it up on the defensive end. Unfortunately he's not a two-way player so his offense suffered.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>James Harden missed 20 shots (8-28) in <a class="hashtag" action="hash" title="#Rockets">#Rockets</a> 122-120 OT loss, most shots he's missed in NBA game. (371 regular, 50 playoff games played)</p>— AdamWexlerCSN (@awexler) <a href="https://twitter.com/awexler/status/458219500224012288" data-datetime="2014-04-21T07:23:36+00:00">April 21, 2014</a></blockquote> <script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The dude was 8-28 from the field including horrible bricks to end the game. He jacked up what, 13 3s? Unacceptable.
the effort on defense was really not THAT great either. he was ball watching and let his man cut to the basket on more than one occasion. he was letting his man blow past him while trying to poke it out from behind on more than one occasion as well. Matthews ended up with 18 points. Harden did work a little harder on offense than usual, but enough to be using it as any excuse for his offense.
Problem with coaches not having a game plan--offense is too predictable and too free. No discipline at all so our game can unravel very quickly. Harden's psyche is still too fragile to expect him to make good decisions in the endgame. He panicked. I just wished coaches had given him a better play to work with. Vs. POR, we need to keep on scoring. On defense, we were doing all right until the last 5 min of the game.
Attempting a lot of threes isn't necessarily wrong, so long as he has good looks. But I agree that it wasn't a good offensive game from him and that he made some poor decisions.
Almost all of Harden's threes were actually good shots (except the one late) that you would want him taking anyways. He just had a terrible shooting night. As for the late game shots, and decision making.... Obviously some folks here haven't been watching much this year (probably out of their control with the CSN debacle.) Harden has consistently been one of if not the best closer in the league all season long. It sucks that he wasn't able to do what he's done all season long late in games in the post season, but it happens. Late in games, against a set defense, and little time on the shot clock, I can't think of too many other players in the league I trust more than James Harden to get a bucket. (maybe Durant, Lebron, Lillard (who has been clutch), Curry, and maybe Love). Harden has been just as good as any of those guys late in games so there was no reason to think he would have a late game clunker last night. Nobody should deny that Harden hasn't had bad moments in the playoffs (OKC vs. Miami will always follow him), but you can't just sit back and deny was he has done consistently throughout his career. I trust James Harden when the game is on the line for better or worse. It is what it is guys.... he's going to lay a clunker every once in awhile.
