Lebron joined up with his BFF Dwayne Wade in order to win his first championships. Then he went back to Cleveland and inherited a talented young squad that featured Kyrie Irving. I don't know what art he mastered here other than maybe the art of riding coattails. Hardly commendable. Harden is doing it on his own, he isn't coming out and demanding "****ing playmakers" just because his team lost a few games. Harden has proven he's all about sharing the ball which is a big reason why Gordon and Anderson came here during the off-season. It's also why Lou Williams looks like a kid in a candy store right now. I think if you asked any of those three if they're worried about being "subservient" to James Harden they would all laugh in your face. I'm sure Harden tried to recruit Durant over the summer, but Durant ended up choosing the quickest and easiest route available. He did what Lebron did when Lebron went to the cHeat. The Rockets dismal year last season probably didn't help give James much ammunition to use in his sales pitch. Either way, you would have to be a complete moron to think Durant was going anywhere other than Golden State or OKC. Keep on blaming Harden for all of our problems, though. It's kind of your shtick and I'm not one to criticize people for having poor or awkward taste. I remember back when people said similar things about Akeem and how he was too selfish and was always b****ing about his contract, yada yada yada. We nearly traded him for Ronny Seikaly too because the popular opinion in this town at the time was that Hakeem was never going to win us a championship. If you were around back then, something tells me you're exactly the type of fan who would have been in favor of that move. Oh well, I'm done here. Someone grab a mop.
Exactly. "Man, Harden needs to cut down on those turnovers." -Legit criticism, never got blowback "Man, Harden is so lazy. Look at those turnovers! Not a leader he's so drunk! We can never win with him he blows the game we are better off with the bench in there! Frauden!"-That's simply bashing and is rightfully pushed back against Game thread frustrations are one thing as that's typically just people expressing their frustration in the moment, but the people who got push back were people who essentially lived to bash Harden. I'm probably considered a Morey apologist on this board and by extension a Harden apologist (he is my favorite Rocket since Dream after all) but if you go read my posts about him you will find a lot of criticism. Criticism that's fair is...fair. The trolling and bashing that has frequently been done has been treated as such.
But where is his SHOT?? If could've hit 35% of his 3's....he's been horrible and Ariza has been worse
All I saw was some posters complaining about Harden being too inefficient with his shooting, poor judgement on passing leading to lazy turnovers, and calling out Harden for his lack of effort on D. Nothing different from what most people admit to be Harden's problem now, but was called haters nonetheless. The only thing that has changed is people's perception, not the reality.
Harden didn't execute and went back to playing too much hero ball. Our philosophy isn't to just jack up a bunch of random 3 point shots but move the ball until we get a good look.
Harden needs to be able to control the pace of the game. He plays with one pace the entire game whenever he brings the ball down the court. That slow lazy pace is enabling defenses to set-up everytime. Chris Paul is still the better point guard despite Harden averaging more assists and points.
You will not make James play faster or slower than he wants! I’m at my own pace. You’re not going to make me play faster than I want to play. Most guys speed up. I need to get to point A, I’m going to get to point A when I want to get point A. When I need to change direction to get to point B, it’s when I need to go to point B.
The team had such a long break during before and during all-star week. They haven't had any back to backs since then. Please no more "tired" excuses for a player making superstar money with talent in the team. He has been playing less minutes since Lou signed as well.
Seriously, the tired excuse has been thrown around since the end of December. Good God, if they are ALREADY tired again after the All-Star break they are going to shoot like 10% in the playoffs.
That Sports Illustrated article that's been posted a couple of times already today does a nice job of discussing James's deliberate pace when bringing up the ball. It's not laziness on his part. While I think MDA might like him to speed it up at times, I think MDA is smart enough to just let James be James most of the time.
I have learned that around here, logic takes a back seat to doing whatever is necessary to shift responsibility away from harden.
What Harden is doing on his own is losing in the playoffs while Curry, LeBron, and Kawhi are winning championships playing a team game and sharing the ball with other creators/playmakers. Lebron has mastered the art of playing with multiple superstars, giving to make them happy, and convincing them to give up some of their individual game to make the team work. Harden, on the other hand, ran off his guy (Dwight), couldn't recruit his best friend, cost us a first rounder by recruiting Lawson and convincing us Lawson would be good here, chose to roll with Terrence for 3 years instead of working with DMo, among other bad decisions like show up for camp last season out of shape and then asked for the removal of McHale when McHale held him accountable for not playing defense. Harden is a great player. But he is not mature. He wants to control everything. And he's not capable, at this time, of bringing it all together. If he doesn't mature more and learn how to lead his team better he is going to be an also-ran for his career. Harden is lacking in humility and selflessness and a true commitment to winning above promoting himself and his brand. He has to correct that or he will not win a championship.
You made the post towards the end of January, after a month where we had faced better teams with less rest. We won less and there's a clear reason why. Your opinion of why it was happening was baseless. No, I am stating the things that are Harden's fault when they're his fault. Harden cannot always be perfect, and he cannot always be the reason why we're losing. I am critical when he screws up, and I am supportive when the reasons are clearly not sourced from him. Absolutely not an effort issue. They were TRYING hard, but they were trying stupid. MDA got outcoached by McMillan, so he deflected to effort. I don't buy it. I've also been a big supporter of MDA, but he got outcoached last night and that's not common. Also, if a coach says the team didn't try hard, it means the team didn't try hard. It literally doesn't mean one of the 5 players on the floor was more responsible or giving less effort than the others. EDIT: just watched the full interview. Even on that answer, MDA ended his answer with "lately". So, yeah, you are definitely wrong if you think MDA is agreeing with your overall, unchanging, record-ignoring assessment of this team. Thanks for the bump material. A total divorce from reality. You are stating that we have a lazy leader and a commonly dysfunctional team and we are the 3rd seed after 2 MONTHS that you are heavily critical about. Clearly, you are not seeing the big picture. I did not say they don't have offensive lulls. I said they don't have them as a pattern. Every team, including the Warriors, has offensive lulls. We don't have them more often than the other top 5 teams in the NBA. It's not an issue. We are an elite offensive team that teams are scared of because they can see our numbers for the entire regular season. I'm a Rockets fan, I don't root against them. I didn't say I'm glad we lost. Please re-read my post. Honestly, you're wasting your time if your number 1 problem with the Rockets is James Harden, who is the #1 or #2 most conducive player to winning in the entire NBA. It doesn't make sense, and frankly you would be fired if you brought this up in a well managed organization. It wreaks of being incapable of diagnosing actual problems, it's some kind of obsession. You should be able to have a well thought out, well mapped out opinion. In a season, some things will be his fault, some things will be role players' fault, other things will be the coach's fault, other times teams' quality will affect us. It's mind-boggling that you can look at everything James Harden does to help this team win, and what you come away with is that 90% of what you think affects the team is the 10% of Harden's performance that everyone sees is his weakness. It's very narrow minded thinking, and it's precisely because we don't have that kind of thinking in the management of our team that we are winning so much with him after things were so dim just 7-8 months ago for this franchise. MDA focuses on all the amazing things we can do. Morey does that. Les does that. Harden does that. All our role players do that. The result is winning more than 99% of people thought we would win. But you insist on going about things the backwards way. Let's scream and holler about Harden's weaknesses - minor relative to all NBA players - rather than then looking for areas where we are most likely to make big gains with the least effort. Harden is going to be incredible right away and we all know it, you know it too. For our Thursday game against the Clippers, they will prepare for him like the greatest offensive player in the world who is capable of single handedly winning games. And I won't come back to tell you "SEE SEE I TOLD YOU" because I just understand the big picture. That's not how things work. These are normal cycles. Harden's ups and downs will average out to the best player in the NBA. What we need is to tighten up what we have, there is a special chemistry with this team and their execution has been lacking as a whole. Disclaimer: I will come say "SEE SEE I TOLD YOU" after we beat our first round opponent. I've earned it.
I mean...of course Harden has to be playing well for us to win. But for a player like Harden using FG% is not useful as a measure. His FG% has gone down, but his 3 point % has gone up in the same timeframe. Full season TS%/turnovers: .613 / 5.8 January TS%/turnovers: .606 / 6.4 February TS%/turnovers: .598 / 4.9 He's had a perfectly fine February. For reference, Lebron James' whole career: .583 / 4.6
Then you missed quite a bit of the unnamed poster and his groupies that consistently bashed Harden no matter what happened in the game. That's what people got tired of. It's disingenuous to not recognize that there has been success this season.The Rockets have the 3 seed and Harden has been the MVP to this point. In spite of the negatives. But it's a slippery slope and there is a real danger of both those things going away by the end of the month. If he doesn't play better we won't make it out of this stretch in tact. This team and Harden need to get it together.
This actually proves my point that the criticisms about Harden back in January was totally justified. Why are people suddenly complaining about Harden's 3PT shooting now? He was even more terrible a month ago (and more turnover prone). If anything, Harden has been a lttle better in February than January. I guess some people need to be pushed to the brink of an edge before they admit that there is something wrong with our best player or this team in general.
You have to provide evidence if you're going to make a blanket statement like 'bashing Harden no matter what'. Did they bash Harden when 1. Harden was shooting the ball well. 2. kept turnovers low 3. and played good defense? If that's the case you would be right, but I never saw that happening. Unfortunately, to a lot of people simply calling out Harden for his shortcomings was tantamount to 'bashing Harden no matter what.' At least that was the prevailing mood back in January. If you look at the stats, Harden's 3PT% was even worse a month ago and committed more turnovers. And criticizing this aspect of Harden's game shouldn't be considered as denying our team success this season, a lot of which has to do with our strong bench btw.
