I don't mean to speak for other people, but I believe the argument to be that Harden's 50 may not be as great as it looks, and Westbrook's 14 may not be as bad as it looks. My point: Westbrook's 11 TO's turned in to 10 points, whereas Harden's 9 TO's turned in to 14 points. Take it for what it's worth.
his D is bad. we all know that. but his D was not particularly worse than other players in today's game. again, this is all subjective but given what I watched and looking at the numbers, that's my conclusion.
There are some good offensive players in the league who can't even be a starter because of poor defense. I'll take Paul George in a heartbeat.
i know, that's why it's nonsensical. Westbrook totally sucked in today's game. it's was not any better than the initial numbers show. basketball is a team sport, so other 4 players can totally make up for or mess up despite what numbers a single player puts on. the fallacy is that correlating way too closely a single player's performance with a team's overall performance.
Westbrook has not been considered by everyone as the NO1 go to guy. He is a nice 2nd superstar that you pair up with a nice two way allstar That has been the sentiment all along..... we do not want Harden to be in the same category ever (as long as the No 1 guy is here)
c'mon man. Westbrook is not just another '2nd guy'. At this point, he's pretty much on equal footing as Durant.
Not really... TO's are really categorized in to 2 types: live ball and dead ball. Harden's bigger problem is that he commits more of the former vs the latter. There's no real way of making up for a live ball TO that goes the other way for an instant 2. Most of WB's TO's were dead ball, which are much easier to deal with as a team.
again, if Harden was that much of a liability, is should have been reflected in the relevant stats. i don't see any.
Yup I agree he has done it for 1 or 2 seasons so far but his team was also around 9th and 10th seed. Kevin has done it for way longer
those are the metrics for defense and even that, not even close to being accurate. you were talking about the turnovers. don't change the subject.
Yung-T was implying that Harden was somehow playing worse D than other players in tonight's game and i just didn't see that. if anything, bev and brewer seemed to be worse. so i'm saying where is the evidence? we can all argue who was the best and who sucked based on our eye-test and personal opinions, but that will lead to nowhere. and other than the ordinary stats and +/-, i don't know if there is any relevant data on this point.
Liability has nothing to do with just offense or just defense... These guys are pros and to be considered top tier you should not be a liability on either end, IMO. And I only get one topic I can broach, whereas you get the whole gambit?
again, Harden is the only player along with Capela in the current rockets roster with positive on/off court margin and was +13 rating in +/- against the Philly. If your argument is that Harden is not a good defensive player, then save your breath because nobody's arguing against that. I'm saying specifically in today's game, Harden' D was not worse than any other rocket player and he did more than enough to make up for his turnovers. all the hard cold numbers back up my argument, so that's that.
WHAT??? Man everybody including role players are licking their chops to go at Harden when he's on defense. How about going to a live game and you will see up close how bad he is defensively. Man you have to call a Spade a Spade.
how abut calling Spade a Spade for the role players since calling Harden a bad defender does nothing precisely because it is a widely known fact already. on the other hand, how much emphasis is there on our pathetic team defense in general, not just Harden? do they even make up for their lackluster D with above average offense and shooting? again, Harden and Capela are the only two players in this roster with positive net court margin. what does that say about other players?
Look at my history dude. Nobody but Dmo gets a pass from me since he's rehabbing and working getting back on the court. But you have to understand when your Superstar is loafing on defense, the **** becomes contagious.
i know, that's why i did not **** on other player's D at the start of the season because I thought that was mainly on Harden. But Harden is def not loafing on D in the past few games. He's still pretty bad, but not intolerably bad. Yet, we still give away way too many points on the court, and the diffusion of blame needs to takes place at some point. IMO, Brewer, Terry and Thorton is arguably worse than Harden on D, Ariza and Howard is disappointing and not living up to their reputation, and the only bright spot in our defense seems to be Capela.
i forgot to mention that Ty and Bev totally sucks on both ends of the floor too. so yeah, the blame has to go all around, even if Harden plays well on the both ends, this team is going nowhere with this level of production from the role players.
