So George is averaging 26/8/4 and Harden is averaging 27/5/4 and George is "by far" the better player? Harden's defense wasn't even bad against the Lakers. Defense is team thing, not individual. I guarantee you that if George played on these Rockets with our ****ty defensive schemed he would not be regarded as the great defender he is. If Harden played in Indiana were the team actually has a defensive mindset and almost every player on the team is a good defender, he would be regarded as a better defender. Defense is a mentality, a culture, and NO ONE on the Rockets has it right now, and the Parcers as a whole do. If I'm starting a team from scratch, I'd take Harden. Once George comes down to earth offensively it'll be clear.
when you lost you man or get blow by again and again it's hardly to shift it to "team thing". gotta admit he is naturally bad defender due to slow acceleration, blame his figure. it's an advantage on offense but it kills him on defense. today they play 3 guard in the end, slide him on 3 to covered his flaw, but it's too late and the unorthodox line up got it's own weakness that will get exploit by other teams.
I will admit that James Harden has had quite a few poor effort possessions on defense, especially the Clippers game when he let Reddick go off on him. In the other games, his defensive effort was fine IMO. George takes plays off on defense as well, but he has good team defense to back him up, something Harden does not.
Preach. It starts from the coach, preaching good defensive tactics and habits. Period. If JVG or Thibs were the coach Harden would look a lot better on defense and the team as a whole. I remember people used to complain about Drose's defense and then Thibs came. Problem solved. Harden's ball watching is a problem...but that is something that SHOULD and COULD be coached out of him. It needs to be explained and taught.
Exactly. It makes me sick to see a shot go up and NO ONE box out for the rebound. Offensive rebounds killed us tonight. We lack fundamentals.
+1 That's why he shouldn't be playing PG AND SG; dribbling, passing AND scoring on offense all the times.
As a Pacers fan, I used to like this place much more when no one talked about the Pacers here. If there was a Pacers-Rockets rivalry, I'd get it. Now all this "lets talk about the Pacers to trash the Rockets, and then trash the Pacers in return" thing is just silly.
Harden and it isn't even close. This poll is an embarrassment. Get back to me when George sustains this level of offense for more than one week. I mean, if one week is your standard for declaring a "huge leap" in someone's development, than the Linsanity run in 2012 should've put Jeremy Lin in the Hall of Fame. Right now, all evidence we have on George points to a guy that averages about 17 points/game with a PER of around 16. Not an elite shooter. Sorry, I'm not taking that over one of the best offensive players in the game. Not even close.
