Think back to the 2014-2015 season. Harden carried a depleted Rockets team to the playoffs, was the 2nd seed and had a much better season than Steph Curry, and he still lost the MVP because Steph had more wins. This year, similar situation and the Rockets will probably not have more wins than the Bucks. People are not going to vote for Harden if he doesn't have the wins. It's just reality.
we lost because we could not get a rebound or stop, but i agree late in games we should get more action instead james dribble around and then jack up a 3. when we penetrated and dished we easily created good looks.... unfortunately without capela we didnt also have roller/lob options which probably led to the record number of 3s but yea....this is how we often look in the playoffs too. james just runs out of gas (not his fault though)
I hope you realize Harden is a human. He plays like a superhero but he is really just a person. Goodness what more could he have really done tonight?
"I know you're tired, but dude. Get un-tired and use the energy that you don't have anymore, to do stuff!" Sounds petty, OP. Harden needed that extra time because he just played defense on the other end. He's letting Rivers handle the ball so that he can catch his breath and gather up some energy to expend when he gets the ball back. The fact that you can't see this, is mind-boggling.
It's clear that my post went way over your head. Nowhere will you find in my OP that I said to take the ball out of Harden's hands or to diversify our offense. Harden is the best player in the world by FAR. He needs the ball in his hands even more in crunch time, but if he's unwilling or incapable of creating separation from his defender in 18 seconds, then our coaching staff needs to make some in-game changes, because our offense should have won us this game. I expect next to nothing from the lineups we've been trotting out there defensively.
Did you see Harden walking out of the tunnel post game? Dude looked like he had just been run over by a stampede. I used to criticize Harden for laziness, when I felt it was warranted. This is the opposite of one of those times.
I hear you but I can't really put it all on Harden tonight. The way our defense was tonight with Gerald and Nunnally out there in crunch time and no center we just wanted to take as much time off the clock as possible. Its ugly but it was probably the right call. In general though we need to do a better job of exploiting teams when they sell out to deny Harden the ball in those situations. This wouldn't be as big of a problem with CP3 out there but even with one of Rivers/Gordon we should be prepared. It seemed like Harden and Rivers accidentally discovered using Harden as a screener in those situations for a couple easy downhill drives which I think could be a nice wrinkle for us. I agree MDA should manage the game better. I'm starting to lose faith in him as a coach. It feels like he's going through the motions out there sometimes. Every now and again we see a nice set-piece out of timeout or out of bounds play but I don't see many strategic changes in-game to counter what other teams are throwing at us.
I mean we were up huge, while this may not look that different than our normal late game offense, we were definitely trying to run the clock down on every possession. And it would have worked had Spencer Dinwiddie not had a T-Mac moment and put in 13 points in 28 seconds, including a 30-footer to tie the game. The offensive strategy was fine, it got us points and ran the clock, the defense and dinwiddie just killed it.
Seriously? He scored 58 points with 10 rebounds and 6 assists in 45 minutes tonight. Harden scored 22 points in the 3rd. Harden scored 18 points in the 4th. Overtime was 5 minutes and Harden scored 5 points with 2 assists and 0 turnovers. James Harden had 45 (FORTY FIVE) points in the second half!!! The Rockets lost because they were out rebounded and crushed in the paint. Blame it on Capela being hurt, not having a power forward or lack of depth at 4/5.... but the problem is not James Edward Harden Jr.
We dropped like 150 points. We had no problems putting points on the board. CP3, Capela and House are probably our three best defensive players and none of them were on the court tonight so I expected nothing defensively. When we're up in the 4th and OT and have no problems getting open shots, there's no reason we should wait until there's 6 SECONDS left on the shot clock to set our offense up. If we found Harden ten seconds earlier, we'd have more time to find better looks instead of rushing up 3's to beat the clock.
The Rockets dropped 142 points tonight without their second best player (Paul), third best player (Capela) and their starting small forward (House).... the offense is NOT the problem. The coaching is not the problem. The Rockets lost because they were out scored by 30 points in the paint and out rebounded badly.
I don't disagree with OP. Tho, I'd rather put more blame on the coach for not managing that well. A timeout at the end of regulation to assign Tucker to Dinwiddie would've been good. Another timeout at the 1:30 mark in OT would've been a good strategic pause for physically resting Harden in case it went down to the wire in addition to just mentally preparing the team to close the game out the right way. It was such a flippant ending. Harden is definitely not one to blame. It's on the coach to read his own players to give them rest. MDA is terrible in close, late game situations.
