He was sloppy. There were pockets where I felt he was nowhere near sufficiently aggressive, and pockets where I felt he was over-aggressive and forced the issue when it really made no sense to do so. All in all, he had a completely nightmarish game. But no, it does not make me doubt his heart or his ability to lead overall. I'll leave that to you.
Lebron struggled in his early year with the same issue that Harden is suffering with right now. People were questioning his heart and desire to win.
I don't care much for Harden the person, all I care about is his basketball persona and while he had a great season, the lack of owning up to HIS OWN bad play and not feeling any sort of responsibility to lead or put the team on his shoulders is worrisome. I'm not sure he will ever get that, but let's hope he learns.
This thread was created during the pinnacle of the Rockets success since our last chip. So no it wasn't said when I said.
if sth. is truly out there, eventually most people will see it. i had the same observations and doubts back then, i still do now. glad i wasnt the only one.
no, it's not. it just tells you harden is a better player than his mates. it doesnt say anything about his personality, which is the topic of this thread.
Insights into a player's personality that you have never met, spoken too, or seen outside of 20 second - 2 minute post game interviews. Very useful!
so by your logic, all the discussions about harden, or any players' personality, their mental makeups, leadership skills and such, are really invalid and baseless, since none of us personally knows any of these players, eh? as a result, we as fans can only read boxscores and the stats like the +/- you used in your post, eh? yeah, thanks. your "insights" are rather quite useful.
My logic is you take useful information to make informed decisions, and then laugh at people who care about their amateur psychology diagnosis.
a piece of information in and by itself is neutral. it becomes "useful" when someone actually starts to make use of it. or it will remain "useless" or irrelevant. geez,,, thought that was 6th-grade stuff...
In the playoffs last year it was not Harden who carried us in the playoffs... Actually in the last 2 years it was not Harden who carried us... This again is why I can't stand just relying on stats, because they never tell the entire story. T_Man
Rereading through this thread is pretty funny, especially now that everyone is questioning Harden's leadership abilities when some of us had questions when we were winning.
You have a point OP. He's a very talented young man. But he doesn't have the same competitive edge as his peers. Could you imagine someone making a clip of WB's defense? He'd probably make a fool out of whoever made the video by shutting down the guy he's guarding next game. But Harden seems fine with getting embarrassed aslong as he gets his numbers.
he carried us in the regular season, that I can admit just not consistently in the playoffs Even in the regular seaoson he had several games when he did not care.