I feel like you are wrong . Stop being a psychologist for a second and let the season play out for more than a week and a half .
He's prolly basing it off the trend that half the board exhibits when they call harden mentally weak and haren ; and when they bash mchale as having no scheme . Yes this dude stared a thread , but if the first three comments hadn't been negative , they might have just as easily been in agreement with what he posted .
Yeah seriously. Don't get me wrong, Capela has been BOMB. BUT Howard is a nuclear explosion in comparison, and without him our D is always going to look mediocre. On top of that we don't have neither of our PF's in Dmo and Jones. Motie was out starting C and a big part of our D last year, Jones is a good rebounder and shot blocker. We are literally playing a 21 year old sophomore who didn't play his rookie season at center, our 210 pound SF in Ariza at PF. Harrell a undersized rookie, and Hayes a undersized dated vet. Our front line right now is almost comical.
I just don't get how you easily ignore the fact that when we are missing 2 PF's with Capela as our only viable big. This previous game our defense looked phenomenal with Capella in the game (helps they didn't have a big PF to outmatch Ariza). It only fell apart once Harell or Hayes was in the game. They played off Capella on defense very very well
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">James Harden on moving to 3-3: "I think we picked up our defensive mindset we know obviously we can score the basketball with anyone."</p>— Calvin Watkins (@calvinwatkins) <a href="https://twitter.com/calvinwatkins/status/662887918592094208">November 7, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
When you have Harden and Lawson starting in the backcourt, how good defensively do you think we should be? Those guys suck defensively. It is what it is.
The issue hasn't stemmed from them defensively. Harden has done a very good job on team defense. Lawson has been sneakily good in that regards. The issue is the lack of size around the rim. The issue from last year with Dwight going for the shot block, but nobody getting the rebound has been emphasized even more without Dmo/Jones. Capela is not going to be a great defensive player constantly and that has shown. Our 3rd string bigs in Hayes/Harrell have done poorly. And another glaring issue has been due to turnovers. It hasn't been the dumb turnovers as last year as much, but more of a knowing what to do issue. I've seen Lawson turn it over a couple of times because of him not being comfortable with his teammates just yet. And Harden has looked pretty bad turning it over. But this issue should smoothen over in time. With Dmo back, our offense will be better and more structured which will also cut down on turnovers.
Defense is overrated especially in the reg season. This league is now about scoring, scoring and more scoring. Individual and team defense is gravy. See Memphis Grizzlies See GSWs. In the postseason u ramp up defense.
it's way too early for this team to have any kind of team identity set in stone with players consistently out of the lineup rotation but it's a long season...should gel with time check out the western conference standings... http://espn.go.com/nba/standings
No Dwight so we suffer.. Capela is still learning but I think this is really good for him. He needs playing time and during the playoffs he can really contribute. We closed out on shooters better this game (with the exception of the wide open Rudy gay three).. It's really weird how defense usually leads to offense but for James Harden it seems to be the other way round.. If he doesn't score he doesn't defend.
