yes he is a decent 1 on 1 defender , when he wants to be, which is almost never. Defending his defense is a joke at this point. Using the fact that he can play defense makes it even worse and puts him in the melo category. No hustle, lack of effort disinterested when he wants to be. Not sure what you're trying to get at here. We all know what he can be, its just that he chooses not to be. Played great last (regular) season, amazing actually and had me on his side 1000%, played defense, vocal leader, got his teammates involved...and most importantly looked like he actually gave a ****. Post seaosn though... just another example of using the stats to alter the picture. If you remember, for the past 3 postseasons before that he was notorious for laying an egg every time. He showed up and played well vs Dallas but it was Dwight that was the difference in that series, as well as Smith to some degree. Clippers series....you really want me to go on? Do you not remember Austin Rivers grasping him by the balls? Thats how bad it got. If you want further proof, McHale actually chose to bench him in that pivotal game which led us to beat them. Golden state series? All that smack talk, then partying before and after the games while getting crapped on. I don't blame him for game 2 where he lost the ball on what could have been a historical shot, but apart from that I don't know how anybody can overlook the lack of fire and sense of urgency. I mean, here is the one of the most lackluster defenders in the league repeatedly talking about how we need to focus on defense after every game. Then he complains about his minutes publicly saying he doesn't have the energy to---which is complete B.S. Its too early in the season to attribute the toll of collective minutes, and many of his disgusting lapses have occurred within the first couple of minutes of the game. I'm not a harden hater, I was a huge fan actually, I'm just a realistic rockets fan. If you disagree with my opinion that's fine. I think I put you on ignore once before, guilty of being too stupid to actually debate, and not having the manners that would at least allow people to feel sorry for you. Whatever it was that you were doing before 2015, is where you need to take your stupid takes now. Bye.
1. Harden was a plus-defender all throughout the last season and postseason if you go by his BPM numbers. He actually does play defense way more than 'almost never', especially during the crunch time. Just because there are few videos floating out there showing Harden slacking off his D time to time, doesn't mean he does that 'all the time'. 2. If you think Harden didn't play that well in the last postseason, you clearly didn't watch the same games as I did, or your judgement is clouded and blinded by your pure hate toward him because he actually did perform very well for the most part, it's just that when he bombed he bombed BIG and perhaps that few games stuck to your memory, but numbers and stats don't lie. In the 2014-2015 playoffs, Harden was : 4th in Points per game 4th in Assists per game 3rd in Win Shares 4th in PER 6th in TS % 6th in BPM 4th in VOP You can almost argue he was the THIRD BEST PLAYER in the 2014-2015 playoffs because Anthony Davis just played 4 games so his number are inflated, and only 2 players you can legitimately put above Harden was Curry & Lebron. You want to dissect this even more? Dallas Series : Harden 28.4 PPG 7.8 APG with 47% FG and 39% 3pt% Howard 16.6 PPG 13.8 RPG with 58% FG and 46 FT% they both played pretty good, but the main difference is Harden put up those number by himself where as Dwight was fed a lot of alley-oops and easy dunks by his teammates, especially from Josh Smith. Not to mention that Harden made almost all important clutch shots during that series. So clearly, Harden was the main reason we beat Dallas 4-1, not Dwight. LA Series : Harden 25.4 PPG 5.6 RPG 8.1 AST with 40% FG and 35% 3pt% I agree that this was his weakest series, but still those numbers are not as bad as you make it out to be. And why don't you mention Harden owning Austin Rivers in game 7? McHale benched Harden for one quarter during game 6 because he was having a bad game in that particular night. I don't remember him being benched for the entire series? Talk about selective memory. GS Series : Harden 28.4 PPG 7.8 RPG 6.4 APG with 47% FG and 43% 3pt% Again, these are pretty impressive numbers and Harden played GREAT 3 games (game 1,2, 4) and almost single-handedly won us 2 games on the road, which is crazy given GS was - and still is- historically great team. If you don't recall, everyone was praising Harden's performance in that series before he had that collapse in game 5, which is partly attributable to him being just exhausted carrying all that load for the entire season. Again, Harden is a streaky player so when he bombs, he bombs HARD and that's a problem, but don't over exaggerate his struggle based on few selective games in an attempt to diminish his performance in the last postseason. You have to judge a player's ability based on his overall performance, not just on few bad games. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether you are a just another Harden hater or a normal rockets fan, the fact is you are wrong in almost every claim you make about Harden and tends to over emphasize areas where he has problems (which i agree that needs to be improved upon), and likes to rewrite history to undermine his credibility as a TOP 5 best player in the league, including the postseason.
http://stats.nba.com/league/player/...4-15&SeasonType=Regular Season&sort=PTS&dir=1 so true. if you look at the clutch stats from last season, you can see that he was prob the top 2 clutch shooters out there along with Lebron, when you factor in the amount of points scored in clutch time and the accuracy with which he made those shots.
These stats are irrelevant this year. I'll be beyond ecstatic if he can regain his 2014 mvp form. Don't think you can argue that he's playing way below his potential this year. And with how much our offense relies on him being great, anything less and our team crashes.
