Since when WB is considered 'one of the greatest scorers in the history of the game?' People here sure as hell overrate WB offensively. I get that he's a great all-around player, but when it strictly comes to scoring, WB is not as good as you'd think. He can be very inefficinet and bad with his shot selection, and probably one of the biggest chucker in the game since Kobe, just not as good. WB was the scoring champ last year? yeah, and this was his shot chart. compare this with this year's scoring champ, Curry, whose shot chart looks as green as an Amzon forest. WB scored 28.1 PPG on 42.6 FG% / 29.9 3P% / 53.6 TS% last year. Harden scored 29.0 PPG on 43.9 FG% / 35.9 3P% / 59.8 TS% this season. WB is a great scorer? better than Harden? I don't think so.
Don't look at me. I don't think WB is great. Harden had a better year than WB last year and people were saying how great he was. Harden had the same year as WB did this year.
The only thing that can improve that offense without getting another high scoring superstar and still become a contender without having a strong defense would be to get better shooting role players like the Suns. In the mid 2000's they didn't play a lick of D but surrounded their superstar with well above average shooters and a big who loved to pick and roll. Stoudemire could also hit his free throws and mid range shots. Harden has none of that and still we still made it to the playoffs this year. The point is if you get more talent then you can afford to ISO. If you don't have more than one ISO capable star then you need better shooters and a damned good coach in order to be a contender. Dwight is not ISO capable yet we keep acting like he is and we've been playing that way since he's gotten here and it ruined Rockets basketball. Morey needs to do his job and just find guys who are above average at SOMETHING. Just one thing is fine and then find a coach who can take advantage of that ONE THING they are really good at.
Once you add in the fact that defenses can pretty much ignore everyone else and focus in on Harden and he still put up those numbers it's even more impressive than WB's who has a former MVP that gets most of the attention from opposing defenses.
there are 4 that would've gave more effort than any other role player on this team. beasley the obvious one.then harrel, kj and capela. those 4 can easily be a good bench themselves and cheap as hell.
yeah, I agree that this year's Harden was similar to 2014-2015 WB, except that media narrative surrounding him was much less charitable for some unfair reason. I know the grass always looks greener on the other side, but people really need to calm down on WB. He's not any better than Harden, and in fact this year is the first time where WB could be considered better than Harden, and that was not the case for the past few years. Since Harden has joined the Houston Rockets, he finished 8th 5th 2nd and 9th in MVP voting. In the same time span, WB finished 12th 9th 4th and 4th in MVP voting. Harden outranked WB in the MVP race 3 out of 4 times since he bacame the Rocket. Harden has been selected for 1st-team NBA 2 times whereas WB has none (probably this year is gonna be his first.) Harden has been a better player than WB more than he's not, and this year is actually the outlier not the norm. I hope Harden bounces back next season and corrects this wrong percepton that WB is a better player, which is shrared even by some Rockets fans.
If a team has managed to contend for 2 decades with the same core (the longest in all of sports) and been consistently above 50 wins every season...you're not proving anything with a title like this.
Beverley was a 40% 3pt shooter this year. Ariza was a 40% 3pt shooter before he rejoined us. It's a disservice to Harden to compare him to Nash. Harden is a better scorer, but Nash was a significantly better offensive player.
88% of Beverly's 3P shot this season has been open or wide open. 84% of Ariza's 3P shot this season has been open or wide open. I wonder who made those shots so easy for them? given their extremely low shot difficuly, Beverly has done his job but nothing spectacular, and Ariza has been pretty bad actually. Just to compare, only 57% of Harden's 3P shots were open/wide open, which mean 43% of his 3s were contested. This is because Harden actually has to create his own shot, whereas other role players do not. We ranked at bottom 7th on open 3P% and bottom 9th on wide open 3P%. Those numbers don't seem to suggest that we have knock down spot-up shooters. Actually, Ariza led the entire league in the number of spot-up possessions category, but his efficiency (points per possession) was only 39.2 percentile overall. Ariza's carrer 3P% is 35.2%. The one time where he shot over 40% was more of a fluke - probably aided by the fact that he was playing in the contract year - not the norm. I have no problem saying Nash was a better player than Harden since he is a two-time MVP and one of the greatest ever, but that doesn't mean we have quality shooters on this team. Harden and Bev are pretty much it. The rest are average to below average.
Im not comparing the two, just their duties and position in the NBA. They are both superstars who can facilitate an offense. Nash met his potential because of the fact that his role players actually did their jobs. That team had clear a clear strategic plan and the coach and players to carry out that plan. The Rockets have a strategic plan but only have a couple of players that match that plan, Harden and maybe Bev when he sticks to what he does well.
Warriors can play ISO if they want to. Curry and Klay are more than capable of being ISO players, Klay is maybe the tallest SG in the NBA. Bogut used to be a 15/10 guy before the injuries took over. Iggy was the top dog in Philly for years. I imagine some team like the Lakers this summer pays Barnes outrageous money, and I would not be surprised to see him average close to 20/game as a lead dog. In fact, if Kerr just played Curry the way OKC plays WB, Curry would probably average 35/game for the season. Its just less effective for the net team result, and Kerr understands that from being on multiple championship teams.
The fact that so many people go on and on about Houston running ISO is a great example of perception vs reality. As a team we ran ISO 10.5 times per game in the regular season and 10.8 times per game in the playoffs. So during the regular season we run ISO 9.4% of the time and during the playoffs 9.3% of the time. Take our playoff stats for example: We are #2 in this year's playoffs in Isolation points per possession (ppp) at 0.96. We are also dead last in the entire playoffs in overall ppp at 0.89. So was the 9.3% of the time that we ISO'd at 0.96 ppp the issue? Or is the issue what we did the other 90.7% of the time? Everything that we do can get better but the primary problems are on the defensive side of the ball and the lack of any passing or scoring in addition to Harden. The Spurs ISO'd less than any team in the league last regular season at 5.3 per game. GS ISO'd 7 times per game. The fact that the Rockets ISO'd an additional 3.5 more times per game than GS or an additional 5.2 times per game than SA isn't anywhere near the top reason for the difference in the two teams. The perception is that we are constantly running ISO and that it is a huge problem. Reality is that we ISO less than 10% of the time and running ISO isn't one of our issues. There's quite a few legitimate issues that the Rockets need to address but running ISO isn't one of them. There's not one magic system that will make every team successful. If there was then every team would be running it. Look at the teams that run lots of ISO, what do they have in common? They have guys that are good at running ISO. CLE has Lebron and Irving, Toronto has DeRozan, OKC has Durant and Westbrook and Houston has Harden. San Antonio has several good postup players so that's what they do. The Spurs led the league in postups in both the regular season and so far in the playoffs. A team built around Lebron James isn't going to play like the Spurs. A team built around Curry and Thompson isn't going to run heavy ISO. Teams are going to play to the strengths of their stars.
