Harden's Offensive stats wouldn't be as good if he played any defense at all. The guy saves all his energy and hustle to pad his stats on offense.
Even when he is on offense but when he doesn't have the ball, he just stands at the half court or 3 point line and chills there until he gets the ball in his hands does his 15-20 seconds of 1on1 isolation. Mchale needs to do a better job limiting Harden's minutes. Remember Mchale more minutes he plays, the more lazy he plays.
I guess that depends on your definition of superstar. If you think guys like Curry, George, or Love are superstars then Harden is too.
I watched every minute of the Rockets Blazers playoffs. Harden did not both to show up until Game 6. When the ref did not blow the whistle on his drive to the basket, Harden just took tons of quick 3 pointers and missed a ton, instead of moving the ball. On the defensive ends, Mathew took him to school time and time again. However you like to sugar coat it, Harden did NOT deliver for Rockets.
List of Superstars LeBron KD CP3 Paul George Dwight Howard (Playoff Mode) Everyone else is an All-Star
Superstar is the most over used word in basketball. There are only two superstars in the league today and that is Lebron and Durant. That's it.
Why the hell dd 45% of the voters pick him as a superstar then? I think people think too highly of Harden, his deficiencies are so problematic.
If you asked the same question on another team's forum, you'd get a very different result. Since this is a Rockets focused forum, the members obviously tend to overrate Rockets players
We would probably get better answers asking this question to non-Rox fans. I guess a fair equivalent would be "is Paul George a superstar?" I would think most would vote no.
Harden averaged 8.3 FT per game vs Portland. That's just slightly under the 9.1 attempts that he averaged in the regular season. In fact he was #5 in the entire playoffs in ft attempts per game. So you think that getting 0.8 fewer FT attempts is what threw him off of his game? Really? What exactly did you think you saw Matthews doing defensively? Did you notice Matthews overplaying to the outside? Did you notice that whenever Harden went by Matthews that Lopez and Aldridge were sitting in the lane waiting for him? Did you notice Aldridge totally ignoring Jones and Asik so he could play centerfield? Did you notice that Portland played Howard 1-on-1 for most of the entire series? Seriously, did you notice any of those things? If not, then how do you believe that Portland played us defensively? You think they just played straight up man to man? As I said, Portland's defensive scheme was taken from what OKC did in 2013 and it's the absolute best way to defend the Rockets if you have time to prepare your defense. Think about it. If you were the opposing coach, how would you defend the Rockets? If your answer is anything other than packing the paint to prevent Harden from getting to the rim then you haven't been paying attention for the last two years. The challenge for the Rockets is to come up with a way to make teams pay for playing that type of defense. The obvious answer would be a stretch 4 that teams would be afraid to leave open.
A superstar plays both ends of the court. The fact that we brought in PB to help him play the other end of the position tells you he is no superstar. Harden's idea of combo guard is I play offense, and you play defense. In my opinion, a superstar is a game changer. Insert him and all of a sudden you have a real shot at winning a championship. Yes there is a superstar James in the league but its LeBron James.
Better than 70% of the all stars so i say he's a super star. If he can gain a concept of team defense including staying between his man and the basket, then skys the limit the dude is crazy clutch. In the final seconds, I would pick him or Durant to take that shot out of the whole nba.
