True, but you're being incomplete. Simply put, Howards the anchor on Defense, Hardens the anchor on Offense. Howard has dominant offensive games and now Harden will have his share of at least above average Defensive games. This will bring immense balance to the team. Along with the steady development of Jones, DMo and Beverly. Get your popcorn ready.
Finishing is cute and all, but not as important to CLOSING games. And Harden has the ability to be the best closer if he already isn't to be quite honest. Harden and KD will be fighting for the title of best closer in the game for years to come IMO. DRose? (If healthy) Melo? CP3? we'll see.
That's a strong statement for you to make for a young player with just two years of being a starter and the main option for his team under his belt. The same use to be said about Jordan before he started winning. It took Olajuwon 10 years before he developed into a player good enough to carry a team through the playoffs. This may be a microwave society but the NBA is still the same as in young players usually don't win.
defense, mid-range, and post-up are some of Harden's deficiencies but he finishes as much and as efficient as KD and Lebron
Funny how many Rockets fans who complain about Harden's defense _ always wanted Kevin Love... Who is a huge liability on the defensive end.
I see now that I wasn't clear. By finisher I'm talking about the ability to finish at the rim. Lebron and Durant are easily the best. Harden is good, but he is not at their level.
Harden is still young and yet you're comparing him against the two best veteran super star basketball players on the planet. And oh how do we forget that both LeBron and KD had their issues when they were young in their playing career... But as a Rockets fan _ Harden being behind LeBron and KD is nothing to cry about. But I think the finishing issues that you speak of may have a lot to do with Harden trying to draw the foul instead of concentrating on finishing at the rim. But with as many foul calls as he receives when driving to the basket _ it's hard to say he's not a good finisher and or on par with those two guys.
Durant is only 24. And Harden being young is irrelevant. He'll never be better than Durant or Lebron at their best.
In the "lead dog" role for only 2 years Harden is very young. KD and LeBron had that role for years. On another note _ KD hasn't been able to get his team to the finals, and when KD had the lead role with no other star players on the court with him _ they were bad enough to draft both Westbrook in Harden at the top of the lottery... Harden dragged the Rockets to the playoffs with a center who can't catch, a point guard who at times didn't know rather he was coming or going, with guys like Delfino playing at the power forward position, and McHale as the head coach ----> IN THE WEST... And I'll leave it at that.
I really like James Harden. Durant has won MVP and lead his team to the finals. They got Westbrook after Durant's 2nd year and then they got Harden the next year after that. And those teams were pretty devoid of talent. It's not like he was Kevin Love a good portion into his career with a decent enough team to make the play-offs around him.
man, talking Thunders only got a couple nice picks and quickly turned around. Cleveland got so many top picks in past several years but did nothing.
KD is 331 days older than Harden. There is a big difference between " not a good finisher" and "on par with Lebron and Durant". Harden is a good finisher. He's not great like Lebron and Durant. Those guys shoot lots of FT's too. Harden is really good. He's just not those two guys.
That's a sorry sack of an organization....lol. The thunder hit gold what they did can't be replicated. There's no way a team will ever draft the 2nd best player in the game league mvp. Then draft a top 10 player who made 1st team all nba by yr 5 then you draft the best sg in the game who happens to make 1st team All nba his 5th yr and is potentially the 3rd best player in the game. No team is doing that ever again. Just typing that made me realize how incredibly stupid the thunder we're for trading harden away. They could have made so much money marketing all those championships. With the "3 brothers". They could have rivaled the bulls 6 those guys are that good and are that young. None are still over 26.
Durant may be less than 1 year older, but he has nearly 200 more games(regular season and playoffs) of experience over Harden. Not to mention Durant was basically immediately given the keys while Harden only has 2 seasons of that. But I will definitely agree, Harden is a very good finisher. Durant and Lebron are on another level. Career FG% from 0-3 feet with their best individual season in () Lebron - .726(.796) Durant - .718(.798) Harden - .628(.723) Lebron and Durant had their best this last season. Hardens high was his last year in OKC and his 2 years here have been .650 and .632.
We're did you find that? And could you post we're harden ranks in the entire nba and I'm curious to see if their is any guard (pg or sg) that is better than him?
All the numbers are from http://www.basketball-reference.com Im not positive if you can look up those numbers for the entire league other than just going to each individual's player page, so I couldn't tell you where he ranks league wide or compared to the other guards. There might be another site or a way to do it on bballreference, I just don't know of it.
This is from stats.nba.com . It's field goal percentage in the restricted area, filtered for players with at least 1.5 attempts per game. http://stats.nba.com/leaguePlayerShots.html?pageNo=1&rowsPerPage=25&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&DistanceRange=By%20Zone&PerMode=PerGame&sortField=FG_PCTZone1&sortOrder=DES&Season=2013-14&filters=FGAZone1*GE*1.5 Lebron is 2nd on this list. Durant is 3rd. Harden is 114th. There are a lot of guards ahead of him.
