Who? Howard, Paul and Westbrook? Embiid is going down the Yao/Bill Walton route of oft-injured player. He may become a 6th man in three seasons. Come on man!
Who? Howard, Paul and Westbrook? Embiid is going down the Yao/Bill Walton route of oft-injured player. He may become a 6th man in three seasons. Come on man!
I must say, I just noticed that when he called DM a liar, the crowd cheered/clapped. Iguodala has a point. JH is much smarter than people give him credit for. He will likely sell more shoes and jerseys now. Heck, he may even be able to play a few years in China when he is done with the NBA, a la Starbury.
Harden has been done as a franchise player for years now. But Mchale hasn’t won squat without Larry Bird. In Uniform! Who hired him as HC after HTown fired him? Mchale is an idiot.
Darrell hired him. Leslie Alexander wanted someone who would be nice for the media but a poor choice overall.
I certainly agree Harden is part of the problem, as I think I was getting at in a couple prior posts. My main point is some of the people I was replying to are going quite a bit overboard in how much blame they are placing on him. I think there are clearly some poor circumstances out of his control ("bad luck") at each of these teams (or at least Houston and Brooklyn), and at least to some extent, you can empathize with why he wanted a change both times. I also think it's unclear how much Harden wanted guys like Westbrook or to trade Paul. I think we've heard lots of different things about some of those situations, but given everything we know, it seems likely to me that Fertitta was the primary factor in acquiring Westbroke, but obviously at minimum, Harden had to give the OK... and he shouldn't have.
And I would add another #...#4. Dude never had a real relationship with stars (outside probably of WB and partly Durant, WB because they were childhood friends.) Tucker would be one of the few role player friends. He rather gets together with rappers and hoodlums. Implications that he is sort of a loner in the basketball world. That makes it pretty easy for him to either change sceneries, cut ties or demand trades for co-players every other year.
After the atrocious performance in the last couple of games of elimination in 2 seasons, I do not blame Morey to change his mind about giving Harden a max deal. Liar or not, Morey has to think of the team first. Morey is an idiot too for promising Harden anything if it is true. Seems like Harden and Morey both will be jobless soon.
I don't like either of them personally, but like it or not, those guys were absolutely good enough complimentary stars to win a title with. Miss me with this "past their prime" nonsense. James just wasn't up to the task. Perhaps he could have if not for the superteam BS, but we'll never know.
OK we're at an impasse... There's a reason even LeBron couldn't make Worstbrook look like a halfway passable point guard, and even Durant couldn't get him to the finals (and that was before he forgot how to shoot free throws and 3s). Westbrick actually had, IIRC, his most efficient scoring season ever playing besides Harden, despite clearly being over the hill. And they even took a game from the eventual champs, against the odds. But putting lipstick on a pig can only get you so far. Similarly, even Kobe and Gasol could barely get Dwight into the playoffs the year before he came to Houston. Then Harden takes his overrated bum ass to the WCF after he misses half of the regular season. I simply could not disagree with you more about this. As far as "star power" goes, Harden had straight garbage in Houston, other than Chris Paul. Harden made both Howard and Westbrook look like they were worth half a sht. There's a reason neither won a title without him, either (2020 doesn't count for Dwight for reasons I hope to god I don't have to explain).
