He needs to stop fouling offensively. He needs to keep his elbow down while driving passed defenders. Is there barely any contact? Yes Do players insinuate the contact? Yes But it's noting different from Harden's embellishments to draw fouls.
Harden should only be allowed to shoot 3's. No driving, no layups, no dunks, no midrange. Only 3's. He can do his Euro Step from the half court and take the shot from right behind the arc.
With 1 day rest Haren is shooting 28% from 3, on back to backs he's shooting 48% from 3. It's pretty obvious he doesn't practice at all. Literally. F-in lazy bum. On the season he's 33% and takes over 8 3s a game. That's below league average on % and among leader in takes. This IS a problem. He's an inconsistent shooter too, which makes it even worse. You can't trust a guy who has games where he misses 10 3s on top of being super net negative on defense.
The further along we get into the season, the less we can slice and dice stats to make him look better. At some point he is what he is
It's ok to accept that he is a very medicore 3 point shooter so far this season and should not be jacking up so many 3's especially on days when his 3's are not falling and he is having plenty success driving to the rim or with the mid range J. It just kills our offense. The bricks lead to fast break opportunities against a non set defense and an easy bucket for the other team. I absolutely hate cherry picked stats just to make someone look better than what he is. Simply because you can cherry pick stats of any player and prove they are good in some certain category. It's all about the body of work. You can't just say let's exclude the first 3 games or lets only look at December and say wow he is shooting 40%, he should continue jacking them up (like that fool jordnnn or whatever)
When you start a season 3-35 that's a pretty big hole out of the gate. He got of to a slow start last year as well, but by years end he was right in line. He's been right on his average since the slow start. You can call that cherry picking if you want. He's been a 37% shooter since the slow start, and he's been a 37% shooter over the last 3 seasons. By the time this season has played out he will be back over 36% this year as well. He has a lot to answer for focus wise this year, but he's always been a high volume 3Pt shooter, it's just part of what he does.
So I took a second to see if Harden has ever struggled this late into the season shooting wise. In 12-13 he was shooting .328 48 games into the season, in 13-14 he was shooting .337 53 games into the season. So not only is this not new, he's done this before and ultimately the water found it's level, as I fully expect it to this season. There are plenty of things to be concerned with, Harden's shooting isn't among them.
A 50-something Texas Tech grad on the internet advising the NBA's 2nd leading scorer on how to score at basketball?
A 50 something "lawyer" from a low rank university still paying off debts advising me on how to post? And did you even read? I didn't give Harden any advice.
It's clear the team wants to take tons of threes because analytics. We can decrease Harden's 3pt attempts if other players can take more. Unfortunately, we don't have a single healthy stretch 4 or 5 on the roster (poor DMo), so the perimeter players have to take the bulk of the threes.
I don't have a problem with Harden shooting three's, but many of them are heavily contested. He should attack first and only shoot when he gets open.
Why does he do this? They should toss that **** right back to him. Hold, hold, hold, hold, hold for 10 seconds and pass with 3 seconds left. <div style="width: 100%; height: 0px; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.250%;"><iframe src="https://streamable.com/e/z5jm?muted=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen scrolling="no" style="width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;"></iframe></div>
for me its more off the lay off the bad 3 pters more so than shooting 3s. The 3s are going to be taken. There's no going away from that but taking more good 3s is what I would prefer. I hate all the westbrook shots that are extremely forced as much as the ones Harden has seemingly taken more of this year.
That doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the standing around in the background. Why do we draw up a play where neither Thornton or Bev are moving? Why doesn't one set a screen for the other while Harden is isolated on the wing? Isolation doesn't necessarily mean stagnancy, at least it doesn't have to.
isolation has always lead to stagnancy. If you want more movement then you take away this. But as long as isolation is a primary weapon you won't be seeing much movement and that's not on the other players watching Harden.
