So a bunch of random regular season games without context and a few playoff games with largely guys being listed who are catch and shoot players who typically get their buckets on open treys created by Harden... which is often times dependent upon the defense leaving them to help on Harden. Just noticed not only is all of this completely disingenuous, but you posted incorrect numbers..... For some reason you only posted 3PT FGA... You can't be serious with this drivel.
I was talking about 3 PT shots all along!! Nothing disingenuous at all. You really can have your own opinion and I don't care. Harden made tons of 3's but he often took far too many in games when he was cold as ice. If I accidently posted an incorrect number point it out. It wasn't intentional. It doesn't matter anyway.
You NEVER said 3pt shots all along so that's incorrect and this still belies the problem with your argument... Guys generally hitting OPEN treys created by Harden in situations he draws the defense and finds them isn't representative of a bunch of games with dudes on fire. Harden taking twice as many 3s as them makes sense in most instances regardless of the percentage.... Those 3s they take and make generally need to be created as most of those guys lack Harden's ability to get his shot off or make contested shots and also those shots are dependent on the defense and the looks generated usually by Harden. This argument fundamentally lacked standard ball IQ.
Lack of ball IQ is criticizing role players for playing bad in a system designed for one player, especially when this one player is not playing(eg. on the bench) or is playing bad. I have a problem with "shots created by JH for them" because whole system was built to JH strengths so of course he shines in it. Try playing basketball this way - work yourself on defense because your star takes time off, and then stand in one spot on offense(the fun part) only getting to catch-and-shoot with like 2 seconds. And if you miss fans will call you bum. If you look at what Trae/Doncic is doing right now in their second(Luka was averaging like 36 in the playoffs against top tier defense with Kawhi on him) year you can see that James as good as he is is a product of a system, which can be replicated. He became master of it, but he is not on Durant/LeBron/Curry level who are just great basketball players no matter the system The problem is this "heliocentric" system is proven to not win a **** in playoffs. Harden didn't win ****, Dame didn't win ****, Carmelo didn't win ****, now Luka can't win ****. The only time we had a chance in playoffs is when we were playing CP/JH hybrid system. And please don't give me Brooklyn as evidence, this is ****ing Allstar team they are playing 5-0 offense you learn in junior school and still win in the NBA its ****ing ridiculous to be honest. They are stomping everyone with Harden and Jeff Green on the sidelines
He won gold@Olympics and NCAA. You really think prime Melo playing with Durant and Irving wouldn't win anything? or if he teamed up with prime LeBron and prime Chris Paul? because that's how Hardens winning will look like if he wins it in Brooklyn
For us Nets fans, Harden was the catalyst for making the team gel. I don't think that would have been the case with Melo.
How many games did you actually watch that season? Call it what you want genius, but I saw far too many times where he was cold as ice at the arc and would skip passing to a wide open player to dribble dribble dribble the leather off a ball til the last second and then take a contested 3 and miss. Maybe I just got sick of that style of play for a guy who was never anywhere close to the top players in 3 PT percentage. He still took way more 3's than anyone in the league, even when he slowed it down from over 1000 the year before to over 800 his last year on the Rockets. He never had the cast of stars he does now, taking 500 less 3's than his last year on the Rockets. Regardless, we did have guys who could hit 3's, who he passed up feeding to plenty of times and took on the ISO dribble dribble dribble dribble dribble shoot shots. I got sick of it, well before he left. It's not like he was twice as good at 3's as anyone on the team. 2018-2019 2019-2020 The highlight on the stats is of no significance. I just didn't edit that out.
The Nets need to be smart and not play him for the rest of this series. Give him a couple of weeks off for the Hawks or Philly series. Harden V Clint will be fun and ultimately Harden V Chris Paul for all the marbles in the finals will be amazing
Melo is nothing like Harden. Harden has a long streak of taking average teams into the playoffs and has also taken his team deep in the playoffs multiple times. Melo has been a selfish chucker his entire life with a terrible track record when it comes to wining. Harden makes players around him better. Melo only cares about how many shots he can chuck away. Melo had a chance to get out of New York as a FA. What did he do? Stay there for lifestyle and money. Bum doesnt care about winning. lol @ Olympic gold. Most NBA players can win Olympic gold if you put them on an All star team. Also, the NCAA win probably harmed Melo more than it did him good. He ended up thinking thats how he can win in the NBA as well, by taking as many shots as he can. He tried the same formula in NBA without success and never changed. The guy is a loser.
That's not necessarily true. Lou Williams played better before and after he left the Rockets. In fact, Lou, Harrell and Beverley all played better the year after they left the Rockets. Paul is playing as well as he did on our team this year.
What are you basing these things on. Lou only played here about half a season and Harrell and Beverley had different roles than in Houston and Harrel became a starter which accounts for a lot. And that's only 3 players how about all of the other guys who have gotten paid and had good years with Harden. The fact that you don't think Harden makes players better shows a lot of bias on your part. Just look at the guys who have bounced out of the NBA after having good years playing with Harden.
The same could be said about justifying him taking over 1,000 3's and over 800 3's those last two years on our team when he was double teamed so much. There were far too many times he took contested shots and missed when he could have passed to someone more open or just taken it to the rim. It's not like he was some superstar 3 PT shooter who shot far above everyone else on the team percentage wise.
The lowe post made some great observations today about this series. - credit Nash/MDA on how they defend jrue/giannis pnr which killed miami. Nets aren't switching as they normally do. Giannis's man dropping FAR back while Jrue's man go under or chase after, daring Jrue to shoot the mid range. - Durant has ran more pnr as the ball handler than he has in any game all season. He is getting whatever he wants and is defending the paint at elite level again. Along with Irving, he is killing the Nets on pick and roll plays, attacking the mismatch and passing to the role players. - Bucks half of the Bucks 3 point attempts have been off the dribble. In the regular season it was under 30%.. Bucks have taken too many pull up mid range shots and not attacked Irving and other Nets weak defenders. Basically they cited a bunch of plays where Bucks did things that didn't make sense or wasn't smart. - middleton and Jrue have been terrible. - Coach Bud's job is on the line To me this is an indictment on the Coach. He seems like a good guy and a great regular season coach, but from his ATL Hawks days to now, his teams has continuously dissapointed in the postseasons after KILLING it in the regulalr season. Maybe going home will give the Bud, Giannis and the bucks the change, help, impetus to play better and turn this series around. The series could either be over after game 3 or start becoming interesting. For the sake of my entertainment, I hope its the latter.
Shooting 36% from 3 is nothing special as many players are capable of this percentage. Shooting 36% from 3 while also leading or nearly leading the league in 3 point attempts is something very special and not many players in the league are capable of. Shooting 36% when a good portion of your attempts are high difficulty step backs is completely different than shooting 36%-38% when you can only maintain that percentage by taking 5-7 spoon fed catch and shoot wide open 3s per game. There was a year where Tucker was shooting like 40+% on corner 3s. And if we could run an offense where every shot we took was a wide open corner 3 for PJ Tucker we would have had the best offense in NBA history, but that’s not how it works. You have to create that shot for him for him to be able to shoot that percentage. And defenses aren’t going to just let you have what you want. This is where Harden’s ability came in so valuable. He was able to hit a high enough percentage at extremely high volumes to fuel extremely efficient offenses and he didn’t need it to be a “open” look like most players in the league need it to be to be able to shoot it efficiently enough. So you can’t just say he shouldn’t be taking those shots and other guys should have. It just doesn’t work that way. As far as suggesting he drive more you have to consider that players don’t have endless energy. At some point fatigue is a factor when asking guys to continually drive the paint. And the thing is over his entire time in Houston Harden was a very close 2nd in the entire league in drives to the basket per game. Only Westbrook had a slightly higher total. He was already nearly leading the league every single season in drives to the basket. You can’t just ask for more, it doesn’t necessarily work like that.
So that makes it ok to say he did not make players around him better? Also you do how percentages and lower number of shots taken works don't you? Who exactly on those teams do you want shooting and how many times did those guys pass up open shots?
This will go round and round. I've said all I want to say. I just didn't enjoy his game style as much as most did.
Same with Jeremy Lin if you take out his year with the Lakers, who were doing their best to tank that year.
if you dont like harden, then why comment in his thread lol. that makes no sense. This thread is mainly for rockets fans who are also fans of james
