When you get a max contract, you don't get breaks -- especially not when you play piss poor defense. It's preseason, but thus far, I haven't seen Harden make the boneheaded mistakes he was making last year on D. His issue isn't his physical capability to play defense, it's his mental focus throughout an entire 48 minutes. We've seen him play legit D for essentially an entire season (2014-15). He's proven he can do it, and therefore deserves no breaks when he doesn't.
Ariza, Bev, and Beverley take pride in defense and are good teammates. But other guys on the team don't and aren't?
Lol Kevin already making noise for his new career. Then again I would take his analysis with a grain of salt... Minnesota still happened on your watch.
he plays with good energy, he plays hard, he tries the win the game and not lose , he plays harder when his shot is off. i think i've seen enough: all around he's a great player. he just needs to play some ************************** defense.
All this Harden at PG stuff is sooo dumb. I really wish D'Antoni never said that. Harden's role is the same. He was the primary playmaker under McHale when he almost won MVP. That role won't change. He might be asked to facilitate some more and shoot a little less, but his overall role is not changing.
Meh I disagree to an extent. Harden is gonna be the main main guy. Meaning he's taking every possession as the ball handler [which he did slot anyway but bev took a lot as well]. With the new weapons we have harden may be competing at PG for assist
So he wasn't the main main guy before? He pretty much was. There might be some adjustments and wrinkles but the overall it's not much different. D'Antoni and Harden actually confirmed this but everyone ignored that part
D'Antoni is the Anti-Van Gundy. D'Antoni has a system where the offense feeds the defense and Van Gundy's is the defense feeds the offense. Very interesting indeed....
"The elite of the elite can help their team in many ways" - Kevin McHale The "elite of the elite" would describe Larry Bird, so McHale does know a little about players of that caliber, having played with Bird and against several others. McHale was elite himself, but Bird was on an entirely different level, just as other retired players like Dream, Jordan, Dr. J, Russell, Havlicek, Wilt, Duncan, Kareem, Magic, and Bryant (and others, of course) were/are in that small club. Harden has the talent to join them, but he needs to raise his game and win some championships to get there. LeBron already has. We'll have to wait and see if James can make that leap. Fingers crossed, as always.
Harden does seem to have grown or at least made more of an effort in becoming a vocal leader for the team
This is the logic of one of my ex girlfriends. "You look good today." "So I didn't look good yesterday?!?!"
Kevin, why did your guys struggles down the stretch? I don't know. I don't know. Ball got sticky. Told them to move the ball & it just stuck. Couldn't get anything going. McHale: We got nothin'. We're stagnant. JBB: We're ****in' hyperventilating out there. Come on guys! Stick with it! We're in a good spot. Keep playing hard! When you have 2 days of practice like this, how much of it is just physically and mentally recharging the battery? I don't know. I guess I'm way too old. You're playing basketball for a living. Recharge your batteries? Every morning you should get up and get on your knees and thank God that you're playing basketball for a living. Someone is actually paying you, in some cases millions and millions, in other cases hundreds of thousands at the minimum to play basketball. If you have to recharge your battery to play basketball, I understand recharging my battery that I've done three double shifts, I'm laying cement, and I come home. I understand that. I don't understand that, recharge your battery for what? To be able to come out here and play basketball for a living? If we have to do that, you're in the wrong sport, you're doing the wrong thing. This is a high energy game that requires total commitment but it's a joy to play. It's fun. #BeWell Kevin.
I still believe the organization should've fired Mchale after the tragic Portland series. Making zero adjustments until game 3, and the terrible coaching on Lillard's game winning shot to end the series. The Rockets had more talent than that Portland team and it's a shame we couldn't watch them advance that year. 0.9 seconds. People will say the WCF run was good, but honestly we showed a lot of warts during that run. The players willed themselves into the WCF despite Mchale. We lost game 1 in the semi's with no Chris Paul, and got smashed into oblivion games 3 and 4 in Los Angeles. For a WCF, we sure were not even competitive in far too many games to count. Don't forget, Rockets were 2 seed for a long time that year, until we lost back-back to San Antonio late in the season and they briefly overtook us. If San Antonio wins their last regular season game that year, Rockets are the 6 seed facing the Clippers on the road to start the playoffs.
