If you weren't talking about sports I would say that it sounds a lot like throwing good money after bad.
He clearly doesn't trust his teammates, that's my biggest issue with him. Other stars try to involved everyone, even at end of game situations, while James goes ego mode and thinks he has to do everything himself.
There's many bad Harden takes floating about - but you deserve a special singling out for this flaming pile of dung. Rather than going through the tedious exercise of proving you wrong - what is your basis for your scorching hot Skip Bayless style take? Anythign? Or are we dealing with the good ol' "eye test"?
Harden sets up his teammates with plenty of open looks, they just did not hit them at any sort of consistent rate this year. I agree with the notion that Harden would benefit by allowing others to make more plays, but I also don't think another quality option was currently available this season. Who should Harden trust? Terry? Beverley? Ariza? Lawson? Dwight post ups? Even we the fans didn't trust those guys to create plays on their own, especially in late game situations. Maybe implementing a proper offensive system changes that.
As a season ticket holder for the past few years, I can definitely understand the frustration with Harden... but I think it's getting a little out of hand. In person, I have seen James make great plays to get teammates open for uncontested shots or easy layups. Last season his team converted on those plays. This season they didn't. Simple as that. I think Harden would have amazing numbers this year if he had more help on offense. BUT he screwed himself by saying he wanted a creator on the offensive end. He put management in a bad position to where they thought the risk/reward of Lawson would satisfy Harden and solve the problem. If they would have pursued shooters that hit the 3 more consistently then it would have been a better season. It also doesn't help when Howard can't accept just running the pick and roll all day long. He wants more touches in the low post but hasn't improved his game to be worthy of those touches. I don't think he understands how frustrating it is for Harden to deal with hack-a-Howard eating into any leads they built. Howard talks about checking egos but doesn't do it himself. For those that say Harden doesn't play good defense... WE DON'T PAY HIM BASED ON HIS DEFENSE! He is a phenomenal offensive player who is very effective. Especially when his teammates hit those open shots. Yes he needs to do better than he is now... that is a given. But that is why we need 3 and D guys around him. To hear all this talk about trading Harden is just dumb and short sighted. I've been a fan since the 80's and lived through the Hakeem, Francis&Mobley, TMac&Yao and now Harden&Howard eras. When you get an offensive talent like Harden you don't give it away. And no... nothing you get in return would suffice. NOTHING. The moment you want to trade Harden no one will give you anything that is worth him... because you are already burning the bridge with him. Then the onus is on you to get rid of him for whatever you can get. That being said this season sucked but I'm excited about Free Agency and Next season.
James Harden = black hole on offense who leaks assists into a wormhole in another galaxy and manages to finish 6th in the entire NBA
We haven't seen a shooting guard average that many assists per game since the 85-86 season when Reggie Theus and Clyde Drexler averaged 9.0 and 8.6 assists per game, respectively.
He's 2nd in the league in Clutch-Time FGA by a pretty big margin and has one of the absolute worst fg% of all top players in that category. But yea, feel free to debunk my "flaming pile of dung". The Harden apoligists are as stubborn as ever.
That's what happens when someone has absolutely no reading ability and creates a strawman argument, sad.
Nice fancy stats except you're missing the point. 1) Of course he leads the league in FGA in the clutch because literally nobody on our team outside of Beasley has the ability to finish out the game themselves/create for another teammate. Defenses tighten up severely towards the end of games and if you are the only creator on the team, chances are that you'll have and chuck the ball almost every time. 2) The above leading to #2 (Worst FG %), if teams know that James Harden will have to finish out the game + study game film on a coach who lacks offensive creativity, they have the ability to force Harden to take tough shots. So you combine #1 and #2 you get a legitimately good reason why he does not have great "advanced stats" at the end of games, because essentially thats what he has to do in order for us to have a chance to close out games and the other teams know it.
The thing about Harden that people forget is that when he was with OKC he was a very good, if not great defender.
The question then becomes...who do you trust outside of Harden in those situations given our current coaching/offensive system?
He could be - but by DBPM his worst defensive season was 11-12 OKC. I do think there's an inverse correlation between offensive load and defensive focus with him.
See my sig: Energy is a talent too. If Harden's defense is due to his lack of energy which is due to his load on offense, then he is not that "talented." LeBron used to carry the whole load of the Cavs offense the first time around, but he was still one of the better defenders. That said, I am not sure if Harden's problem on defense is so much about energy than about focus. This is not a scientific statement. But I feel that he has focus issue rather than energy issue. The focus issue sometimes spills over to his offense too.
That team still had more varied players than the Rockets. You guys keep comparing this years Rockets team to very talented teams and the comparison just doesnt work.
Because there isn't one. We don't have enough talent and Harden plays the way he does because he has to. Someone compare our team to Lebron's Cavs but failed to mention that even with Lebron scoring 29 he still had 3 teammates who averaged double digits because they could get their own shots. He had a better team. 2 of those 3 role players averaged 16 points. And almost all of the other role players playing high minutes averaged close to 10 points so they could knock down their shots and make layups.
LOL - LeBron, one of the greatest players in history, was also superhuman back then and had his very greatest do-everythign seasons with those miserable Cavs crews - though I don't htink he was the wing defensive ace - they used Anthony Parker for that IIRC Regardless I would expect James Harden and the very rest of humanity dating back from about today, back to the first hominids to emerge from the East African savannah and traverse across the globe - to compare unfavorably to ultra-peak LeBron.
