True, Golden State is straight murdering teams while playing in a historically stacked western conference. Voters may buy into that IF they are already buying into the "Best player on best team". But if team record was never a big criteria to begin with, then Harden is the front-runner and I'd have to imagine Westbrook is up there as well.
Paul George knows who the real MVP is. <iframe src="https://vine.co/v/OYlu23ZZDw0/embed/simple" width="600" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe><script src="https://platform.vine.co/static/scripts/embed.js"></script>
100% true! If you take record out, this would easily be the top 3: 1. Harden 2. Westbrook 3. Davis / Lebron / Curry
42% of all of the Rockets points are scored or assisted by James Harden. Take his stats away, and 42% of our points are gone.
That's what I thought and that should prove you how crazy good he is. A SG with those kind of skills is just amazing!! All the others in top 5 are actually PGs, though Westbrook is not a traditional PG either.
Geez RealGM is an absolute cesspool when it comes to Harden hating. Check this thread out. http://forums.realgm.com/boards/vie...d=0366395b9f53919c0b82596d95cf3c48#start_here Here are some posts from the thread.
If I were not a Rockets fan, I would not like it either. In fact, most games where Harden shoots many FTs are indeed boring. It's easy and understandable that people like to root for a guy who gets most points off of shots, especially if it's with a release like Curry's. There's also some truth to those statements, if you can look past their hate and emotional state in which they posted.
It is understandable to hear them say that Harden is over reliant on FT's but a lot of them are saying that he would be nothing without his calls which is absolutely ridiculous. Westbrook gets about 15 FT's a game these days and no one calls him out on it. Many of them say he flops for every foul call which is again ludicrous.
James gets hated on for the free throws. Look at Westbrook's free throws during his Hero-ball stretch. He is shooting a crap load of free throws. To his fault James does play for contact a bunch, But he usually deserves them.
Myth: James Harden shoots a historically high number of free throws, proving that he is the only scorer ever to rely on the refs. Fact: Here are just a few of the 100 NBA player-seasons that averaged more free throws per game than James Harden. Should these guys get an asterisk for relying on the refs too? 1987 Michael Jordan 1988 Michael Jordan (MVP!) 1988 Charles Barkley 1989 Charles Barkley 2005 Kobe Bryant 2006 Kobe Bryant 2006 Lebron James 2008 Lebron James 2010 Lebron James (MVP!) 2006 Dwyane Wade 2007 Dwayne Wade 2010 Kevin Durant 2013 James Harden (ha!) 2008 Dwight Howard 2009 Dwight Howard 2011 Dwight Howard 2012 Dwight Howard 2005 Allen Iverson 2006 Allen Iverson 2009 Kevin Martin 1994 David Robinson 1995 David Robinson (MVP!) Shaq, 9 times (MVP!) Karl Malone, 6 times (MVP!) and everyone good from the 60s, many times. Furthermore, those within 0.2 attempts per game of Harden include such luminaries as Gilbert Arenas, Jerry Stackhouse, and Corey freaking Maggette.
It's not as stacked as we thought in the early part of the season. OKC lost Durant so they are basically a treadmill to nowhere team this year, PHX was kind of a dud, the Spurs have declined and the Mavericks weren't as good as advertised either. You're not going to have any 50 win teams miss the playoffs this year. On the other side, the rise of the Hawks caught everyone by total surprise.
But but when Westbrook gets 22 free throws in a game he is just in "attack mode" and is just being "aggressive." I have slowly learned to stay away from /r/nba and any public basketball forum. The amount of hate that Harden, Bev and Howard get is ridiculous.
The thing is though, we have to be worried about his FG% and amount of FTs since he will not get a lot of those calls in the play-offs. We've seen that in years past..
I couldn't believe how much love they where showing Harden on ESPN. It was nice to see, and James Harden deserves all the accolades he's reciving for how he's been carrying this team all year long. The guy is unstoppable in the paint.
Tom Haberstroh mentioned on Bill Don't Lie that data shows Steph sitting on the bench actually hurts the Warriors more than Harden on bench. If the Warriors win 67+ games, history shows teams of that caliber are rewarded with an MVP.
