Asik's elite defense makes him valuable, but his offense is straight trash. Funny how nobody *****s on a player who's all defense and no offense, but harden got crucified last year for being the anti asik
This is actually not as true as last year. With DMo and without Dwight, Rockets allow 1.039 opponent point per possession. With Asik, Pelicans are allowing 1.012. For reference, Asik's numbers would correlate to 4th in the NBA in defense this year. DMo's numbers would correlate to 10th. This despite DMo playing mostly alongside Black and Papanikalaou, while Asik gets to play with Davis. Asik is better, but you're really underestimating how good the Rockets are with DMo in the middle. #10 without Dwight is REALLY good.
To be fair, Asik couldn't play offense because he just didn't have the talent. Harden didn't play defense because he just didn't make the effort. You can't do much about a player's talent level. But you can certainly criticize a player's effort.
Was it effort, or was it that somehow he could not find the energy to be elite on both sides of the ball? Was he taking some plays off because he was so physically drained? Did he push his conditioning up to the next level in the off season? Or did he have nagging injuries last season? Impossible to tell.
If it was conditioning, he certainly didn't make an effort to improve his conditioning during the offseason last year. His defensive issue wasn't new. In fact, he said at the beginning of last season that he wanted to play better defense. Of course it proved to be just lip service. After the end of last season, he admitted that it was a focus problem, which a lot of us observers already saw. It was clear that he wasn't paying attention a lot of times on the defensive side. So it was clear to me that it was an effort problem. (Focus is a mental effort.)
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>The Pelicans, with Anthony Davis and Omer Asik up front, are tied with the Knicks at 27th in points allowed per possession.</p>— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) <a href="https://twitter.com/ZachLowe_NBA/status/541601521096720384">December 7, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
I really believe that there was a serious lack of veteran leadership on this squad last season. Omer Asik pouting, the world looking at JLin's stat line, Portions playing for a max contract, just a lot of little agendas and issues on the team that were detracting from focus. This year you can clearly see everyone buying in to effort and all-out hustle.
Lets not get carried away. Asik is a beast and he's a great rebounder. Offensively, it isn't even close. D-mo is playing great on both sides of the ball and it's leading us to lots of wins.
Nah, Asik has a much bigger sample of great rebounding and defense. DMo is definitely a better two-way player though, not even close.
Asik is a roleplayer, Harden is a superstar. Superstars get all the criticism in addition to the glamor.
