Source close to Westbrook believe he was made out to be a scapegoat for Houston's playoff meltdown

Witch hunt? Harden is the best player on the team and the franchise player..... he is the alpha and omega on the team. Everything he does has an outsized impact on the team, its part of the package of being a superstar, franchise player. It's not hard for me to rationalize how a generational offensive player probably won't ever win a championship.

I finally figured out the national media was 100% wrong about Harden, just mostly.

 

Is MDA and the Rockets coaching staff lazy casuals then and every team that also gives him 6 feet to shoot lazy casuals?

Also, yes, those games before don't matter for Dort. He showed up for a big game in a big way, his stock has risen a lot since that game, we'll see what he does with it. If they won that game 7 it would have been because of him, they would have won the series because of Dort.

 

Conspiracy theories? Was Dort not an undrafted rookie?

My agenda is to see the Rockets win another championship. Is your agenda to only see Harden put up stats and be able to argue on twitter and reddit?

 

He was regularly outplayed by an elderly Rajon Rondo and Alex freakin Caruso....



C'mon Man!

 

every team doesn't give him 6 feet to shoot. That's being dramatic. Outside of the rockets, no other team was guarding them like they did. They believed that gave them the best chance, obviously it was wrong.

now those games don't matter. so why even play them then. They should have just skipped to game 7. sounds about right. who cares if his stock rose. You're a bottom barrel player on the edge of being outside the nba. where else would it go

 

When you consistently use "what if's" and spurious conclusions to fuel your anti-Harden agenda it qualifies as a witch hunt.

Harden is not perfect and there are legitimate arguments to be made about facets of his game or past performances so it is completely unnecessary for you to go to the lengths you do to fabricate these scenarios.

 

i think a lot of our problems come back to depth. That might be a Morey thing or a Dantoni thing. For the most part we had strict 8 man rotations, and when someone went down, we collapsed. It never felt like we had guys off the bench ready to step into roles when necessary.

The “culture” thing may be slightly overstated. I think Houston made a business decision to move on with House rather than dump him because they couldn’t find anything close to equivalent value. Also, I think he was just the guy that got caught...he definitely wasn’t the only one.

 

My point exactly the guy is not very good as a floor general.He does only one thing well and that’s run. Other then that he literally has nothing. He can’t shoot, he can’t dribble and play under control. He is a poor defender and that is not due to Covid. That is who he has ALWAYS been

 

Westbrook played terribly, but he's right. He's been scapgoated. Even if he played well, we weren't going to beat the Lakers in a 7 game series. We simply had no answer for Lebron and AD.

 

I don't know either, I was just curious. I also thought the series would be a lot tougher but didn't expect it to get like that.

I just don't understand why Harden couldn't just give his best Klay/Reddick impression for just 15% of the time he shared the floor with WB. Could we at least see it so we can at least check it off the list..... We played heavy PNR.... we played heavy ISO.... how about a balanced attack?

Ive come to the conclusion that MDA is right, "the ball is energy", and Harden hogs too much of it. It's great for the legend of Harden, but I think it puts a ceiling on the team.

 

Are you so anti-Harden that you're exploring alternate timelines? Let's go back to 2009 and bash Kobe for letting a Yao Ming-less Rockets take the Lakers to 7 games. Who cares that they actually beat us and Kobe played well? Let's just bash him in a hypothetical situation and ignore actual performance.

 

To be fair, for any goat conversations including Russ, this would be the most applicable.

 

Is WB delusional? He cost us at least 1 or 2 games in that Lakers series. Crucial turnovers. Dumb passes.

 

This is exactly what I mean with you.

Those two ideas are NOT mutually exclusive.

And teams now do not win championships without at least ONE generational talent like Harden.

 

Dmoreybang sounds like a lin fan. Just put him on ignore. Do yourself a fave

 

Lol, how are u a scapegoat when u were actually by far the worst player?

Rockets had a -6.1 net rating in the playoffs with him on the floor, and that jumped all the way to +6.9 when he was off!

 

It's not a fabricated scenario.... the OKC series turned into a coin flip. We literally almost lost to a CP3 led OKC team. I think you are just upset because the truth hurts,

 

dude has literally spent the last 48 hours on here posting. every single page of like the last 5 threads created has him talking. Boy what a life

 

I remember years back the Lakers were doing the same thing when they played the KG Celtics, just sunk off of him completely...that's with Phil and Kobe and all the high-IQ people on that Lakers staff.

But Dort's value before game 7 was basically playing the best defense we've seen on Harden and yeah, when it is game 7 time, the previous 6 games don't matter. Game 7 matters, it's the only game that matters at that point because if you go up 3-1, as teams find out, and don't win the 4th game then no one cares what good is done. In fact, people will clown you for losing a 3-1 lead, as Kawhi and PG13 found out.

 

Confirms it. Dude is a lin fan.