All good except that basketball is played on both ends of the court. And the two guys you mentioned are all time Defensive players while Harden is one of the worst possibly Also what is his record in elimination games like Game 6 vs Spurs or Game 5 vs Warriors where he had a record 13 turnovers That's the issue with just looking at raw numbers. It's all well and good posting monster stats in the first round of the playoffs against weaker teams like Harden does but then going missing further in the playoffs when it counts. Stats on average will seem good but reality is different
Harden never quit. But every single thing all y’all haters and what have you done for me latelys say was said about Hakeem. Y’all either too young or don’t wanna admit it.
First, those aren't raw stats, they are averages. Harden as one of the all time worst defenders is another played out narrative. He's not elite but he's not a bad defender. The Rockets learned how to use him to take advantage of his post defense. He switches to bigs and he's been one of the the top post defenders in the league. He's fine on defense. Are you under the impression that Harden's man is frequently going off? If so, who would that be? You want to take Harden's first round stats out of the equation? Ok, fair enough. Here's the stats Rocket vs GSW series this season: Harden - 34.8 pts, 6.8 reb, 5.5 ast, .594 TS%, 2.2 steals, 3.8 TOV Curry - 23.9 pts, 4.7 reb, 5.0 ast, 1.0 steals, 3.0 TOV Durant - 33.2 pts, 5.0 reb, 4.4 ast, .589 TS% , 0.8 steals, 3.4 TOV So, of the 3 MVPs in the series, Harden was the leading scorer, most efficient and had the most rebounds,assists and steals. Yeah, I see your point. It really looks like he shrunk under the pressure. 35 pts on elite efficiency? Hopefully he can do better. So, in your mind "Regularly" means two game over a 10 year career? I'm going to make a guess that you probably think that Kobe was clutch too. Am I right?
I have these numbers saved because I recently had this discussion with someone and calculated it myself. His career stats in elimination games as a rocket are- 6 wins 7 losses 27.5 points 5.6 assists 5.2 rebounds 5.4 TOV 58.6% TS
Nope.. 1990-91: Were it not for a serious injury midway through the 1990-91 season, Olajuwon would likely have led the NBA in rebounding for a third straight year. He took an elbow in the eye from the Chicago Bulls' Bill Cartwright on January 3, suffering a blowout fracture of the bones that surround the eyeball. Olajuwon underwent surgery on January 14 and missed the Rockets' next 25 games, the longest idle stretch of his career. Although his average of 13.8 rebounds per game was better than any other player's, he failed to qualify for the leaderboard because he did not play in the required 70 games (only 56) or have the required 800 total rebounds (only 770). The seven-year veteran did qualify to rank among the blocked-shot leaders, finishing first in the league for a second straight year with 3.95 per game. He added 21.2 points per game, leading the Rockets in scoring and rebounding average for a fifth straight season. Olajuwon's eye injury forced a break in his string of six consecutive All-Star appearances. (He returned to the All-Star Game in 1992.) At season's end he was named to the All-NBA Third Team and the NBA All-Defensive Second Team. The winning streak was without him and he learned to trust his teammates with an early pass. And usage rate is nice but it doesn’t track the entire possession. And the team got better because of it. DD
Should rephrase it to: Harden isn’t going to share touches with someone anytime soon when he thinks the team is on the verge of not making the playoffs.
Except Hakeem didn't stagnate the offense or hold the ball too long. He always made quick decisions. Same with Jordan. The issue with Harden is more the stagnant ball dribbling and as we see it hurts in the playoffs as the team offense has performed worse 3 years in a row.
Hakeem wasn't a willing passer before the championship years. He tried to spin through double and triple teams because he had 0 confidence in the players around him.
Several things missing here. First, adjusted for era, Harden's TS% doesn't look great at all. For the 90's that was a very good TS%, today not so much. Secondly, you can look at efg% which takes out free throws, because as we know refs or gameplans can take them away. Hakeem efg% 94- .521 95- .523 (.529 for playoff career) Jordan efg% (in 96 he was 32 years old) 91- .537 92- .514 93- .502 92- .506 96- .490 97- .469 98- .474 (.503 for playoff career) Harden efg% 15- .509 16- .475 17- .486 18- .478 19- .504 (.492 for playoff career) Another thing not considered is turnovers. Harden has much higher turnovers. He's generally averaged around 6 or more per 100 possessions while Hakeem and Jordan were around 4 or less. Harden also tends to get those live ball ones that lead to easy fastbreaks. And as well you can just see their ORTG and TS% compared to their regular seasons. Harden drops off, Hakeem and Jordan get better. Here's a good video that goes into further detail on who improves the most in the playoffs and who gets worse.
Even if you argue Harden isn't a bad defender, he's still miles behind Hakeem and Jordan who are 2 of the best in history. At best you can hope Harden doesn't hurt the team. Sure he does ok in the post against crappy post players, but that isn't saying much. Also the team is forced to switch everything he's involved in because he doesn't fight over picks. He's also terrible at getting back. 2019 Playoff stats: Harden- .567 ts%, 111 ORTG Curry- .620 ts%, 121 ORTG Durant- .661 ts%, 121 ORTG Doesn't look much better for Harden until you look at 2015, a year Harden actually did have a good playoffs because he played with pace and didn't stagnate the offense with too much dribbling on the ISO and his turnovers were under better control. This offseason Harden should look at video from his 2015 playoff run. BTW, I don't really agree that players don't want to play with him. H'es a great passer so he gets guys a lot of easy shots. Also, by plus minus numbers Harden doesn't look bad in the playoffs. It's his box score (and the team offense) that take big hits.
DD, How is the article excerpt that you posted relevant? All it says is that Hakeem missed 25 games. That's true but he came back the game before the streak began. Olajuwon fractured his orbital socket on 1/3/91. He missed the rest of January and returned on February 28th. The 13 game winning streak began the next game on 3/3/91. The final game of the streak was on 3/28/91. Here's the game log for Olajowon in '91. You can see that he played in every game of the 13 game winning streak. The gamelog contains links to box scored for each game too. https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/o/olajuha01/gamelog/1991/ You want to ignore useage? Ok how about 26 fga/game in the '95 playoffs? Harden's high is 24 fga/game. Between '91 and the two championship years, Olajuwon's FGA, useage and FGA all went up. You can't argue with the fact that he shot the ball more in '94 and '95. In this year's playoffs, Harden took 28.6% of the Rockets total shots. In the '95 playoffs, Hakeem took 32.7% of the Rockets total shots. Hakeem was hugely ball dominant in the championship seasons and it worked. Perception vs Reality.
The "Stagnant" Rockets offense last season scored 114.1 points per 100 possession. The '94 Rockets averaged 105.4 points per 100 possessions and the '95 team averaged 109.7. There's no style points, I'll take 114 points per 100 possession over 110 or less every day of the week. Yes, in the playoff you play good teams most games so typically the defenses you face are better. Toronto averaged 112.6 pts per 100 possessions this year but in the playoffs they only averaged 104.2. That's because they played some good defensive teams. We played Utah and GSW who are both good defensive teams. It's not really surprising that our number would be lower vs them. Look at GSW, they were down almost 4pts/100 possessions against the Rockets and they were down almost 8 pts/ 100 possession against Toronto. If you play against good defenses, it's harder to score.
Efficiency is efficiency, you don't adjust for era. They had 3 point shots in the rules and the Rockets used them. The fact that there's more 3s now doesn't effect Olajuwons numbers at all. He wasn't a 3 point shooter. Why in the world would you ignore free throws? We're talking about what actually occurred and the free throws occurred. Ok, so Harden had a couple of more turnovers per game than Jordan or Olajuwon. How about the number of total passes or total touches? Are you going to factor that in? So what live ball turnover stats or points off individual turnover numbers are you using? So your argument is that Jordan and Olajuwon's numbers are superior because their TS% goes up in the playoffs? Even though Harden's TS% is lower in the playoffs, his TS% is still higher than Hakeem or Olajuwon's. If you're only going to look at playoffs then bottom line is that Harden's TS% in the playoffs is better than Hakeem or MJ's.
Harden doesn't just guard crappy post players. We switch most everything and because of that the opponents can get most any switch they want by simply choosing who participates in their pick and roll. The numbers are on the NBA site, you can see exactly who he guarded on each possession and how he fared. Did Harden get lit up defensiviely by anyone? If so, who was that? Switching is a basic premise of our defense. We aren't doing it because of Harden, we do it for all of our perimeter players. GSW does the same thing. I stated the fact that Harden's career playoff TS% was higher than the career TS% of Hakeem or Jordan. The reply that I got was that it was because Harden's stats were padding in the first round and then they went down against the good. teams. So then I posted Harden's numbers vs GSW. Now you're back posting the full playoff averages. Are we talking number over the entire playoffs or only against good teams? I posted the numbers from the Rockets series vs GSW. Harden was better that Curran and Durant in pts, TS%, Reb, steals and assists. We played two really good defenses in this year's playoffs, it shouldn't really be too surprising that our offenses numbers go down.Toronto played some top defenses too and they were down over 8 points per 100 possessios vs the regular season. You don't score as many points against good defenses.
Rather be Harden than Westbrook right now. No love for recent MVPs. Harden can't find another superstar, Westbrook lost George and Curry lost Durant.
