NO Way... Harden every year in the playoff decides when HE WANTS TO PLAY and that is the bottom line. Harden CAN NOT BE COUNTED ON IN THE PLAYOFF'S He just can't be.
You do realize that running through people to get the free throw line is a major part of his game? He doesn't have their length or leaping ability, but he is a tank and he drives seeking contact to get to the line all the time. It's why he leads the league in free throw attempts year after year.
I am definitely not a Harden hater. I use to defend him all the time. But you’re being way too easy on him. First off I don’t believe any more if he would team up with AD he would be crushing it in the playoffs. If you replaced Lebron on the Lakers with Harden, you would win probably just as many if not more regular season games, but you most definitely would have a tougher time in a series against the Clippers. And I can’t believe I’m saying this but he wouldn’t bring out the best in his players like Lebron does. I always thought of Harden as someone who makes his teammates better and he does, but the playoffs are a different game. Guys like Caruso and Kuzma need to be inspired to excel, and Harden wouldn’t do that by how he has casually carried himself recently. He also had Chris Paul on his team, and I don’t care what anyone says, he could have had him stay in Houston. Maybe not his fault, but there’s no denying if he said CP stays CP wouldn’t have been traded. Remember when Kyrie demanded a trade, Lebron actually insisted Kyrie doesn’t get sent in that Boston trade, probably cuz he knew what was best for him basketball wise. Yes we were really close once, but can’t keep living in the past and glorifying a season where we didn’t get it done no matter the circumstances. We should still be fighting until we get it done. At the end of the day it’s not a knock to not be as good as Lebron. So it’s not like he’s a failure of a player, and he is still undoubtedly my favourite player of all time despite how it sounds. But this series is on him. We’re always standing up for him saying he’s the best and it’s not his fault, but have you watched the last 2 games? Yesterday was disgusting. We were weak and it starts with him. Would we win if he played with more intensity and fought harder? Maybe not. But since he doesn’t we don’t have to wonder that.
I think the difficult part about all this is due to the fact that most of us know he has the skills to be that guy. I’m thinking about all other stars that come back year after year and compete and fall short, Harden is by far the most skilled out of anyone. (Oddly enough the second best is probably Chris Paul) Whether it’s heart or mental toughness or killer instinct, something is missing and it has nothing to do with his basketball abilities. This is the coldest I’ve been about him but you can’t watch his body language yesterday and not agree with me a little. And after too many examples I guess I told myself I can’t just blame the double teams or teammates or chalk it up as just a bad game anymore. Game 6 against the Clippers. Game 5 the first time against the Warriors. We were in situations where we were down but not out and he played like he had given up or played too loosely. Game 6 against the Spurs. Multiple games against OKC. OKC had Shai, Dort, and Bazley playing big minutes. Good players. Super young and ones a vet should eat alive. That block on Dort bought him one more series before showing us where he was these playoffs.
I used to hate Harden's mentality in the playoffs before acquiring Chris Paul. But he has improved every year. He even plays great defense the past few years. I only hate Harden bec he wanted Paul traded for Westbrook bec the latter is one of his best buddies. This trade wasn't logical based on the system and stats of Westbrook and Paul. It was an emotional, personal and irrational trade from the beginning.
My concern is the core gets blown up in some way shape or form, and then what’s the endgame? Are there examples of a non-glam city blowing up a consistent playoff team’s star/coach/gm, and then winning a championship? w the Morey era we’ve at least been in the mix. Knowing Houston sports teams’ luck, I could see us getting rid of Harden/Morey and then sucking for decades. Harden has consistently been good enough to put us in the mix dependent on some lucky breaks, and unfortunately those haven’t happened. Yea he could do some things better in theory, but especially w his increased defense in addition to the offensive load...it’s like people expect him to be Curry and offense and Mutombo on defense.
The fact is Lebron is far better than James Harden. Even basketball idiot know that. Great player likes to play with Lebron over Harden. It has reason. They are not stupid.
Harden pushed for Westbrook because he wanted to play with his buddy, knowing it wasn't a great fit. CP3 can be difficult, but even the current lesser version of him makes winning plays. More than anything on the floor that is gonna forever aggravate me. He slammed the door on his own title chances in Houston.
Lol at Harden haters. we got a player most teams would trade their whole team for. With a guy like harden you can put a couple decent role players around him and your team is an instant contender. Rockets are wasting his prime and he’s getting **** on from his own fans. Dude needs to demand a trade to Toronto or something. If y’all hate harden so much trade him for Siakam and VanVleet plus 5 picks or whatever and cry about never being relevant again.
Take 538s RAPTOR stat for what it is. Dismiss it if you like. Using it simply as a tool to compare talent and production level of the final 8 playoff teams rotations. # of rotation players with a positive RAPTOR rating in these playoffs (winning players) Miami : 8 Boston : 8 LAL : 7 LAC : 6 Milwaukee: 6 Toronto : 6 Denver : 5 Houston : 4(The 40 million dollar anchor Westbrook didn’t manage to crack the net positive RAPTOR rating this postseason) Any surprise the top 4 look like they all will advance? Talent generally wins out. LAL features the #1 overall players based on this rating. Harden being 3rd. He is not blameless, but the inability for some to recognize how little he has to work with as far as positive impact players compared to everyone else in the 2nd round especially considering he’s going up against the team featuring the best 2 overall guys is really astounding.
and CP3 was flawed What are the Stats Harden needs to make people feel good . . .. . the answer is . .. . . I dunno . .. I just need to FEEL like he gave a damn . . . pass the eye test. . ..blah blah blah they will NEVER say cause when he does it they will be hypocrits by still BAMming Rocket River
I think we as a fan base can have two things true and it be completely fair to him and our love for the Rockets: 1. That there’s some truth to the narrative that in the playoffs he’s stoppable in a 7 game series and needs a great team around him, or ideal matchups. Otherwise he just doesn’t have that ability to alone take a team to the Finals. 2. That he’s still going to be one of the all time greats. He’ll be the guy who everyone keeps running into with “all time” records with Wilt, and Jordan. He’ll have a great legacy just because of how high up his name will be on so many lists. He’ll probably earn his jersey and number being retired in Houston even if he asks for a trade this summer. If this is it for Harden in his prime with Houston it sucks no doubt. But sometimes things just are what they are. Two things can be true.
only 2 years ago, we had one of the better teams in nba history, a team that was maybe a hamstring away from beating the most talented team ever. whatever one thinks of harden, that type of team can be built with him as the best player. james harden plus wrong-side-of-30 chris paul plus good role players was an amazing, amazing team. a team that would be considered significant favorites if they were playing this season. that wasn't even some unprecedented supporting cast. a really good cast where everything fit together? sure. but hardly unrepeatable from a team-building perspective. and again, it wasn't just a team on the cusp of maybe being a contender, it was probably a top 25-30 team ever (maybe higher) that would be a favorite most years. it could have been a worse team and would still be a contender in almost any season so it could have involved a lesser player than cp3 as the 2nd star or a lesser group of role players (a worse center than capela) and still been really good. hakeem and jordan have 2 of the top 4 playoff PER's ever. that's why they are who they are. you don't have to have that type of player to win it all. is it much more likely you will win? yeah. but you can have a dirk-level player who finally puts it all together the same year all the role players go crazy in the same year lebron has his worst playoff moment ever and you can win it all. you can cobble together 3 past-their-prime greats like boston. hell, you can hope the actual best team just gets injured like the raptors last year (or the warriors in 2018 ). if i was a betting man, i would say harden never wins a championship. but having an all-time great means you keep hanging around, keep building however you can, and keep hoping that this is the year. because the alternative is usually a nice, long trip through the wilderness hoping the next guy is going to be an all-time great.
in a series of lebron james and anthony davis vs james harden and russell westbrook, you're gonna go with the guy averaging 29 ppg on 66 TS% as the problem, not the guy who has been a complete and utter liability on both ends of the court, up to the point that he's actively holding harden back from scoring more because the other team just refuses to guard him and doubles harden? that's where the team needs to focus on getting better?
so now it was multiple games against okc. maybe in a few years it'll be 4 or 5 games. and you watched dort and think he's a player that other players should eat alive? sounds disingenuous. okc was 26-10 in the games dort played this year, probably not a coincidence. and even if you think they should've been easy to score on, well harden put up 30/8/6 on 62 TS% against the #7 defense.
So you believe with zero bias that he showed resilience and fought and played his hardest this whole time without it ever appearing like he took his foot of the gas pedal? I mean if you read my post I say his skill level is there. Fine Dort is a tremendous defender. And a few years ago it was because Jonathan Simmons was a tremendous defender. And Game 6 against OKC he played just the way you would have liked him to in the 4th? We don’t have to agree. Maybe we have different standards. At some point in every star’s career the specific Wins and Losses are going to stand out more than the stats. He’ll continue to make cases for both sides statistically. But your 30/8/6 is pretty irrelevant to me as that was not his numbers in Game 7. Those were not his numbers in Game 6 against the Spurs. Again, I’m holding him to a very high standard. I’m not arguing he’s not elite. But he’s not at the tier that I argued he was at these past few years. Stats aren’t the whole story.
