No on the trade of Braindead right now unless we get a King's randsom in return. However we do need a true alpha dog that will fight on our behalf a game 6 at home. Make it happen Morey
It's stupid not to hold the rest of the team accountable. Just build around Harden, that's all you have to do.
Agreed, I would love to get Kelly Olynyk and trade Ryan Anderson to a team l the Knicks, he would be great on the triangle offense. That said Harden needs more ball handling support to run the offense 3 needs point guard help, wing reliability and front court depth. Alos ne of them have to be a great player. Ex Gordon Hayward, Blake Griffin or Chris Paul. Just examples in actuality could likely spend money better A side note would consider offering Shaun Livingston a lot leave Golden State. Valuing decision making and defense over shooting.
Absolutely ridicolous. In the modern NBA, every player that resembles a superstar is going to get maxed out (Hayward, Lowry, Love, DeAndre, Derozen, etc.) making elite players that can singlehandedly carry a franchise the most valuable possible commodity. Mediocre teams, and even teams like the Raptors, Clippers, or Jazz would kill to have Harden, Kawhi, or Westbrook to build around. And y'all want to trade him? For what? So we can tank the next 5 years? Because any ring prospects for the immediate are out the window. If you seriously think the answer is to move on from Harden rathen than pairing him with another supersar, you are bat **** crazy. We have a player who has been a MVP candidate two out of the last three years and will probably make less than Kyle Lowry and Mike Conley next year, and y'all want to trade him because he "chokes" and has a "bad attitude". Fans like this don't deserve success.
I assume that by putting chokes and bad attitude in quotation marks, you are implying that neither are accurate. If that's the case, then how do you view all those crucial games where Harden played like crap? This is not an aberration - this has happened in every playoff series since 2014 (and happened when OKC played Miami in the finals). That's 4 consecutive seasons plus one more. Maybe it's not choking or a lackadaisical attitude. If you know there's something else going on here, by all means share. Make sure to be specific about the problem and the solution. In the meantime, here are my thoughts..... There's been a lot of Harden apologists suggesting that adding more talent will solve his habit of disappearing in the biggest games. Why? Will better shooters cure him of throwing wild passes and driving into a mass of defenders when he has one of his meltdowns? Will a 2nd elite playmaker cure him of his habit of hanging around the half court line when he doesn't have the ball in his hands? Will a few more elite defenders cure him of his tendency to drift off his man or let his man drive around him? Will a few more high energy guys somehow in invigorate him in those games where he plays like a drunk with chronic fatigue syndrome? All of the above isn't meant to be rhetorical only. I ask these questions in hopes someone can convince me that there is some perfect and more importantly available combination of players that can fix the problems I've listed. One point everyone agrees on is that superstars are a rare commodity, yet there seems to be an assumption that it's a given that we can acquire a 2nd superstar to pair with Harden. But as we've seen, it isn't easy to add quality players unless (a) you've already won a championship or (b) your team is a major market. Neither of those descriptions fit the Rockets. Maybe we can improve our role players (Anderson has been a failure, mostly because he simply can't hit his shots at home), but is that enough to make us a championship contender? Based on what I described above, I don't think it is. So that leaves us with trying to add superstars, and I don't see how we can do that. We're not going to have top draft picks, and we don't have a huge collection of role players as trade assets. That means we have to hope that some superstar wants to play with Harden badly enough to take a pay cut and sign as a free agent. Which brings me back to the problems caused by Harden's shortcomings - why would anyone be inspired to take a pay cut to play with a guy that wants the ball in his hands all the time but can't handle the pressure of an elimination game. Ask yourself - if you were a highly coveted superstar free agent, would you give up Bird money or an offer from GS/Cleveland/SA just to play with Harden? I think the answer is pretty obvious. So if you can't win a championship with Harden without either pairing him with another superstar or the absolutely perfect collection of role players, and the odds of either are minuscule, doesn't it make just a little sense to consider trading him while he still has value? Do we want to do the same as we did with McGrady, Yao, and Dwight - hold on until they're no longer valuable assets at all? We're not winning it all either way, but one gets things moving a bit more quickly.
After careful thought and deliberation, I think I have determined what is necessary to fix the problems you have cited... We need a big sob who can whup Harden's ass when he starts lagging! I'm thinking a vet... a big vet... jason terry couldn't do it - vet but too little... Dwight couldnt do it - big enough but who's really gonna take Dwight seriously while he's grabbin your junk or giving you a purple nurple... but this year everything was going great... harden was having a phenomenal year, elevating his teammates, sharing the ball - he even was playing some decent d... then Nene got injured and the threat of a big dude walking up and dottin james' eye disappeared... yeh... I think I might be on to something here... lol
We signed Dwight Howard. Not every single superstar ever is going to sign with Golden State or Cleveland, we could make a run at a Blake Griffin-esque player. Or through trade. Seems like players would enjoy playing with Harden much more than Westbrook, unlike RWB Harden elevated all of his teammates to career highs. As long as another superstar isn't a primary ball-handler, they should benefit from playing with Harden. To answer you're choking question, a simple answer is to take the pressure off. If Harden doesn't feel like HE has to win the game alone, he may not be prone to extreme anxiety-induced choking. Another answer is for as much flack he gets, playoff Harden isn't that atrocious. His playoff numbers are about the same as his regular season numbers, and he flashes in some terrific performances. The problem is the bad performances have been god awful, but its not like it happens every game. Maybe Harden has an off-game and having another superstar doesn't mean we have 0 chance of winning that game. My other question is if not Harden, then what? Half the puzzle seems to finding one of the league's true top superstars, and we have one. Do we really want to give that up to go through a long rebuilding process? Because that is the only viable option to chase a ring, and that takes years. Like 5-6. **** that. Lets ride with the superstar we have, hope we get an improved roster, and enjoy watching 50+ win seasons and playoff basketball every year. A WCF appearance and a playoff series win in the stacked Western Conference over the past three years is better than most teams.
I guess im old school. I dont care about individual accolades or our team "hip" & cool". I want guys that compete What part of QUITTER do you not get? The guy is going to ruin the intregity of this franchise. Nobody's going to want to play with a quitter. Its hard to watch other superstar players give it 150% and know ours laid down when it counted. Having a bad game is acceptable. But quitting? If we gotta rebuild, im okay with it. Its better than surrounding our team around a professional con artist. Keeping Harden is a sign of desperation. Les needs to change the culture in houston
were probably stuck with him, but the ideal championship scenario is drafting a tim duncan while he's a david robinson.
I'm sure Houston would love going to a perennial playoff contender to winning less then 40 games every season as long as we have the right "culture".
Like it or not Harden is a superstar talent, and he's not going anywhere. Having him is half the puzzle to a championship team - getting rid of him would be like an NFL team getting rid of an elite QB in his prime because he **** the bed in the playoffs.
Or winning 55 games just to have Harden shut it down in the postseason? No thanks. We should trade his azz & rebuild around a nucleus of young guys. Get me someone here who works hard & wants to win. This isnt the 1st time Harden quit in a elimination game. The guy is a con
You guys really miss those "Kevin Martin struggling to make the playoffs but not bad enough for a good pick" years don't you?
Sure it's fun, romantic even, to imagine ourselves becoming like the Bucks or Wolves but you're even more likely to be like the Magic or Pistons or Hornets or Suns or Kings. Just riding the treadmill of suckitude year after year hoping to find the next star but ending up with Mario Hezonja. It took us years to find a star and we finally got one. The return OKC got for Harden was NOT worth it and so will whatever we get. In this era of MVPs freeloading for rings you need multiple stars to win and to have multiple you need to start with 1. Count your blessings.
You're smoking rocks . We're close . Harden improves every year . We could use one more star piece next to Harden . And hope Durant leaves for another team LOL . I believe we can win a championship soon.
How quickly they forget. Those years were not that fun, Idgaf how hard working those teams were or how much passion they played with. We were just hoping to sneak into the playoffs as a mediocre 8th seed and not get embarrassed. We had no star. We were totally irrelevant. There was nothing worth talking about when it came to the Houston Rockets back then. people are over here acting like it's so easy to get a superstar... Let's not forget how LUCKY we were to get a player like Harden in the 1st place. It required OKC being so incredibly cheap and not willing to give Harden 4 more million dollars in order to keep a young title contender together. Not 4 more mil/yr, but just 4 more mil over the life of the contract. Then, GS wasn't willing to give up Klay for Harden, and Washington wasn't willing to give up Beal. That is what allowed Morey to swoop in and get him. Even after we got him, I saw those threads. A lot of people on here did not think that he was that good lol or would become some special player. Morey got Harden, and NOBODY on here ever envisioned him becoming this good. NOBODY thought that we'd be getting a potential top 5 player and MVP candidate. We could go 10+ years without getting another player on Harden's level.
