I'm not acting. Tyreke is an absolutely horrible player. He's not even the best shooting guard on his team. Marcus Thornton is better than him for crying out loud. If the Maloofs would have drafted TWill in 09 and handed him the basketball and told him he was their man, then you would have the same player they have in Reke. A terribly inefficient scorer and playmaker who has "empty stats" because he completely tears down the concept of team and he plays at such an inefficient level that his mates have no respect for him. The Maloofs are responsible for Tyreke being who he was. He's simply not that good. He's a big guard that tried to be a point guard but that didn't work and now he's trying to be a shooting guard. But he can't shoot the 3, he can't facilitate the offense, he can't do nothing but chew up the shot clock and jack up a jumper. He is terrible. He's one of the worst shooting guards in the NBA. And he's in danger of being out of the league in a couple years.
Here is the deal in the NBA. If your not good enough to be "THE GUY", you better have the skills to play off the ball. Tyreke isn't good enough to be the guy, and he has to dominate the ball to be effective. He also can't play off of someone else. He's just not that good.
Both have the same skills but comparing Evans and Harden is a lot like comparing John Wall and Rose....one has stuff between the ears and the other only has earwax. At least Wall is still a rookie and by all indications has improved from his first few games, Evans got spoiled from Sactown force feeding him the ball to get his 20-5-5 stat and became this era's Starbury/AI/Francis clone along with Melo. Maybe even worse than Melo, because Melo at least operates in the paint which has a higher success rate, Evans shoots from the perimeter and takes long 2's all game long. Yes, Evan has experience being "the man", but if being "the man" leads to lottery land how good of a "man" are you? Harden was already extremely skilled coming into the league, and while he had trouble making his presence felt his first few years (leading me to call him a bust LOL fail), however he learned to play great two way ball and has really good of the ball movements. Now that he's learned to finish in the paint and shoot 3's at a decent clip he's probably one of the most complete SGs in the league. At the very least he's true to his character as a SG, Evans is still trying to be a pg because pgs are easier to shoot over than wings lol.
IMHO this is where simple box score analysis fails and people who "watch the game" get the distaste statgeeks crunching up numbers in spreadsheets. You can have zero assists and still be a better playmaker than someone who has 5 assists a game, esp. when your "assists" become foul shots or hockey assists (where the dude you pass to passes it to another more open guy). OTH, if you have the ball 99% of the time and you keep on throwing it to the other guys with only 5 secs left, some of their desperation heaves actually go in and after the night is over you have 5-6 assists. Sure Harden has never been the focal point of the offense, but he doesn't have to be the focal point, you can get other offensively talented players and have them all be offensive threats. With Evans (and AI, Melo), they have to the focal point or they're pretty much useless. They're probably ok if you can get extremely defensive players who don't mind not getting the ball, but those types are really rare and if you just get normal two-players or another offensive player then those guys will be rendered ineffective by the ball hog. With Harden, you can find any type of player and he'll make it work. With Evans, you have to find Dennis Rodman, Ben Wallace, Luk mbah a moute and Mutombo to round out your team.
No. Harden has superior skills. You're giving Reke too much credit. He hasn't improved much since his rookie year. Talk to me when Reke shoots better than 25% from long range. The Rose/Wall comparison also doesn't work since Rose is much more experienced than Wall while Harden and Reke are both in their 3rd year.
Let's maybe save some time here. Have you actually seen Reke play much or are your arguments based on theory? When you pose the question "who else on the Kings are going to take those shots?" it proves you haven't seen how well their offense ran when Beno came in and Reke went to the bench. Sometimes it was night and day. When you say Harden gets "open looks", how do you think he gets those open looks? If you don't know I'll answer: He creates them. Saying Harden performs under little pressure is also totally ridiculous because OKC has played in meaningful games with expectations the last 2 1/2 years while Sacramento has been garbage time Reke's entire career. Harden is "not Ariza, obviously he's better"? Really? LOL! Then you bring up JJ Hickson. SMH.
Haha yeah, and sometimes the Lakers offense runs better when Kobe goes to the bench. I'm well aware of Tyreke's game. Just because the offense runs better when he's out of the game at times (and it does) does not make him a bad player. I mean I guess Harden is better than Carmelo than right? The truth is Tyreke is still their primary scorer and best scoring option (unless again Cousins decides to play that night) Yeah it's easier to create open looks when you're on the best team in the NBA. That's just the facts, it's easier playing with a potential MVP player and Westbrook. You obviously missed the entire point of me bringing up Ariza and Hickson. Both players were on really good teams, and when you took them off those teams what happened again? The question is all about upside and if you do not understand that it is harder being the leader of your team than coming off the bench then there is not much else I can say here. I'm the one who doesn't watch? One of the worst SGs in the NBA? Really? It takes some time for these guys to get it and it took Durant, Dwight, a long list of guys to really break out. The coach also plays a big part in this as well. I think guys like Tyreke get too much flack for being ballhogs. These guys were big time college players and you usually don't become that being a ballstopper. If you get Tyreke on a great team with a great coach things would be different.
Answer me this: How many actual games have you see Reke play? This will determine whether "there is not much else I can say here".
Have seen enough of him to know he still has great potential. Didn't know I had to make a tally mark for the amount of games I've seen for each player.
Yeah he did, but I always said when we got Harden that I wasn't the biggest fan of his game. I'm more than happy to be wrong about this.
And that is how a MAN accepts defeat. I think your take actually wasn't that bad at the time. Harden was being held back by two players at the time and Tyreke was putting up some Lebron like stats.
