[VIDEO] Why James Harden is the Most UNDERRATED Player in NBA HISTORY

Well the thing about him not being on any team was kind of a punishment i felt for being so blatant about not showing effort. Especially when the year before that he really showed effort, but as said when he saw Coward not wanting to do his role he said i wont either.

 

the team played better without howard for a reason, if howard is willing to run pick and roll then thats different

 

We made it! 4 pages though? No chance

 

Harden will be MVP now the curse has passed to Tristan and the CAVS

Doing it for the land

 

Dude is just repeating the same stuff that always gets dismissed. Sucks, but no one cares.

 

That's not how the curse works...

 

Did you forget about James's compilation of this year already? He clearly took a step back on defense.

 

This guy doesnt have a number but I think we should retire this guys shirt in honor of him. From here on out, Rocket fans can not wear that flannel pattern

 

He makes some good points, but Harden did regress on defense this year. This regression to me seems like a lack of focus and effort more than anything else. If he was just a bad defender but actually put in effort, I think people would be fine with it but the lack of effort does not look good.

And the reason Harden was being criticized this year was because we made the conference finals with essential the same team last year and the expectation was so high. The rockets did not live up to expectations. Harden is our best player and a top 5 player in the league and as such people expect a lot from him, as they should.

Having said that,and having watched almost all the games, I blame Bickerstaff, Brewer and Howard for our losses.

 

There's a huge difference between not giving 100% defensive effort not giving even 20% defensive effort. It's laughable that, in order to defend Harden, you're setting the bar at 100%. If you have to set the bar at 100% defensive effort, it doesn't matter what your argument is. Your position is indefensible.

It's easy to play a lot of minutes when you're allowed to rest on defense. Look at the guys with whom we surrounded Harden. Beverley/Ariza/Josh Smith/Dwight. Within the past few years, each of these guys have been considered "great" defensive players.

Why is that something to be proud of? How many other players prioritize drawing contact over making a basket?

Frankly, given his role in our offense, that should be expected of him.

Who cares? "Non-pgs" is just semantics. He runs our offense.

Cherry-picking stats is pointless. Ok, he generates points off touches more efficiently than Lebron. So what? Shabazz Muhammad generates points off touches more efficiently than Harden. Does that mean Muhammad is a better player than Harden? Of course not.

What matters is how much a player's production contributed to overall winning, and frankly, anyone can see that his 2016 level regressed from his 2015 level. There's a reason he wasn't voted to an all-NBA team.

 

This is always my favorite argument: the "winner" argument. If Harden was magically placed on the Warriors with other great players, he'd win a bunch, probably a few rings, and be considered a "winner". I mean...right? Put Steph Curry on the Sacramento Kings. Is he a "winner"? Is he "a guy you can win with" if he can't carry a bunch of scrubs to contender-status?

2015: Harden plays great. The team around him plays great. The coaching is passable. The Rockets make the 2 seed. Harden is showered with praise.

2016: Harden plays great, but not quite as good as 2015. The team around him plays entirely worse, with many players having the worst years of their careers. The coaching is arguably worst in the league. The Rockets make the 8 seed. Harden is skewered by everybody.

Is there no middle ground with Harden? Can people not realize that Harden both needs to improve his defense from last year and maybe become a better leader, but also realize that he is not entirely responsible for everything that happens with the Rockets?

 

Not even 20%? Yeah ok.... This is more vine/compilation talk... Harden is actually a solid on ball defender and a good post defender.... Now he's a mediocre to sub par off ball defender that falls asleep on D or ball watches and he did it even more this past season after having a solid defensive season in 14-15.... Why did he regress? Because he had to carry the biggest offensive load in the league.

No it's not easy because he's the SOLE legit ball handler, playmaker, and shot creator on the team. Which means he has to create the majority of his own points and also the majority of the points for every other player on the team.... No other player in the NBA has that burden.

He doesn't prioritize contact over making the basket....
He does both at an elite level.... He's an elite finisher and he's always among the top 5 in the league in AND-1s... A category he's also led the NBA in before.

You don't simply compare the efficiency of two players if the FGA, USG, and production is completely disproportionate....

 

As you said, he's a sub-par off-ball defender. Well, since he guarded the worst offensive wing on the opposing team, he spent most of his time playing off-ball defense. In other words, he spent most of his time playing sub-par defense.

Maybe not this year, but there have been plenty of players in years past who have had similar roles (Iverson, Carmelo, Kobe, Westbrook, Irving, etc...). It's really not a unique situation.

Absolutely wrong. He clearly prioritizes contact over making the basket. Specifically, as Harden drives to the basket, iif the defender's arm is extended, Harden will try to bring the ball (and his arms) through the defender's arm, creating a defensive foul. He does that rip-through move almost every time he goes to the rim.

That's actually the point I was trying to make.

Cherry-picking random stats to prop up a player is painfully transparent.

 

Want the season to start, sick of these garbage discussions that prove nothing

 

i'm somewhere in the middle on this argument.

yes he plays the most minutes and has to do everything for the team. i completely forgive the turnovers because harden BY HIMSELF is a top 10 offense in the league.

however, the defensive effort needs to be there. sure he needs a rest after doing everything on offense, sure he can get annoyed that his teammates can't help, but we never had to have that discussion about lebron, kobe, wade, iverson, jordan, etc... HOF players didn't need those excuses. and all of them played with crap teams that they had to carry 100% of the offense and still played defense. he needs to own up to that if he wants to become that type of winner, like kobe, lebron, wade, jordan, iverson, etc..

HOWEVER:
the blame here falls not on james, but on les and morey. and i've been a strong morey supporter (les, not so much). morey's fault was in not looking at chemistry when going after dwight. a guy who never wanted to run a PnR was brought in to run what would've been a devastating PnR, but guess what? he didn't want to. and because we paid dwight so much, it affected morey's ability to build a solid roster that fit around james.

honestly instead of signing dwight, the #1 target that summer should've been paul millsap. no one knew he'd be the better player in 3 years, but he was always the better fit. not to mention he signed for only half the cost of dwight that summer. dwight would've gone to his #2 pursuer, the GSW, which might have messed up the good thing they have going for them. and we would've still had about $10M more to spend on FAs. since the warriors blew theyre money on dwight, iggy would've still been available for about the same money we have remaining. that's right, we could've landed iggy and millsap instead of dwight!!

gone into the 2013-2014 season with a rotation of:
asik(30)-dmo (18)
sap (36)-tj (12)
parsons (36)
harden (36) - iggy (36)
bev (18) - lin (18)

and i bet we would've beat portland with sap guarding LMA and iggy guarding guys like batum, matthews, and even lillard. we would've lost to the spurs in the second round though.

that summer morey's next mistake was going after guys like melo and bosh... instead of going after lowry who was open to a houston return. he resigned with the raptors who showed him that he was their #! priority while the rockets waited to hear back from everyone else they were after. letting parsons walk, trading lin to clear cap space, and signing lowry was the the way to go. many of us were screaming to just sign lowry rather than waiting for bosh. this isn't a hindsight move! we knew this was the right move back then!

in a WCF mach against the warriors we would've had the advantage because of how well we match up against them:

asik Vs dwight
sap Vs green
iggy Vs barnes
harden Vs klay
lowry Vs steph

all we needed was the right FIT, not just chasing the biggest name (dwight, bosh etc..). with the right fit, harden wouldn't have been asked to produce 100% of the offense, he wouldn't have been asked to play 40mpg, and he could ALWAYS guard the worst guy on the other team.

finally, i blame les for coddling his cash cow star player instead of pushing him to work harder on defense. again, harden alone is a top 10 offense in the nba. this summer we had a great chance to instill a defensive mindset not just for our team but james in particular. JVG, thibs, and vogel were all available. tell me that any one of them wouldn't have turned a lineup of capela, sap, iggy, harden, lowry, into a legit championship contender... even though they would've been legit contenders for 2 seasons. those coaches might have put us over the top. instead our owner wants a fun flashy brand. so why would james hold himself accountable on defense when the owner doesn't believe in it and hires a coach that doesn't believe in it?

sorry for the rant / long post.

 

No mention of James' complete lack of defense? Oh here we go, 9 minutes in. lol @ saying "not everyone can be Lebron James on defense," nobody is asking James to be Lebron. We're asking him not to be so oblivious to his surroundings. You can't put in 100 percent effort and 0 effort on defense. Even if you're amazing on offense. It's a ridiculous excuse, IMO. It's not like we're giving him crap for not running...he's done the major physical effort of getting down court...we're not yelling at him for cherry picking...the guy just ball watches...that's mental focus...absolutely no excuse for losing mental focus so often on defense.


Still don't think James gets a pass for "freezing Dwight out of the offense," because he didn't like that he wanted to post. Dwight was recruited with the impression that he would have those opportunities in Houston. James was part of the reason Dwight came to Houston in the first place.

James does not get a pass for alienating his teammate and refusing to play any semblance of defense for most of last year.

He's amazing on offense. And he is capable of playing decent to good defense an entire season. I've only seen him do that a once. Both of those years have been sandwiched between two atrocious defensive effort seasons.

I have faith James will come back this year playing defense, though. And I'm glad we have him on our team. But I would gladly give up 15% of his offensive focus for him to just pay attention on defense.

 

The problem with all of the Harden defensive criticism with regards to his level of effort is that most posters simply slap an arbitrary percentage to him. "He only gives 20% effort," "Nah, it's more like 35%." What do the metrics say about his defensive level of play, and how can we compare that to the numbers on his '15 MVP level (a year almost all of us are in consensus on the fact that he was focused and dialed in on defense).

I also do think it's important to note that when guys like Melo, Jordan, Wade, Kobe were asked to carry their team's load, they still had at least competitive talent around them to the point where they didn't have DOUBLE the points per game & assists per game of the next highest guy up; if they did, then they had about the same success as Harden did this past year. Jordan was an 8 seed and got swept by Bird's Celtics; Wade struggled to carry the Heat to the playoffs in a weak East; Kobe missed the playoffs and lost to the Suns in the first round.

Regardless of what you think about his defense, what he did this season, given the circumstances of the team around him, warranted at least an NBA 3rd team honor, and he is extremely underrated by fans across the league at the moment because of the simplistic meme perception they have of him.