Who is better right now James Harden or Lebron James?

Dang resorting to attacking perceived educational backgrounds. Nice

ChemE for me in case you are interested.

Sure. If attacking the validity of the data that’s available is what you have to resort to at this point go for it.

I know that the negative slant towards Harden is overblown. The idea that he holds the ball more and hampers his teammates from the opportunity to possess the ball is overblown and essentially bullshit compared to other similar type players.

 

Daryl Morey(and Zach Lowe) are on Record saying that the reason we stopped doing pick and roll was because teams would just start trapping out of it and not would not let Harden use it. Teams gave up guarding the Harden Capela pick and roll.. Using a pick and roll now would just bring the doubles to Harden(with no release valve). Capela couldnt be trusted on the short roll because he wasnt skilled enough. You see how differently it is when Jeff Green is on the floor, he's actually a great short roller. We also dont soley run isolation plays, I dont know where you are getting this from.

 

James is

LeBron James :-(

 

It's not overblown. If anything it's surpressed far too much by aggressive fans.

Dude you've insulted countless posters saying they are bad at math because they use the "eye test".

I'm sure in ChemE they had some sort of design of experiment course where they taught you about confounding factors.

 

You don't think 15 extra minutes of playing time will have a noticeable impact on distance traveled?

Maybe you should stop using stats you don't understand.

 

If that were true, then the Lakers wouldnt double him? Why not let Harden go one on one and let us run our monotonous offense as you say?

Our offense does work though? Like yea motion offense works if you have the right players. But our offense works as well. You just need more than Harden running it. You need a number 2 guy and Cp3 was that guy. Westbrook is not that guy.

 

Our offense doesn't work well in the playoffs tradionally. Big drop offs in offensive efficiency relative to other teams. Teams in the post season can gameplan for you in a seven game series. They really can't during the regular season when they face a new team every other day.

This is a disadvantage to the Rockets because of our very predictable offense.

This definitely isn't all on James Harden. It's on the organization's philosophy and how it failed Harden from being in the top 10 conversation. What Harden has learned throughout the years chimed with the diversity in his game he had in 2012-2015 along with probably the weight he was in back then would be needed if he wants to win a ring as the man even if he had a teammate like AD.

Diversity in his game is simply another tool the Rockets can have when they see those doubles. Catch the ball in different spots of the court. Have multiple teammates set screens and run some curl actions. Do something besides dribble up and stand around waiting to get doubled. Harden is by far our best offensive threat. As of right now it's too easy for NBA teams to shut down our best offensive threat in the 4th quarter in tight playoff games from even taking shot attempts often.

 

Your not taking in context though. Most offenses drop off in the playoffs, weve gone over this before. Our offense does work. You can say whatever about that 65 win but our offense did work. When teams face great defenses their efficiency drops off. And its not relative, Ive even explained that to you from numbers from last year.

 

Come on man....

Harden : 38.6 minutes per game x 5 games = 193 minutes
Distance traveled : 12334.6 feet
Feet / minute = 63.9 feet per minute

LeBron : 35.6 minutes per game x 5 games = 178
Distance traveled : 11881.8
Feet / minute : 66.7 feet per minute

So no. I don’t think the 2.8 feet per minute difference overall is a significant distance where one would deduce that one guy doesn’t move and one guy is flying around.

 

If providing the information that Harden in fact does not have the ball in his hands the most in the league and that many others teams, including the one that knocked us out, also employ the strategy of letting their best player control the ball the majority of the time is suppressing reality I don’t know what to say.

 

I've also discussed this before. When Harden just restricts himself to paint and three point attempts, he makes himself less useful the closer the game approaches the end. 3>2 works when the sample size is large enough. During closing moments of games, 3>2 is less effective. Simply pointing points up on the board in tight games near the end is what matters the most. Because of this, NBA defenses tend to play their most aggressive gimmicks solely for the Rockets which often is aggressively guarding just the paint and 3pt line and just give wide open looks in the mid range area. This makes it even more difficult for Harden to enforce his paint vs 3pt attempts only rule. This is when he often just falls apart. He'll often give up wide open mid range shots and just make himself work harden than necessary..And by this point it's probably a good thing he avoids those shots because he probably just doesn't practice them enough to be competent at them. He needs an off season to regain that part of his game. We need it in late game situations.

 

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Which top 10 conversation are you referring to? If we had Lillard on this squad instead of Westbrook, would be in the finals right now. If we had Cp3 from two years ago, we would be in the finals. Give us Victor Oladipo and I still think we could take the Lakers in 7.

 

All time.

 

Wait, @jordnnnn said stats show that Harden does NOT hold the ball longer than other play making stars.

 

I mean in terms of seconds per touch with the ball.

 

I guess that depends on how you define "ball dominant". I would expect that most people would define it as how long you hold the ball each game. If you use that criteria then time of possession is a good measure and both Lebron and Harden are ball dominant. As are most any other really good facilitator.

If you look at the numbers, Harden possesses the ball 23.56% of the minutes that he's on the floor. Lebron possesses the ball 21.38% of the minutes that he is on the floor. That's not a significant difference.

If you you want to try and argue that Lebron is somehow using his possession time more effectively then go for it. As for "ball dominance" they are almost equal. Lebron touches the ball about 10% more times per game than Harden. Each of Harden's touches last just over a second more than Lebron's. Again, not much of a difference.

If I just browsed this thread without knowing how the series went, I'd think that Harden was completely taken out of the series and did nothing. Harden averaged 29.4 pts/game, 4.6 reb, 7.2 ast, 1 blk, 1.4 stl on 50% FG% and a whopping 66.4TS%. CF has identified that as our problem? No player in history has averaged those numbers for a full season.If Harden could produce those numbers every game you'd gladly take it. Those are first ballot HOF numbers.

In the past Harden would have forced things when double teamed. Now he trusts his teammates and gives up the ball which we should be able to take advantage of since we are attacking with a man advantage due to the double team.

Harden was uber efficient this series. He outscored both AD and Lebron and was more efficient than both of them. I'm not sure why ball dominance would come up after this series as WB took more shots and had a higher usage rate in this series.

It was a weird series in the sense that as a team we shot the ball very well except for WB who obviously wasn't healthy. We were able to generate 20.8 wide open 3s and shot a great 44.2% on those shots. We also generated another 12.6 open 3s and still shot 34.9% on those. This wasn't the story of us not being able to shoot, we shot the ball well. As a team we had a TS% of 57.7%. Usually, that kind of efficiency will win the game for you but the Laker's were even more efficient at over 61% TS%.

Give the Lakers credit, they are really good. They are on the verge of winning the title and not dropping more than a single game in any round. They were better than us (and every other team) in the league this year. They had the best record in the league and were the best team in the playoffs. Are Portland, Denver and Miami fans questioning their teams and start players too?

Harden put up huge numbers and he was incredibly efficient doing it. Why do you want to change what he's doing? Why does it matter if he scores or creates open shots out of ISO or off of PnR. If the Laker's double teams had completely taken him out of the game then it would make sense to have this type of discussion but they didn't. The Laker's double teams simply kept him from going nuclear. He still scored right at 30/game on only 17.5 shots/game and he facilitated for teammates.

People are acting like we just lost to the Kings. We lost to the best team in the NBA. The Lakers beat everyone they played quite convincingly. Going into the playoffs, did you believe that we were the best team in the league and should be the title favorites?

 

Why want to change what he's doing because as our best offensive threat, his play style makes it very easy for defenses to just **** him our during the fourth quarter when the team needs him most.

 

I don't want/meant to interject into this conversation but is that more of a mark on Harden....or the fact that our system and/or its supporting cast just aren't good? Harden has the intelligence to get out of traps and double teams but if the players he's passing to can't hit a shot or can't make any moves due to lack of skill then that can't be on Harden.

Harden's far from perfect but he's also far from the biggest issue this team had in the playoffs, specifically against LA.

 

If he has the intelligence then that means he doesn't have the will power because the dude walks into doubles, and often just stands around holding the ball waiting for doubles and as soon as he passes out he just stands around near the half court line.

 

If you ain't first you're last! - Ricky Bobby

MJ is the GOAT. No need to debate second place.

He played in a decade where MEN ROAMED THE HARDWOOD! Favorite book of today's NBA player is The Vagina Monologues cause that's what players be. Only a few throwback players in the league now. It is sad!