so JBB intentionally sacrificed his coaching career by employing the most r****ded offense, defense, and substitution patterns in recent nba memory -- all because james harden told him to? multiple sauces? who exactly? the 1st Q of the last game played clearly shows our scrubs getting wide as can be wide open looks, many off of harden setups, and bricking to no end
Harden is not a real ball stopper if but if you are on a team where you have to create everything it will make you look like you a ball stop hell on this team I be wishing he keep the ball from them sorry a$$ players he has to play with
Y'all mention his name in this thread but didn't nominate him. #1 ball stopper in the league is on the Rockets and it isn't James Harden. It's Beasley. Chris Paul should also be on the list. Sure he passes a ton, but he stops the ball and kills the movement with dribbling and probing the defense. He wants to be the one responsible for creating the offense for others. To me, that's stopping the ball.
I put Melo. Harden wasn't a ball stopper in OKC, and while he dominates the ball here, he often has to (and he's damn good when he does have the ball in his hands). To me, a ballstopper is someone who would be better playing off the ball, so I put Melo. Melo is good, but he'd be a lot better learning to play off the ball. He couldn't play with Amare even though offensively the two should have meshed very well.
Chris Paul is one of the most efficient and proficient facilitators in the history of the game. He's the opposite of a ball-stopper. He's a ball-mover.
JBB coached this team around Harden. He did not ask Harden to make one single adjustment. He catered his coaching, play-calling, and rotations to exclusively feature Harden. As the season wore on he did it even more increasingly.
You should define what you mean by "ball-stopper". To most people that means who holds the ball the most/longest. I assume that you're going to define it differently so that it can't be measured and no matter what anyone answers you'll say "no that isn't what that means". So what is the definition of "ball stopper" that you are using?
I think when we acquired Harden, we knew that he can set up the offense but we never thought he was our only option at that.... We never thought he was that good at passing also turnover prone I think we wasted away Dwight Howard's 3 years to figure out something we haven't figured out yet. How to integrate another playmaker that can make Harden play off the ball more and pass it to Howard more often.
Lillard is more of a ball hog yet there alot of Russell Westbrook doubters here....(5 votes more) Lol well he has proven he has surpassed Harden, sour grapes
Agree to disagree then. To me, if a player has the ball in his hands all of the time, that is stopping the ball. When you play with guys that have to create everything it can become a problem. Especially when other teammates might want to be involved, touch the ball, move. It might be why a lot of prolific distributing point guards don't win titles. Magic Johnson is the last one that comes to mind. Stockton, Nash, Paul, etc... no titles. Kidd had to go from a ball dominator to an older ball-mover before winning a title. Whether you're shooting or passing, if the ball is in your hands for an inordinate amount of time, you're stopping the ball. If Paul dribbles, probes, penetrates, then decides where to create offense, he's holding the ball for a long period of time. As a player, when you play with someone who wants the entire offense to go through him, it's a completely different experience than moving the ball as a team and can lead to a lot of standing around.
It looks like Paul is among league leaders in time of possession. But he plays much fewer minutes than his peers. If you hold the ball... the ball stops. Seem straight forward now?
You're quoting reality, that has no relevance to bbholic. He is going to have his own definition of "ball stopper" that has nothing to do with time of possession and it will be impossible to measure it. He will be the only person in the world that understands his definition so everyone else will be wrong and the world will depend on him to enlighten us. In the real world you are correct. CP3 in #3 in the league in the average number of seconds per touch (5.52 sec/touch). Harden is also #30 in the league in the same stat (4.43 sec/touch). Likewise Paul is near the league leaders in the avg number of dribbles per touch (5.47) and Harden is 45th (3.84 dribbles/touch). If we truely want to know who the biggest ballstopper is then the answer is Reggie Jackson who leads the league in both avg seconds per touch and average dribbles per touch. That's reality but bbholic will soon tell us that we don't understand what a ball stopper is and redefine the term to mean whatever he wants it to mean.
I love your takedown of bbholic, keep up the good work I've noticed very interesting pattern on this forum that vast majority of Harden haters almost never use stats or figures when making arguments. It's just full of words, descriptions and labels, but devoid of numbers. The only time they bring up stats wrt Harden is to denigrate him about his turnovers. This canard that Harden is a ball hog or ball stopper simply doesn't live up to reality. Given our total lack of offensive talent on this team, Harden's usage rate, avg touch duration and avg dribbles per touch is nothing exceptional. It certainly could be higher if Harden was as selfish as some people believe him to be; he's just not that kind of player.
Brewer is the true ball-stopper, in that it stops going in the hoop when he touches it. He da real MVP.
