basketballholic blames our terrible coaching on Harden and not the terrible coach who is responsible for coaching the team. I love it
These players bring th ball up to cross half court. THE rockets has Beverley, Terry and had Lawson, Lin etc do that for Harden ...
A ball-stopper stops ball movement. Other guys may possess the ball longer but they're not stopping ball movement. They're moving the ball side to side on the dribble. They're creating for teammates first. Guys like Melo and Harden hold and shoot or dribble a lot in place and then chucks it up or attempt to make the scoring pass instead of just swinging the ball quickly when they are covered. Tho possession times are meaningless. Keep trying to make something of it. But it's meaningless minutia. Harden throws the the ball away at a rate that those other guys with more possession time don't even come close to. If you looked at time of possession as a percentage of how much time the offense has the ball you'd see a truer picture of the real ball-stoppers. When harden throws the ball away and when we take hurried forced shots early in the shot clock that means we spend more time playing defense than we do with the ball. But even simpler than all that just watch the games. And observe what guys that played the game successfully are saying about Harden. Barkleys comments were on point. Faced with a choice to play with the Spurs or Harden the majority of players will choose the Spurs and ball movement where they know they're going to touch the ball much more frequently. Everybody knows that the more frequently shooters touch the ball the more lethal they become and the less frequent they touch the ball the less accurate they are. I could go on. But that's enough for now. Bash away. Most posters here view Harden as a ball-stopper and many of us that do think he's one of the best players in the Association and wouldn't trade him. Harden is a championship caliber number 1 player. But for him to reach that destination he's going to have to change his style and not dominate the ball so much nor be a ball-stopper.
You're all over the place. You just write long posts that take all sides of the story. You say "Harden is a championship caliber number 1" and then go on to say "to reach that destination he's going to have to change his style and not dominate the ball so much nor be a ball-stopper" so in essence what you mean is that he is not a championship caliber number 1 just yet without making those changes?
Now I get it, so the problem with our stat is that it accounts for when harden had the ball, only when our offense has the ball also. Hmm.
I have consistently said Harden is a top 3-5 player. You can't be a top 5 player and not be championship caliber. Don't see what's so difficult to understand about that. He's got all the tools, talent, and brains to win it. He's just got to open himself up to playing with other great players instead of just a pack of role players. We could've already had several great players if he had wanted them. They've been available for the taking.
Only the Top 2 players (given that they have a decent cast) have the best chance to win it all Top 5 is like Top 8 or Top 10 outsider chance at best
I think they're quite different but I do see the point. At the end of the day, who are the best players Melo has gotten to play with? Melo was still an elite piece to own in his prime.
Silly to say Melo, he's upped his passing big time this season. Silly to say Harden, he leads all non-PG's in assists. Gotta be DeRozan. Guy's basically a black hole. As a bonus, he might join the Lakers and fill Kobe's seat.
The top 2 are usually guys that have recently fine it already, have already surrounded themselves with great players and they make a great team. Not much difference in talent/ability in 1 though 5. Everybody else is outsiders because they lack the teammates around them. Up until now Harden has been happy to be surrounded with role players. And that is why he's not in your blessed top 2.
