Its ok hes handling the ball a lot and hes practicing difficult passes for the playoffs when we will need it the most
And the team is doing a better job. Not great, but better. Team TO per game 2014/15 - 16.5 (28th) 2015/16 - 16.1 (27th) 2016/17 to date - 15.5 (25th)
In assessing the team, I think a helpful stat would be assist to turnover ratio Right now, according to the link below, the Rockets are 10th in the league https://www.teamrankings.com/nba/stat/assist--per--turnover-ratio
The better measure is turnover ratio percentage of possessions. And the Rockets rank 20th in that department. Not great. 20th there and 20th in defense. You won't win championships with those two numbers.
Don't s*** on the man's dream. The dream that will never die. Ricky Rubio will be 36 years old and Bobby the Holic will still be advocating we trade for him.
Turnovers is one of the most overrated stats ever in NBA. The top 20 players with the most turnovers in a career, 19 of them in the HOF (Reggie Theus). Hakeem is part of the list as well as John Stockton, most NBA assists in a career. I'd be worry if he has 0 turnovers in a game which means he DNP or got ejected.
It's funny how you keep pushing the narrative that Harden needs to play like "X" player in order for the Rockets to win a title. Nevermind the fact that Harden has nothing in common with Jordan, Iverson, or Curry or their style of play except for the fact that they're all basketball players. I guess if Wilt Chamberlain had played more like Hakeem he would have won more titles and not be considered an underachiever. Too bad Hakeem wasn't around during those days, because Wilt probably wouldn't have won a single title. The only problem is that the game doesn't work that way. You can't turn Wilt into Hakeem or vice versa, they're two different dudes.
It's justifiable to have a high number of turnovers. It's not justifiable to have an excessively high number of turnovers like Harden currently has. It's something he needs to improve on, no doubt, but it's obviously not killing us like some make it out to be, as we're currently one of the best teams in the league. All last season people said Harden's turnovers are the primary reason why we're not winning games, and here we are this season with Harden having even more turnovers, yet the team is winning more games. The correlation is largely unfounded. But as I said...not justifiable, and certainly a problem that needs to be improved upon, but the team has much bigger issues. 3-5 turnovers is acceptable. More than that is not. I'm not entirely sure that it will improve, but we'll see. Hopefully it does.
The Rockets are currently averaging 15.5 turnovers per game which is 25th in the league, Golden State is averaging 15.1 turnovers per game which is 24th in the league. Steve Kerr needs to have a serious talk with Curry.
Whilst you raise a valid point, it also doesn't tell the full story. Our entire offense runs through harden. I mean let's be honest here - we have two dudes who can do something with the ball. Harden and Gordon. When your primary facilitator who is running the offense and is so turnover prone, and when your offense is so dependant on that one guy, it's probably not going to end of well. Harden has done so much right this year, but he has definitely lost us games this year with his turnovers and slowing the pace right down in the crunch. My concern (and I assume other posters) is that he doesn't seem to value the rock enough at times. I mean how smart is harden really? That may sound blasphemous, but how many more times is he going to throw a full court pass through traffic at a pivotal moment in the game? Surely a player of his Ilk is intelligent enough to pull his finger out and realise how dumbassed some of these turnovers are. We all know he's going to turn it over, it's basketball. But to keep doing the same thing over and over and over again is infuriating. He doesn't seem to learn. When Mike is saying we need to cut our turnovers down, and harden even admits his turnovers are yuck, it defies belief that there is a large contingent of posters here (not you dude) who defend him at every turn and say they don't or won't hurt us. Apparently pointing out a very real flaw and expecting better is being a hater? How many times is harden actually forced into committing a turnover? Maybe twice a game? I guarantee a significant majority of his turnovers are through pure laziness and being sloppy with the ball. Posters can say it's about 'pushing the pace" yeah well bs. There's plenty of ways to push the pace, and he has too good of a control on the tempo of a game to hide behind that logic. I'm looking ahead to when the real season begins. He's got to quit his horrible habits which are so easily fixed, yet he doesn't seem to care. There's a very real chance it's going to bite us in the ass in the post season.
MDA has always been about putting players in a position where they feel comfortable and can perform at their best and without pressure. He's sort of like the Pete Carroll (Seahawks head coach) of the NBA. You believe in your guys, you put them in positions to succeed, you make the game fun for them, you tell them to be themselves, then the whole team comes together and works in unison. You either believe in your guys or you don't, there is no middle distance here. But, everyone has flaws and Harden certainly has them as do the rest of our players. But, the free flow game and the great communication this team has right now is something we haven't seen since the days of Rudy T. Players will have flaws, Teams will have flaws, but even the best teams have flaws. The only thing we need to worry about is winning games, I know that sounds cliche and simple, but its true. This is a great time to be a Rockets fan, but I understand the cynical outlook and forgive you for it. Dude loves you.
Yeah. They never convinced Wilt to shoot under handed free throws to get his FT% up to acceptable levels. And he was thirty years before they convinced him to GIVE UP THE BASKETBALL so he could win a championship. Until then all he did was hog the ball, take way too many shots, leave his teammates with horrible looks, and he turned it over more than any player in history on his way to his gargantuan statistics as he constantly tried to beat double and triple teams off the dribble in the paint. Wilt was stubborn and would not incorporate his game into a true team offensive attack. He wouldn't get off the bench in today's game and would probably get cut because he was such a poor ball handler and unwilling passer. Just a great individual player that could have won close to double digit championships if he has his head screwed on right. But it wasn't. He was an egotistical maniac that won way less than what he could have. Don't get me started on Wilt. I know more about his history than anybody here. I played pickup ball in Lawrence years ago with some old men who were on his KU teams. They hated playing with him. Every one of them hated playing with him because he wouldn't pass the ball until it was too late, would not drop it off on the simplest of backdoor cuts by his teammates when their defender left them to attack Wilt's dribble. They hated playing with him. Wilt was plain stupid for the vast majority of his career and was a very inefficient offensive player. So yeah, Hakeem was way better than him and would have dominated him if they were in the same era. Hakeem would have had plenty of trouble with Bill Russell though because Russell flat knew how to win and how to make his team great. That would be the matchup of two different era big men I would have liked to see. Hakeem vs. Russell.
One of the most painful facts some delusional homers here have to accept is exactly this point. Harden unfortunately is not a very smart player, despite his play style on offense seem to indicate on the surface. Being crafty is one thing, but truly understanding the game on a deeper level is completely something else. It's just not the idiotic turnovers Harden commits over and over and over and over and over and over again and doesn't seem to learn, but also his inability to grasp basic defensive schemes despite playing in the NBA at a high level for several years now. Some of Harden's lapses on defense seriously look like he doesn't know what he's doing on that side of the court, and the genuinely hideous scenery it creates is why he has become the main target of people's derision when it comes to this issue. I would maintain that Harden has pretty good 'feel' for the game (whatever that means), but is not a very intelligent player. His true strength lies in having good instincts and spontaneously reacting to the given opportunities by the opposing defense (his ability to draw fouls, knowing where his teammates are on the court, etc.), but in terms of making rational judgement on whether this is the right kind of move to make at this very instant - or just displaying sound fundamentals - Harden has a long way to go. This becomes pretty obvious when you combine Harden's defensive issues with his turnovers, and there's just no way any sufficiently intelligent player who reads the game really well has that much of a gaping hole on both sides of the floor. "(Offensively) we can get a lot better... We have too many turnovers. The last five or six minutes, we're not efficient yet. We have to do better there." - MDA The players do not disagree. "One hundred percent....we just have to figure it out. I'll get better. My turnovers will start dropping as I get familiar with what different defenses are doing." - Harden Apparently MDA and Harden himself are 'haters', since they both acknowledge the turnovers as a problem and have spoken out on the need to address this particular issue.
I don't care about turnovers in total. Where is the stat about liveball tos? These are the one that matter.
