His late shooting is bad and there are a variety of reasons for that, but a poor shooting percentage at the end of close playoffs games by elite scorers is not uncommon. There are things that the Rockets can do differently to an extent but if Harden is going to draw all the attention, then his field goal percentage is going to be low.
I wasn't as negative on this article as you but I did find myself asking this same question. I wanted to see comparison to other stars in similar situations, both the ones considered "winners" (e.g. kawhi, lebron, kobe, truth) and the ones that aren't.
It's pretty apparent visually dude. I know you watch these games. Do you think we are gaslighting when we see Harden in so many crucial playoff games start slow walking everywhere, settling for bad threes, making it extremely easy for defenses to deny him the ball etc. The one aspect he definitely improved and deserves credit for is that Harden no longer will sacrifice his defense if he's struggling offensively like he did before. He's committed on D in the playoffs. With someone like Kobe, it was the exact opposite. He moved his feet quicker and became more aggressive in closing moments of close games in the playoffs.
It's not so much that Houston lost, but in the manner in which they lost. Harden often disappears in crunch time minutes either by playing passive or shooting awful
I don't believe this is about Harden's skills or his heart - I think it's about choices. Where did the floater go? It was unstoppable. Why did he stop posting up years ago? He was great at it. No, everything is either a 3pt shot or hunting for fouls in the paint. But the refs stop calling those fouls in the playoffs. You're really limiting what Harden is capable of and making things easier for the other defense.
I like Zach. Don’t think there was anything really unfair in the article. But.. OKC features likely the best the entire NBA has to offer in a one on one Harden stopper and he only managed to average 30 on a stellar 62% TS over 7 games. Averaged the least amount of turnovers he has in the playoffs while with Houston. By some sites metrics was the most impactful player in the entire 1st round. And yet I feel like that’s absolutely lost in the analysis of him in the series. Played 255 total minutes and overall they were fantastic, but because 10-20 of them weren’t exactly what some wanted the analysis is skewed.
"Harden needs to take over in the final minutes and have that mamba mentality! If not he is a beta male and scared of the moment!" ...Gets double teamed religiously at the end of playoff games, a majority of the time by the greatest team ever assembled... "Harden doesn't shoot well at the end of games, he should let cp3 and russ take over" OMEGALUL
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It's a little weird to ignore the fact that, by many measures, Harden was the best player in the playoffs through the first six games of our series... He has a bad night (probably at least in part because he's scared to be aggressive with Scott Foster on the floor), and suddenly his game no longer works in the playoffs? He also lit up the Warriors in the semis last year, but no one remembers because we lost. Harden played better than Durant over those six games. He was the best player in a series that included six all stars and three MVPs (shoulda been four if Paul wasn't robbed in 2008, but I digress), and nobody talks about it. He was the primary reason his heavily out-manned team had a chance. This is an opportunistic article... and not even that great of an opportunity, because as bad as Harden was through the first three quarters, he was strong in the 4th.
His physique has definitely changed. He's bigger and slower now. He's money at the elbows. He should definitely be shooting more of those. Just doing that will open things up for him. We also should be running more PnR with him. I mean he's literally the best ever doing that so why did we almost never run it? We just need to open things up a bit and stop with the ONLY stepback BS.
A media job is a job, so yeah they write stuff that keeps them employed. Still, Lowe is arguably the fairest. His criticisms are backed up with numbers, not the lazy slander of most writers like "Everyone knows Harden doesn't play D," or "Harden's playstyle is bad for basketball." Lowe is saying you can't be expected to be treated with the respect of a champion until you win a championship. That's fair. This is Harden's chance to earn that respect. So many great players have been criticized the same way, and some made it while others didn't: LeBron, Dirk, Garnett, Wilt, Nash, Malone, etc.
I didn't check Pierce, but I did take a look at the clutch time (< 5min, +/- 5 margin) splits for Harden and Kobe from the stats.nba.com website. Kobe: From 2000-2012, 71 games, 177 minutes 52/135 FGs, 11/40 3FGs, 42/50 FTs, +57, 39% FG%, 28% 3FG%, 84% FT%, 43% eFG%, 50% TS%, 31.9 pts/36, 4.5 ast/36, 2.0 tov/36 Harden: From 2013-2020, 26 games, 86 minutes 21/64 FGs, 4/32 3FGs, 26/29 FTs, +27, 33% FG%, 13% 3FG%, 90% FT%, 36% eFG%, 47% TS%, 30.1 pts/36, 3.8 ast/36, 5.4 tov/36 Raw data: Code: Kobe year G MIN FG FGA 3FG 3FGA FT FTA AST TOV plus/minus FG% 3FG% FT% eFG% TS% PTS PTS/36 AST/36 TOV/36 2000 6 10 2 5 0 1 2 3 2 1 25 40.0% 0.0% 66.7% 40.0% 47.5% 6 21.6 7.2 3.6 2001 1 7 2 5 0 0 0 0 1 1 2 40.0% n/a n/a 40.0% 40.0% 4 20.6 5.1 5.1 2002 10 26 8 17 3 5 5 5 4 2 34 47.1% 60.0% 100.0% 55.9% 62.5% 24 33.2 5.5 2.8 2003 5 14 2 8 1 3 5 7 1 1 -2 25.0% 33.3% 71.4% 31.3% 45.1% 10 25.7 2.6 2.6 2004 8 16 5 16 1 4 2 4 1 1 7 31.3% 25.0% 50.0% 34.4% 36.6% 13 29.3 2.3 2.3 2006 3 18 6 12 1 3 2 2 1 0 -2 50.0% 33.3% 100.0% 54.2% 58.2% 15 30.0 2.0 0.0 2007 3 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -4 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 2008 8 18 6 13 1 3 8 8 3 1 -6 46.2% 33.3% 100.0% 50.0% 63.6% 21 42.0 6.0 2.0 2009 8 34 12 26 2 7 5 7 6 1 17 46.2% 28.6% 71.4% 50.0% 53.3% 31 32.8 6.4 1.1 2010 10 17 6 17 1 6 6 6 1 0 -3 35.3% 16.7% 100.0% 38.2% 48.4% 19 40.2 2.1 0.0 2011 4 6 0 5 0 3 1 2 0 1 -16 0.0% 0.0% 50.0% 0.0% 8.5% 1 6.0 0.0 6.0 2012 5 9 3 11 1 5 6 6 2 1 5 27.3% 20.0% 100.0% 31.8% 47.7% 13 52.0 8.0 4.0 TOT 71 177 52 135 11 40 42 50 22 10 57 38.5% 27.5% 84.0% 42.6% 50.0% 157 31.9 4.5 2.0 Harden year G MIN FG FGA 3FG 3FGA FT FTA AST TOV plus/minus FG% 3FG% FT% eFG% TS% PTS PTS/36 AST/36 TOV/36 2013 2 8 3 5 0 1 6 8 0 2 5 60.0% 0.0% 75.0% 60.0% 70.4% 12 54.0 0.0 9.0 2014 5 22 3 18 0 6 6 6 2 1 12 16.7% n/a n/a 16.7% 29.1% 12 19.6 3.3 1.6 2015 2 6 0 2 0 1 2 2 1 2 -4 0.0% 0.0% 100.0% 0.0% 34.7% 2 12.0 6.0 12.0 2016 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 100.0% n/a n/a 100.0% 100.0% 2 72.0 0.0 0.0 2017 3 9 2 9 1 8 7 7 1 2 9 22.2% 12.5% 100.0% 27.8% 49.7% 12 48.0 4.0 8.0 2018 4 13 3 12 1 8 0 0 1 0 8 25.0% 12.5% n/a 29.2% 29.2% 7 19.4 2.8 0.0 2019 5 15 5 9 1 5 5 6 0 3 -15 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a 16 38.4 0.0 7.2 2020 4 12 4 8 1 3 0 0 4 3 8 50.0% 33.3% n/a 56.3% 56.3% 9 27.0 12.0 9.0 TOT 26 86 21 64 4 32 26 29 9 13 27 32.8% 12.5% 89.7% 35.9% 46.9% 72 30.1 3.8 5.4
That is what I expected.... Neither are very good at shooting the ball. The main issue I have with Harden in the last 5 minutes of games has been turnovers, which is backed up by these stats. While there are things that the Rockets and Harden can do to increase his shooting perhaps, he isn't going to shoot well....... and his # of attempts per minute is inline with Kobe Bryant. The biggest difference is the turnovers. Now Harden had the ball in his hands more than Kobe trying to create for others; he still has a lot of turnovers....... the 5.4 number per 36 is actually lower than I expected. Harden averaged 4.5-5.5 turnovers during the regular season in the same amount of minutes. The biggest difference between them is the titles that Bryant has. A lot of that is the players around Bryant..... but he deserves credit for winning them as well, and he was the best player on a couple of those title teams. I would like to see James protect the ball better at the end of the game...... I do think there is some truth to what @fchowd0311 said about moving without the ball harder at the end of games, and that would help some, but they do typically blanket him. We can crunch numbers and point to his lower efficiency at end of games..... and then find examples of other great "winners" having similar numbers or issues.......... but at the end of the day, Harden needs to win a title to be viewed as great as he has been. The comparison to Karl Malone is a valid one. Karl Malone was certainly good enough to win a title, he ran into the Rockets and Bulls....... but he is largely not remembered for being as great as he was. The same thing was going to happen to KG before he won a title with the Celtics.... that stopped the talk of him being a loser, but because he only won one late in his career, he isn't lumped in the top 15. The player production wise most similar to James Harden is arguably Jerry West..... during his day he was viewed similar to Harden in that he never won the big one. He finally won one late in his career but it took West decades, and being an incredible executive to be viewed as a winner...... and now most fans just assume he won a lot of rings as a player.
This is a good point, but to be fair, Russ ran the point at the end of Game 6 and the results were disastrous. I don't blame MDA for giving it back to Harden in Game 7.
I might be looking at different split than Lowe, though, because the numbers I see don't align with what he cited. The stats.nba.com site has a "Last 5 minutes <= 5 points" split and also a "Last 5 minutes | +/- 5" split. Not really sure what those mean, but maybe I should have looked at the latter.
Being double-teamed and triple-teamed when the clock is running out in playoff games is not for the faint of heart! Does Harden have his faults? Of course, he does, but his assets far outweigh his liabilities and he has us in the middle/forefront of every years championship run, and truly as a fan that's all you want from your alpha... being invited to the dance AND having a fighting chance at winning the ring!! You take your shot's (Harden's shot's) .... and you live with them!! Go Rockets!!! ....... ....... .......
