HardenGoat wrote:Last nights Heat win showed me the advantage of 3 point shooting. They shot 52 percent vs Celtics at 35 percent. That’s the game right there. Butler had a lot of help from multiple players. He was featured at the end with the lead, and Mazulla was outcoached evidenced by shutting down Tatum.  Our defense overall is better. I find some of the takes here perplexing. Harden won two playoff games, the team won one, we lost 2 trying to knock rust off. I would say the other two lost was a combination of players missing shots,  lack of adjustment, overall poor play by every player not just a couple. Why would you want Harden to walk?  The problem here is leadership and overall execution of a dynamic offense. One that doesn’t rely on 35+ points from one player to win games and see that drop 10 in the playoffs because the floor spacing collapses. Harden doesn’t want to be the primary scorer, he’s not saying that, he wants an offense that flows better and isn’t standing around every other play. Yes Harden is bluffing to a degree but not for the wrong reasons. There’s no reason you can’t keep the free agents we have that will fit a more dynamic system with a better coach. You just have to go into the luxury tax to do it and pretty deep. This is why he didn’t sign a long term contract, he can leverage the owner to go all in.
The issues is the massive inconsitency of Harden. He won us two games, but he lost us 3 games. The last game was also 100% also on Embiid, but game 6, that's on Harden, as are the other losses. Not 100% obviously but he played a huge role. Game 7 was a catastrophe for Harden of epic proportions. Less than 10 points, as one of the greatest scorers of all time?
So, you have a 34 year old, who is only going to continue to get worse, has unpredictable injuries, it doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. He didn't need to get 45 for us, I mean for those games he did, but if he had averaged 25ppg we would have won the games we had lost. He's just too inconsistent and committing 4 years to a guy like that, seems to be extremely risky.