M4P wrote:it's funny how people think that teams are going to just start gameplanning for Harden now, as if they haven't before. This is nothing like when Lin randomly exploded in NY because Harden has already been in the league for 3 years now...
I think the point that coming in and playing a lot as a second-unit guy in short bursts gives a player a different image in the mind of the guys game-planning. Who do you think they are more interesting in focusing their attention on? The 31 mpg bench guy or Durant and Westbrook, who take the lion's share of the shots and possessions? That's an easy one.
He's been scouted, for sure, but he's going to get different levels of attention as the #1 guy, especially on a weaker overall offensive team. We can talk, as some do, about the lineups with whom Harden played a lot, but the fact remains that he still played alongside Durant alone for over 1,000 of his 1,946 minutes. That's still a large sample of minutes where he was playing with someone who took up a HUGE amount of defensive attention and he won't have anything like that this season. It'll be very interesting to see how this plays out over the length of the season. Clearly, Harden's got the talent to ball at a high level regardless, but as a response to Ozark's rant, if a player could get to the rim endlessly on the basis of footwork, physical tools and screens, Wade would have done it all game long... and from 07 forward, Wade still had 3 seasons of 7.0+ FGA/g from 16-23 feet and up to 3.3 from 10-15 feet.
In his BEST season (2009, 30.2 ppg, scoring title, 57.4% TS, he took 7.5 FGA/g at the rim, 1.4 from 3-9 feet, 1.7 from 10-15 feet, 7.8 from 16-23 feet and 3.5 3PA.
Now, Harden probably won't try to score 30 ppg, so I doubt he'll take 22 FGA/g, but he's still going to be obliged to increase his 3PA/g and his shots from 10-23 feet if he's expecting to take a lot more than the 10.1 FGA/g he attempted last season. It's easy to keep your shot selection limited over a lower volume like that, but it will grow more difficult over time for him to maintain a shot selection of "at the rim or from 3" the whole season if he is looking to expand his scoring role from what he managed in OKC (where he wasn't even shooting 12 FGA36).
