Harden 13/37 FG 5/19 3pt in another loss

[NBAFan93]

His backcourt running mate: Lin, Beverley, Lawson, Prigioni, Terry.

The year he got Paul is the year we were that close to a championship. Then Paul declined big time.

I do agree with your second part though, that legit role players like Wes and Korver don't want to play with him because of his style.

CP3 ia proving that he has not declined big time. That is a false narrative you're pushing.

Say what? CP3 was a legit top 10 per minute player two years ago. This year he's in that 20-35 range. He's declined.

CP3 was scoreless and assist-less in the first half that Thunder game against the KAT-less wolves. Finished w/ 10 points on 5/15 shooting - 0/4 from 3PT. The “narrative pushing” is that every time he has a good game people say he’s still elite all the time, when he isn’t.

SGA and Schroeder have been doing most of the work for OKC this year, CP3 just getting credit. Not sure why cause Westbrook never got that type of credit the past two seasons when his scoring numbers dropped to let PG and others shine. It’s a double standard, but I guess it’s not surprising.

[dhsilv2]

CP3 ia proving that he has not declined big time. That is a false narrative you're pushing.

Say what? CP3 was a legit top 10 per minute player two years ago. This year he's in that 20-35 range. He's declined.

CP3 was scoreless and assist-less in the first half that Thunder game against the KAT-less wolves. Finished w/ 10 points on 5/15 shooting - 0/4 from 3PT. The “narrative pushing” is that every time he has a good game people say he’s still elite all the time, when he isn’t.

SGA and Schroeder have been doing most of the work for OKC this year, CP3 just getting credit. Not sure why cause Westbrook never got that type of credit the past two seasons when his scoring numbers dropped to let PG and others shine. It’s a double standard, but I guess it’s not surprising.

I think having paul george there created a different dynamic, higher expectations and it seems he is more liked. But yeah...PC3 is a quality player and it SEEMS maybe a good locker room guy with those younger players (kinds surprised but who knows). The idea he's still a top tier or even second tier star is a bit much. he's a boarderline allstar and that's as generous as we should get.

[ken6199]

CP3 ia proving that he has not declined big time. That is a false narrative you're pushing.

Say what? CP3 was a legit top 10 per minute player two years ago. This year he's in that 20-35 range. He's declined.

CP3 was scoreless and assist-less in the first half that Thunder game against the KAT-less wolves. Finished w/ 10 points on 5/15 shooting - 0/4 from 3PT. The “narrative pushing” is that every time he has a good game people say he’s still elite all the time, when he isn’t.

SGA and Schroeder have been doing most of the work for OKC this year, CP3 just getting credit. Not sure why cause Westbrook never got that type of credit the past two seasons when his scoring numbers dropped to let PG and others shine. It’s a double standard, but I guess it’s not surprising.

Paul is getting credit just because he was so bad last year, so the contrast between 19 and 20 gives the people a wrong impression "oh he is not that bad". In particular, within Houston's sytem Paul was asked to play like a mini Harden where he was asked to use his own ability to beat his man to either get to the rim or create space for a midrange jumper which he has been doing his whole career even up to 2018 yet in 2019 he looked so slow and incapable of doing so. He can probably argue the OKC setup is better for him to spend his final career years but unfortunately that Houston team was built that way to have two guards create from their ISO and Morey underestimated Paul's decline.

[MrPerfect1]

My personal theory is that Harden and HOU know they aren't going to win any titles.

As a result, that means their main focus is on regular season stats and trying to win awards like MVP through PPG

[mplsfonz23]

Harden is a chucker, and it hurts his team in the PO's because they shut him down, and the rest of the team struggles because they are used to him taking 35+ shots a game.
I don't like Harden because of his flailing, flopping, and offensive charging that goes uncalled.

Against other star players that doesn't work very well. That why they can't win a title, and Westbrook screwed up going to Htown.

[NBAFan93]

My personal theory is that Harden and HOU know they aren't going to win any titles.

As a result, that means their main focus is on regular season stats and trying to win awards like MVP through PPG

I don’t agree that’s the case. They wouldn’t be resting Westbrook on B2B if they didn’t have some bigger goal - just play him and pile up the stats?

Think they underestimate their opponent in a lot of these games and think Harden can turn it on and be amazing enough to win against anyone outside of elite teams cause he usually can...last night he couldn’t. They should have a better plan for when Westbrook is resting and/or both of them are off, but maybe that’s not a big deal to them as they are just trying to make it through the season healthy. I think they have bigger goals besides for regular season accolades.

[madmaxmedia]

Think how much he would have been positive had he created better spots for his teammates instead of killing ball movement with dribble dribble dribble 3 pointer. Food for thought. If you have off night trust your teammates more.

Most of his nights arent off nights as evidenced by the wildly efficient TS%. You can cherry pick individual games all you want. These teammates you want him to trust more got ran off the floor in the 9 minutes he was on the bench tonight (of course i await the wild reach that also pins that on harden). When Harden was on the floor they were a plus 3. Lets talk about how he only turned the ball over one time with all that usage, which is pretty damn awesome. He didnt shoot the ball well but pinning this loss on him and adting like he let those clowns sans westbrook down is frankly absurd.

you sure his ts% isnt mostly due to the ridiculous amt of fts he gets a gm?

He's shooting 54% from 2 and 37.5% from 3 (44.8% overall FG%), which are pretty good for a high volume scorer. The high FTA obviously improves his TS%, but it's not masking terrible shooting or anything like that.

[MrPerfect1]

Harden currently 24.2 field goals attempted per game. beloved Jordan had 5 seasons of over 24.0 field goals attempted per game peaking at a whopping 27.8 attempts per game one season and 25+ another season with harden getting the edge on efg%.

If Harden was winning titles every year and finishing 1st Team All Defense, a large percentage of his criticism would go away.

Jordan was criticized a lot when he would just do his own thing and his teams would get eliminated

[TheGOATWill]

How about the job Brooks and Anderson did on him last night. No gimmicks. Long athletes. That's the formula.

[Wallace_Wallace]

While GIannis had 37 points 9 rebounds and 4 assists on a 70% FG, 83 % FT , 3-5 from 3's in only 20 minutes. lol

Are we this low now? Just based on one game, you come in here and swing attacks? When Giannis had a terrible game, did we go there attack him?

If you really need to pick a game, u pick a beat down on Knicks vs a Memphis team who won 8-2 in their last 10 and on a 6 game winning streak, led by an exciting ROY. Are you really doing this?

Look I respect Giannis and I respect his game. Please do the same thing or if you can't, at least don't come in and clown around with your "one game analysis" garbage. You are embarrassing yourself and making the Giannis fans look bad.

I'm not the biggest Harden fan out there, but he's doing essentially what Lillard/Irving/Butler/George couldn't do, which is winning constantly in the regular season and bringing his team to the 2nd/3rd round every year. Also we don't mention he doesn't bring negative media attention about his team like Irving/Butler/George ("my team sucks trade me").

His foul baiting is a little annoying, but that's his thing. I'm not going to go bash Giannis and say that he only attacks the rim because he's longer and faster than everyone his size because that's he's main weapon.

[Karate Diop]

Darth Westbrook is corrupting James like he tried to do with Kevin.

Sent from my SM-G960U1 using RealGM mobile app

[meekrab]

"Another loss" there are all of six teams in the league with less losses than the Rockets.

[NBAFan93]

While GIannis had 37 points 9 rebounds and 4 assists on a 70% FG, 83 % FT , 3-5 from 3's in only 20 minutes. lol

Are we this low now? Just based on one game, you come in here and swing attacks? When Giannis had a terrible game, did we go there attack him?

If you really need to pick a game, u pick a beat down on Knicks vs a Memphis team who won 8-2 in their last 10 and on a 6 game winning streak, led by an exciting ROY. Are you really doing this?

Look I respect Giannis and I respect his game. Please do the same thing or if you can't, at least don't come in and clown around with your "one game analysis" garbage. You are embarrassing yourself and making the Giannis fans look bad.

I'm not the biggest Harden fan out there, but he's doing essentially what Lillard/Irving/Butler/George couldn't do, which is winning constantly in the regular season and bringing his team to the 2nd/3rd round every year. Also we don't mention he doesn't bring negative media attention about his team like Irving/Butler/George ("my team sucks trade me").

His foul baiting is a little annoying, but that's his thing. I'm not going to go bash Giannis and say that he only attacks the rim because he's longer and faster than everyone his size because that's he's main weapon.

He is a stand up guy in respect to commitment to his team and city. Westbrook was same way w/ OKC. Interesting how much hate they get in spite of being the least snake-like of all the major stars - you’d think people would give them some slack for not being perfect.

[Petergrifindor]

I even don't mind if he miss a lot or not.

I can't be bothered to watch a game with a guy taking 50 shots.

[old skool]

From the outside, it looks like:

1. D'Antoni is a successful coach that allows seemingly headstrong stars take turns dominating the offense, in abdication of his role as coach (pragmatically maybe just trying to keep his job).

2. Harden is a great player who wants to dominate the ball while racking up impressive statistics that often leads to a winning record but seems to detract from team work. I have no doubt that he feels his offensive dominance gives the Rockets their best chance to win. His offensive skill and brilliance is unquestioned. His team work could be lacking.

3. Westbrook is a hard driving player who is most comfortable dominating an offense. Undoubtedly he also feels that his offensive dominance gives the Rockets their best chance to win. His skill and brilliance is unquestioned. His team work could be lacking.

4. Neither Harden or Westbrook seem compelled to acquiesce to each other or to a larger team work goal. D'Antoni either thinks this is great or feels incapable of getting his stars to develop more team work.

For me, the issue is not whether or not the Harden dominant offense is fun to watch, leads to winning or is efficient. Rather the issue is that it seems that the individuals involved are not compelled to to create a whole that is better than the parts. There does not seem to be team development and growth. The Rockets seem to be wedded to the individual brilliance of D'Antoni, Harden and Westbrook, regardless of what they could accomplish in concert.

This pattern contrasts with many dominant players of the past. Chamberlain completely reworked his game to win titles in Philly and L.A. Jordan bought in to Phil Jackson's "equal opportunity offense" to win six titles. Stephan Curry became the ultimate team player, welcoming the skill and ego of Kevin Durant to add more trophies in Golden State. It is hard to imagine Harden or Westbrook playing similar leadership roles.

It looks like the front office is committed to letting the stars drive the direction of the franchise, with D'Antoni likely in his last year on that bench. If D'Antoni is cut loose, it would seem to me to indicate that the Rockets are going all in on a dysfunctional system that reinforces a style of play that values individual dominance over all other considerations while trying to compete in a team sport. While individual brilliance is bringing considerable success, there seems to be a lack of leadership beyond the individual level.

[CumberlandPosey]

I even don't mind if he miss a lot or not.

I can't be bothered to watch a game with a guy taking 50 shots.

only bryant has attempted that many since 83 but i see your point.harden could shoot more threes for my taste

[GreatWhiteStiff]

I'll try to say this respectfully, but for every game harden scores 31 points on 37 fga (which isn't even horrible) do we need to create a new thread about it? Take three players and given them 37 shots and they're going to score 31 or less pretty often. This threads are not for intelligent people and a really repetitive and tiring. They're extremely unoriginal. Are you all the same person with gimmick accounts? I don't get it.

[Liminy]

It has to be so boring to play with Harden and watch him jack up 19 threes in a game.

As a fan I would rather see the 3s than the flailing, flopping induced free throws.

[G35]

You would think Houston was under .500 and not on pace for 55 wins even after this loss. Aren’t they like 14-1 when Harden scores 40+ points? If you’re going to make a conclusive statement, it would have to be comprehensive and consistent, you can’t just choose a bad game in a loss and say “see, look” while they were 4-1 in their last 5 games before tonight and if you discount the game Harden missed which you would have to when talking about him, they are 8-2 in the last 10 games he played before tonight.

The thread just doesn’t make a lot of sense, sorry.

But it's the popular voice on RealGM, unfortunately.

Obviously no one cares Harden is a +2 in a -11 point loss, or the fact we were up by 8 with his awesome first quarter then Memphis had a 15-2 run when he sat. Who were on the court during that run? Rivers -23, House -18.

But it's all because Harden had a bad game.

Look, I feel I am one of the first posters to criticize Harden's playstyle way before it became popular. Back in 2015, I criticized him. So yeah, now it is becoming very trendy to criticize Harden's bad games. But the only reason it has become trendy is that its become repetitive:

- Start of a new season
- Harden posts ATG scoring bursts during the RS
- Harden will have games during RS where he gets 20+ FTA's
- Harden will go through shootting slumps but it will be hand waved away as "look at his team and he's stupidly efficient"
- small contingent will say Harden needs to prove it in the playoffs...they will get shouted down by "look at his TS%"
- In the PS, Harden will have a few great games and a few bad games...detractors will say, "See Harden cannot sustain his RS play in the PS"...supporters will say, "He still shot decent in most games and his OVERALL efficiency was acceptable and he just needed a few more shots to go down"


Rinse repeat in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019

This is like Netflix asking you to binge the same show for the last five years but they don't change the ending....people are tired of making excuses for Harden......

[brettski]

His backcourt running mate: Lin, Beverley, Lawson, Prigioni, Terry.

The year he got Paul is the year we were that close to a championship. Then Paul declined big time.

I do agree with your second part though, that legit role players like Wes and Korver don't want to play with him because of his style.

CP3 ia proving that he has not declined big time. That is a false narrative you're pushing.

Say what? CP3 was a legit top 10 per minute player two years ago. This year he's in that 20-35 range. He's declined.

Agreed he is not top 10. But you cannot seriously say going from top 10 to top 20 is a "big time" decline. Especially as hes a second option (for Houston).