RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #18 (Dirk Nowitzki)

[Doctor MJ]

1st Induction Vote: Karl Malone



2nd Induction Vote: Dirk Nowitzki

This is in keeping with the order I've had these guys since they got nominated.
Still siding with Malone. Still siding with Nowitzki above everyone else.

In the end, I think the best way to understand how I'm looking at Malone here is that I think we'd all tend to see Malone differently if he'd broken through and won a title, and now only could that have happened, the big guys who kept that from happening are already voted in now.

Have you done this exercise with other players?

Aside from his actual championship win, Dirk had 3 seperate playoffs where he ran into the eventual champions and his team played them the closest(by m.o.v and games) with a injury taking him out of a series with his team tied 1-1 against the champs(also led by a guy who has already been voted in). 98 is the only year Malone can say he pushed the best team harder than everyone else.

How would we see harden if CP3 doesn't go down vs the warriors with them up a game?

Are you giving Malone the same treatment you're giving the guys you have him over?

I certainly try to ask the same questions across the board, but will never claim to have ironed out all wrinkles.

Key thing I should emphasize here is that I'm not trying to say that Malone got closer than other guys, rather I'm trying to avoid overreacting to another guy getting that chip while Malone didn't.

But let me map out this space a little bit along the lines of what you say and see how it looks, perhaps I'll change my perspective.

In 1988, the Jazz took the champion Lakers to single elimination, and granted they weren't alone.
In 1995, the Jazz took the champion Rockets to single elimination, and granted they weren't alone.
In 1997, the Jazz took the champion Bulls to 6, which was further than anyone else did.
In 1998, the Jazz took the champion Bulls to 6, and granted the Jazz took them to 7.

So, I can definitely see the argument that the Jazz were only a Top 2 playoff team once, but if we're just talking about right up there with everybody and giving the champ a good fight, I see 4 such cases

For the Mavs:

In 2003, the Mavs took the champion Spurs to 6, and they were not alone.
In 2006, the Mavs took the champion Heat to 6, and they were not alone.
In 2011 champions.
In 2014, the Mavs did take the champion Spurs to 7 when no one else did, but this was the first round and they lost the last game in a blowout.

I certainly see the argument for giving the nod to Dirk here, but I don't see a glaring difference between the two, and to be honest I'm more impressed by the the Lakers & Bulls than I am with the 2003 & 2006 champs, and I don't really think the Mavs would have taken the 2014 Spurs to 7 if they'd played later in the post-season.

Re: How would we see Harden if Paul hadn't Paul'ed? Certainly worth asking, and certainly something I've already discussed in various forms.

I don't think it can be emphasized enough how much the years after 2018 have hurt Harden's rep. In 2019, everyone was expecting the Rockets to close out the Warriors sans KD. Instead, Harden & co. lost out again. Yes, he was losing to a team led by a guy already voted in...but it was a crippled team neverthelss, and a crippled team that Kawhi & co. had no such trouble dispatching. And then of course you get Harden going from hero to villain in earnest, forcing Paul out, then demanding out, then demanding out in another city, then demanding out in yet another city.

It's not like I ignore what was accomplished in 2018, but Harden's performance over the course of critical series have left me feeling like he's just not as able to do his thing against the very best of playoff competition the way some other guys have, and that contributes to where I end up placing the guy, which I don't really think is that low, but we haven't gotten to yet.

[OhayoKD]

Aside from his actual championship win, Dirk had 3 seperate playoffs where he ran into the eventual champions and his team played them the closest(by m.o.v and games) with a injury taking him out of a series with his team tied 1-1 against the champs(also led by a guy who has already been voted in). 98 is the only year Malone can say he pushed the best team harder than everyone else.

Can he? The Pacers pushed the Bulls to seven one round earlier.

I'd say he could say that about 97, where the Jazz took the Bulls to six when the Bulls' previous three series had been a sweep, five, and five.

But then his individual stats in the Finals are considerably worse in 97 than in 98.

Oops. I got my series crossed

[therealbig3]

In 2003, the Mavs took the champion Spurs to 6, and they were not alone.

FWIW, Dirk didn't play in the 2nd half of that series because of injuries. That series could have turned out differently if Dirk could have stayed healthy, and I don't think anyone would have been surprised if they beat the 03 Nets to win the title, right?

[f4p]

Spoiler:

1st Induction Vote: Karl Malone



2nd Induction Vote: Dirk Nowitzki

This is in keeping with the order I've had these guys since they got nominated.
Still siding with Malone. Still siding with Nowitzki above everyone else.

In the end, I think the best way to understand how I'm looking at Malone here is that I think we'd all tend to see Malone differently if he'd broken through and won a title, and now only could that have happened, the big guys who kept that from happening are already voted in now.

Have you done this exercise with other players?

Aside from his actual championship win, Dirk had 3 seperate playoffs where he ran into the eventual champions and his team played them the closest(by m.o.v and games) with a injury taking him out of a series with his team tied 1-1 against the champs(also led by a guy who has already been voted in). 98 is the only year Malone can say he pushed the best team harder than everyone else.

How would we see harden if CP3 doesn't go down vs the warriors with them up a game?

Are you giving Malone the same treatment you're giving the guys you have him over?

I certainly try to ask the same questions across the board, but will never claim to have ironed out all wrinkles.

Key thing I should emphasize here is that I'm not trying to say that Malone got closer than other guys, rather I'm trying to avoid overreacting to another guy getting that chip while Malone didn't.

But let me map out this space a little bit along the lines of what you say and see how it looks, perhaps I'll change my perspective.

In 1988, the Jazz took the champion Lakers to single elimination, and granted they weren't alone.
In 1995, the Jazz took the champion Rockets to single elimination, and granted they weren't alone.
In 1997, the Jazz took the champion Bulls to 6, which was further than anyone else did.
In 1998, the Jazz took the champion Bulls to 6, and granted the Jazz took them to 7.

So, I can definitely see the argument that the Jazz were only a Top 2 playoff team once, but if we're just talking about right up there with everybody and giving the champ a good fight, I see 4 such cases

For the Mavs:

In 2003, the Mavs took the champion Spurs to 6, and they were not alone.
In 2006, the Mavs took the champion Heat to 6, and they were not alone.
In 2011 champions.
In 2014, the Mavs did take the champion Spurs to 7 when no one else did, but this was the first round and they lost the last game in a blowout.

I certainly see the argument for giving the nod to Dirk here, but I don't see a glaring difference between the two, and to be honest I'm more impressed by the the Lakers & Bulls than I am with the 2003 & 2006 champs, and I don't really think the Mavs would have taken the 2014 Spurs to 7 if they'd played later in the post-season.

Re: How would we see Harden if Paul hadn't Paul'ed? Certainly worth asking, and certainly something I've already discussed in various forms.

I don't think it can be emphasized enough how much the years after 2018 have hurt Harden's rep.

LOL, post-2018? so 2019, 2020, and 2021 LOWERED your opinion of harden? arguably his 2 best years and another very good year? for a guy who doesn't like when people hold the 2016 finals against steph, saying 2019-21 hurt harden tremendously is quite a take. and i would say in the general public, at absolute best it wouldn't even be until asking out of houston that would hurt his rep and even then only among people who think First Take counts as basketball analysis. how you could read 2019-21 as hurting him so much doesn't make much sense.

2019 is one of the great floor-raising regular seasons ever followed by a playoffs where harden averages 35/7/5.5 against the warriors, but...

In 2019, everyone was expecting the Rockets to close out the Warriors sans KD. Instead, Harden & co. lost out again.

closing out would imply a lead, not being down 3-2. second, there must be a reason people blame KD for joining a 73 win team. oh yeah, the core of the 73 win team. i didn't realize beating them twice in a row was so easy that a guy having an MVP season and MVP series should be forever besmirched if he can't beat them. "oh james, you only have to play the KD warriors, the team no one else can even challenge, 5 times but then you get one whole game against the remaining 3 hall of famers so that's pretty much a gimme series, right, even if maybe you are the best player in that game but klay and iggy hit 12 threes?" what even was harden's crime here? leading game 6 in scoring while putting up 35/8/5, arguably being the best player in game 6 after having already been the best player in the series for the first 5 games? that doesn't seem like a standard anyone else in this project is being held to. and certainly no one at the robinson/robertson level of player who have recently been voted in.

Yes, he was losing to a team led by a guy already voted in...but it was a crippled team neverthelss, and a crippled team that Kawhi & co. had no such trouble dispatching.

if one game samples are what we are looking at, Kawhi & co. also lost the only game KD even barely played, with the entire margin of victory coming in KD's minutes. there would have been nothing for Kawhi and co. to close out if they had had to face kevin durant for the first 5 games. in fact, KD presumably wouldn't even get hurt in game 5 because it would be over in 4. wouldn't you agree?

And then of course you get Harden going from hero to villain in earnest, forcing Paul out, then demanding out, then demanding out in another city, then demanding out in yet another city.

even if i give you the nets situation, which would seem pretty clear was more about the conspiracy theorist who sat out the whole season (you'll notice things didn't turn around when harden was exiled), "demanding" out of houston seems to be something that somehow bothers non-rockets fans more than rockets fan. harden was i think the 3rd longest-tenured player in the entire league at that point. is he never allowed to leave?

the owner had decided he didn't want to pay mike d'antoni, the 2nd best coach in rockets history, and it had taken daryl morey all of 2 seasons to get tired of the owner's meddling and cheapness and he had already fled to greener pastures. expecting any superstar to want to hang around a team whose window had clearly closed and whose GM and coach had just left, after the player had already stayed there as long as basically any star in the league, seems an unreasonable expectation. harden already being so hated by the general public is the only reason the story got any play at all (i.e. First Take fans seem like the kind of people to go for that kind of story). and frankly, any rockets fan who wanted harden to hang around when it was clearly time to rebuild presumably didn't know what they were talking about and obviously didn't realize we had a top-4 protected pick that keeping harden would clearly cost us (that we ultimately kept after trading him).

and what exactly did he do wrong in 2021? is tearing a hamstring or playing on a torn hamstring a terrible offense?

It's not like I ignore what was accomplished in 2018,

no, just 2019, 2020, and 2021, lol.

but Harden's performance over the course of critical series have left me feeling like he's just not as able to do his thing against the very best of playoff competition the way some other guys have, and that contributes to where I end up placing the guy, which I don't really think is that low, but we haven't gotten to yet.

while harden is a poor playoff resiliency guy, he is actually pretty agnostic about who he underperforms against. it's not a david robinson "beat up on the weaklings" situation. he's lit up the 2020 lakers and 2019 warriors while being "meh" against the 2018 timberwolves. probably the best statistical 4 game stretch of his career is against the 2015 #1 warriors defense but he couldn't figure out the 2014 portland trailblazers mediocre defense. hell, even this year his series against the nets was worse than his series against the celtics, who have all sorts of guys to guard him. in the 8 series stretch from 2018 to 2021, presumably your definition of "critical" series, harden led the entire series in game score 7 times. series that featured Lebron, AD, KD (3 times), Steph (2 times), CP3 (5 times), Butler, Tatum, and Donovan Mitchell (2 times). he literally HAS done his thing against the very best of playoff competition, and had a better team and gotten closer to winning than any other non-alpha title guy ever (in 2018).

[Doctor MJ]

I don't think it can be emphasized enough how much the years after 2018 have hurt Harden's rep.

LOL, post-2018? so 2019, 2020, and 2021 LOWERED your opinion of harden? arguably his 2 best years and another very good year? for a guy who doesn't like when people hold the 2016 finals against steph, saying 2019-21 hurt harden tremendously is quite a take. and i would say in the general public, at absolute best it wouldn't even be until asking out of houston that would hurt his rep and even then only among people who think First Take counts as basketball analysis. how you could read 2019-21 as hurting him so much doesn't make much sense.

2019 is one of the great floor-raising regular seasons ever followed by a playoffs where harden averages 35/7/5.5 against the warriors, but...

To be clear, I was asserting that these things DID hurt Harden's rep in the eyes of people in general, not that he specifically deserved this. And I was saying this with regards to the perception of someone else that Curry/KD got helped in their rep by teaming up relative to someone like Harden - I was saying that back when this was happening (2018-ish), it was the opposite - it helped Harden with respect to Curry/KD - but that this the general sentiment has changed with time with the 2018 run now being less salient in the minds of people analyzing Harden.

We can debate of course whether this is the truth, but my statement was working to explain the perceived truth, not make an anti-Harden statement out of the blue.

Breaking it down in more detail, I'd argue that literally at the end of 2019 things hadn't started hurting Harden yet. The fact the Rockets had lost to the Warriors again was clearly going to be a cudgel used against Harden from that point onward, but it wasn't having the tier-splitting effect that one might argue is has now and likely going forward.

I'd say that '19-20 didn't hurt Harden at the time, but it was providing more cudgels for the future with Harden forcing the Rockets to get rid of Harden and get Westbrook...which was an incredibly damaging move.

Then we get to the off-season and Harden demanding out because the roster he had demanded was not a good one, which through the '20-21 season was still being mitigated by the fact that he looked good in Brooklyn and they might win a title.

But the of course, he demanded out there, went to Philly, didn't add anything, and demanded out of there.

If all this has very little effect on your assessment of Harden's career, I'm not saying that's crazy, but the idea that it doesn't affect the perspective of many I just don't think is realistic.

Re: great floor-raising. This is something of a loaded compliment. I'd say Harden's developed a reputation as a greater regular season helio who struggles to continue that role against tough playoff competition.

Mind you, I consider Harden's OKC work to be very much of the ceiling-raising variety.

In 2019, everyone was expecting the Rockets to close out the Warriors sans KD. Instead, Harden & co. lost out again.

closing out would imply a lead, not being down 3-2. second, there must be a reason people blame KD for joining a 73 win team. oh yeah, the core of the 73 win team. i didn't realize beating them twice in a row was so easy that a guy having an MVP season and MVP series should be forever besmirched if he can't beat them. "oh james, you only have to play the KD warriors, the team no one else can even challenge, 5 times but then you get one whole game against the remaining 3 hall of famers so that's pretty much a gimme series, right, even if maybe you are the best player in that game but klay and iggy hit 12 threes?" what even was harden's crime here? leading game 6 in scoring while putting up 35/8/5, arguably being the best player in game 6 after having already been the best player in the series for the first 5 games? that doesn't seem like a standard anyone else in this project is being held to. and certainly no one at the robinson/robertson level of player who have recently been voted in.

The Rockets took the lead in Game 5 after KD went down only to blow it.

After that there were many people dismissing the ending of Game 5 as a fluke certain that it would be simple for the Rockets to win the next two games, and of course that's not what happened.

Re: didn't realize 2 games...besmirched forever. But of course, we're not talking about 2 games in a vacuum. What we're talking about is a guy who has never gotten over the hump whose main claim to a ceiling comes from having almost beaten the Curry-KD Warriors which was seen as impossible. Him not getting the team over the hump when KD went down specifically hurts that pro-Harden argument.

Wouldn't be so bad if Harden had come back afterward and got his team over the hump...but as we stand now, what we have is a guy who never got his team over the hump, and his excuses for it hold less water than they once did.

Again, none of this means Harden isn't high on people's Top 100 lists, only that these are things occupying space in the landscape.

Re: Robinson/Robertson not being held to same standard. I'd say both of those guys are being helped a good deal by the "2nd banana" part of their career. Had the Nets or the 76ers actually won titles, perception of Harden would likely be different now.

Yes, he was losing to a team led by a guy already voted in...but it was a crippled team neverthelss, and a crippled team that Kawhi & co. had no such trouble dispatching.

if one game samples are what we are looking at, Kawhi & co. also lost the only game KD even barely played, with the entire margin of victory coming in KD's minutes. there would have been nothing for Kawhi and co. to close out if they had had to face kevin durant for the first 5 games. in fact, KD presumably wouldn't even get hurt in game 5 because it would be over in 4. wouldn't you agree?

I'm obviously not suggesting that we should only look at one game samples.

Re: Kawhi/Durant. Sounds like you're saying that a healthy Warrior team beats those Raptors, and yes, I'd agree with that.

And then of course you get Harden going from hero to villain in earnest, forcing Paul out, then demanding out, then demanding out in another city, then demanding out in yet another city.

even if i give you the nets situation, which would seem pretty clear was more about the conspiracy theorist who sat out the whole season (you'll notice things didn't turn around when harden was exiled), "demanding" out of houston seems to be something that somehow bothers non-rockets fans more than rockets fan. harden was i think the 3rd longest-tenured player in the entire league at that point. is he never allowed to leave?

the owner had decided he didn't want to pay mike d'antoni, the 2nd best coach in rockets history, and it had taken daryl morey all of 2 seasons to get tired of the owner's meddling and cheapness and he had already fled to greener pastures. expecting any superstar to want to hang around a team whose window had clearly closed and whose GM and coach had just left, after the player had already stayed there as long as basically any star in the league, seems an unreasonable expectation. harden already being so hated by the general public is the only reason the story got any play at all (i.e. First Take fans seem like the kind of people to go for that kind of story). and frankly, any rockets fan who wanted harden to hang around when it was clearly time to rebuild presumably didn't know what they were talking about and obviously didn't realize we had a top-4 protected pick that keeping harden would clearly cost us (that we ultimately kept after trading him).

and what exactly did he do wrong in 2021? is tearing a hamstring or playing on a torn hamstring a terrible offense?

I think I've already spoken to the essence of this stuff above, so I'll wait for you to bring up specific points you see as most worth further discussion in response to this post.

but Harden's performance over the course of critical series have left me feeling like he's just not as able to do his thing against the very best of playoff competition the way some other guys have, and that contributes to where I end up placing the guy, which I don't really think is that low, but we haven't gotten to yet.

while harden is a poor playoff resiliency guy, he is actually pretty agnostic about who he underperforms against. it's not a david robinson "beat up on the weaklings" situation. he's lit up the 2020 lakers and 2019 warriors while being "meh" against the 2018 timberwolves. probably the best statistical 4 game stretch of his career is against the 2015 #1 warriors defense but he couldn't figure out the 2014 portland trailblazers mediocre defense. hell, even this year his series against the nets was worse than his series against the celtics, who have all sorts of guys to guard him. in the 8 series stretch from 2018 to 2021, presumably your definition of "critical" series, harden led the entire series in game score 7 times. series that featured Lebron, AD, KD (3 times), Steph (2 times), CP3 (5 times), Butler, Tatum, and Donovan Mitchell (2 times). he literally HAS done his thing against the very best of playoff competition, and had a better team and gotten closer to winning than any other non-alpha title guy ever (in 2018).

Well, the common knock on Harden isn't that he's weak in certain matchups but that he thrives early in series before the opponent gets used to him. We can debate the truth of that, as well as whether it's worse to be someone who struggles against certain matchups (like Robinson against Malone) or someone who struggles against Game 5/6/7 opponents.

And of course as I said, Robinson's final act to his career is a thing here. If it were just about who had the best alpha-career, I'd at the very least have Malone over Robinson, so an argument for Harden over Robinson certainly seems plausible too.

[f4p]

I don't think it can be emphasized enough how much the years after 2018 have hurt Harden's rep.

LOL, post-2018? so 2019, 2020, and 2021 LOWERED your opinion of harden? arguably his 2 best years and another very good year? for a guy who doesn't like when people hold the 2016 finals against steph, saying 2019-21 hurt harden tremendously is quite a take. and i would say in the general public, at absolute best it wouldn't even be until asking out of houston that would hurt his rep and even then only among people who think First Take counts as basketball analysis. how you could read 2019-21 as hurting him so much doesn't make much sense.

2019 is one of the great floor-raising regular seasons ever followed by a playoffs where harden averages 35/7/5.5 against the warriors, but...

To be clear, I was asserting that these things DID hurt Harden's rep in the eyes of people in general, not that he specifically deserved this. And I was saying this with regards to the perception of someone else that Curry/KD got helped in their rep by teaming up relative to someone like Harden - I was saying that back when this was happening (2018-ish), it was the opposite - it helped Harden with respect to Curry/KD - but that this the general sentiment has changed with time with the 2018 run now being less salient in the minds of people analyzing Harden.

We can debate of course whether this is the truth, but my statement was working to explain the perceived truth, not make an anti-Harden statement out of the blue.

Breaking it down in more detail, I'd argue that literally at the end of 2019 things hadn't started hurting Harden yet. The fact the Rockets had lost to the Warriors again was clearly going to be a cudgel used against Harden from that point onward, but it wasn't having the tier-splitting effect that one might argue is has now and likely going forward.

I'd say that '19-20 didn't hurt Harden at the time, but it was providing more cudgels for the future with Harden forcing the Rockets to get rid of Harden and get Westbrook...which was an incredibly damaging move.

Then we get to the off-season and Harden demanding out because the roster he had demanded was not a good one, which through the '20-21 season was still being mitigated by the fact that he looked good in Brooklyn and they might win a title.

But the of course, he demanded out there, went to Philly, didn't add anything, and demanded out of there.

If all this has very little effect on your assessment of Harden's career, I'm not saying that's crazy, but the idea that it doesn't affect the perspective of many I just don't think is realistic.

i mean, the public has hated harden since at least 2016 and everyone has decided he's easy to pick on and has jumped on the dogpile. anything he does is looked at in the worst light. similar to basically anything steph does is looked at in the best light. like the steph/KD situation you refer to, where KD is generally reviled for creating a megateam and steph has people praising him non-stop for doing the same thing, even giving him a peak season from 2017, lol.

Re: great floor-raising. This is something of a loaded compliment. I'd say Harden's developed a reputation as a greater regular season helio who struggles to continue that role against tough playoff competition.

if harden did in the playoffs what he does in the regular season, he'd be in top 10 conversations. and in 2019 specifically, he actually did put up almost his regular season stats against the warriors so this is a weird argument.

Mind you, I consider Harden's OKC work to be very much of the ceiling-raising variety.

closing out would imply a lead, not being down 3-2. second, there must be a reason people blame KD for joining a 73 win team. oh yeah, the core of the 73 win team. i didn't realize beating them twice in a row was so easy that a guy having an MVP season and MVP series should be forever besmirched if he can't beat them. "oh james, you only have to play the KD warriors, the team no one else can even challenge, 5 times but then you get one whole game against the remaining 3 hall of famers so that's pretty much a gimme series, right, even if maybe you are the best player in that game but klay and iggy hit 12 threes?" what even was harden's crime here? leading game 6 in scoring while putting up 35/8/5, arguably being the best player in game 6 after having already been the best player in the series for the first 5 games? that doesn't seem like a standard anyone else in this project is being held to. and certainly no one at the robinson/robertson level of player who have recently been voted in.

The Rockets took the lead in Game 5 after KD went down only to blow it.

come on man. the rockets fought back from being down 20 earlier in the game, managed to get a whopping 2 point lead for a combined 20 seconds, then the comeback ran out of steam and they lost. that whole fight back from 20 is exactly why it's not fun to play the KD warriors, so the fresh remaining warriors can take you out. to be fair, harden did have chris paul giving him a solid 11/6/6 on 3/14 shooting so it's hard to see why james struggled to win.

After that there were many people dismissing the ending of Game 5 as a fluke certain that it would be simple for the Rockets to win the next two games, and of course that's not what happened.

really, lots of people thought it would be simple? to beat the the warriors still with their fully healthy death lineup and a game 7 at golden state? with chris paul having maybe the worst playoff series of his career and doing his best to offset steph's struggles and KD's injury? i would be shocked if vegas had it as "simple".

Re: didn't realize 2 games...besmirched forever. But of course, we're not talking about 2 games in a vacuum. What we're talking about is a guy who has never gotten over the hump whose main claim to a ceiling comes from having almost beaten the Curry-KD Warriors which was seen as impossible. Him not getting the team over the hump when KD went down specifically hurts that pro-Harden argument.

well, yes, i guess if we're just doing a "ringz erneh" argument with no context. the fact harden + cp3 created a team every bit the equal of the KD warriors should be a huge feather in harden's cap. the fact that harden + severely diminished cp3 couldn't beat the KD warriors with "only" 5 games of KD wouldn't seem to say much about the 2018 argument, would it?

Wouldn't be so bad if Harden had come back afterward and got his team over the hump...but as we stand now, what we have is a guy who never got his team over the hump, and his excuses for it hold less water than they once did.

his "excuse" is he was trying to beat a team with 2 MVP's, a DPOY, and another hall of famer smack dab in the middle of their peaks with his best teammate being chris paul at 33 years old in his prime but clearly not his peak. and it looked like he could do it if chris paul could stay healthy. just making the circumstances even tougher the next year with cp3 falling off and no depth and considering it a knock against harden just makes no sense. ESPECIALLY since harden didn't play poorly in game 6. harden was the leading scorer in the game and had the second best BPM amongst starters after iggy. he could have literally put up 39/8/5 on 62 TS% and he would have still lost the game by 1. that's like the jordan/lebron standard, not the top 25 standard.

oh yeah, this was the rockets bench in the series after the owner cheaped out:

austin rivers (7.7 PER in the 2019 season, not much better since)
iman shumpert - played 15 more nba games ever
gerald green - last nba minutes ever in this series
nene - last nba minutes ever in this series

does that really seem like the bench to go with diminished chris paul to make winning 2 straight over the warriors "simple"?

Again, none of this means Harden isn't high on people's Top 100 lists, only that these are things occupying space in the landscape.

Re: Robinson/Robertson not being held to same standard. I'd say both of those guys are being helped a good deal by the "2nd banana" part of their career. Had the Nets or the 76ers actually won titles, perception of Harden would likely be different now.

isn't this just a "ringz" argument or is it another "you're not saying the thing, you're just saying other people are saying the thing" argument? i'm sure harden wishes he could play with peak kareem instead of the greatest playoff faller ever in embiid.

seriously, this is their numbers from last year's playoffs:

18.5 PER / 0.111 WS48 / 4.1 BPM
20.3 PER / 0.090 WS48 / 1.9 BPM

it should be striking that you're not sure who is who or which is better - post-hamstring tear james harden or mvp joel embiid.

if one game samples are what we are looking at, Kawhi & co. also lost the only game KD even barely played, with the entire margin of victory coming in KD's minutes. there would have been nothing for Kawhi and co. to close out if they had had to face kevin durant for the first 5 games. in fact, KD presumably wouldn't even get hurt in game 5 because it would be over in 4. wouldn't you agree?

I'm obviously not suggesting that we should only look at one game samples.

aren't you? losing to a team (in 1 game) that kawhi handled easily was your point. of course based on the reverse sample, kawhi and co would not have needed to close anything out because they would have lost after playing KD 5 times.

Re: Kawhi/Durant. Sounds like you're saying that a healthy Warrior team beats those Raptors, and yes, I'd agree with that.

even if i give you the nets situation, which would seem pretty clear was more about the conspiracy theorist who sat out the whole season (you'll notice things didn't turn around when harden was exiled), "demanding" out of houston seems to be something that somehow bothers non-rockets fans more than rockets fan. harden was i think the 3rd longest-tenured player in the entire league at that point. is he never allowed to leave?

the owner had decided he didn't want to pay mike d'antoni, the 2nd best coach in rockets history, and it had taken daryl morey all of 2 seasons to get tired of the owner's meddling and cheapness and he had already fled to greener pastures. expecting any superstar to want to hang around a team whose window had clearly closed and whose GM and coach had just left, after the player had already stayed there as long as basically any star in the league, seems an unreasonable expectation. harden already being so hated by the general public is the only reason the story got any play at all (i.e. First Take fans seem like the kind of people to go for that kind of story). and frankly, any rockets fan who wanted harden to hang around when it was clearly time to rebuild presumably didn't know what they were talking about and obviously didn't realize we had a top-4 protected pick that keeping harden would clearly cost us (that we ultimately kept after trading him).

and what exactly did he do wrong in 2021? is tearing a hamstring or playing on a torn hamstring a terrible offense?

I think I've already spoken to the essence of this stuff above, so I'll wait for you to bring up specific points you see as most worth further discussion in response to this post.

it seems like you want to have your cake and eat it too by saying "i'm not saying james harden fell in my estimation, just that others are saying it, but james harden having a terrible terrible reputation, i'm not saying that". kind of "john smith beats his wife? i'm not saying that, just that others are, but john smith beats his wife, not something i'm saying".

while harden is a poor playoff resiliency guy, he is actually pretty agnostic about who he underperforms against. it's not a david robinson "beat up on the weaklings" situation. he's lit up the 2020 lakers and 2019 warriors while being "meh" against the 2018 timberwolves. probably the best statistical 4 game stretch of his career is against the 2015 #1 warriors defense but he couldn't figure out the 2014 portland trailblazers mediocre defense. hell, even this year his series against the nets was worse than his series against the celtics, who have all sorts of guys to guard him. in the 8 series stretch from 2018 to 2021, presumably your definition of "critical" series, harden led the entire series in game score 7 times. series that featured Lebron, AD, KD (3 times), Steph (2 times), CP3 (5 times), Butler, Tatum, and Donovan Mitchell (2 times). he literally HAS done his thing against the very best of playoff competition, and had a better team and gotten closer to winning than any other non-alpha title guy ever (in 2018).

Well, the common knock on Harden isn't that he's weak in certain matchups but that he thrives early in series before the opponent gets used to him.

well no, that's not the common knock. maybe it's your common knock, but for the public it's that harden sucks in the playoffs and has been choking away championships. just a few paragraphs ago you said:

Harden's developed a reputation as a greater regular season helio who struggles to continue that role against tough playoff competition

the public discourse is certainly not just a nuanced "harden is fine, it's just his distribution of perfectly fine play that we're worried about". people mostly think harden doesn't have a title because he sucks so much in the playoffs when he's almost inarguably had his best playoff years in the years his team had its best chance of winning.

We can debate the truth of that, as well as whether it's worse to be someone who struggles against certain matchups (like Robinson against Malone) or someone who struggles against Game 5/6/7 opponents.

And of course as I said, Robinson's final act to his career is a thing here. If it were just about who had the best alpha-career, I'd at the very least have Malone over Robinson, so an argument for Harden over Robinson certainly seems plausible too.