tiderulz wrote:well, sorry, but count me in the camp that he isnt a #1 player. And i believe that his stats benefit from playing against backups and 2nd level players for the first half of games. He is still young enough to get better, and hopefully gets better defensively. Not been impressed with his defense, all he seems to do is flop and look for the call.
I also see him as a more intelligent player, not more athletic. If he had dunked the fast break he had in the finals, they would have won that game. Instead, he couldnt and missed the layup. He also is not fast enough to guard the top level SG's and too small to guard most SF's.
he does have a good all around offensive game. He is similar to Iggy in that he can set up other players, though IMO better on offense than Iggy. Just not sure that when defense are setting up to attack him, versus when he plays with WB and KD, that he can continue to produce at such high levels.
Really? I mean, really?
Your 1st argument (Harden playing against team's 2nd units, etc) doesn't warrant that kind of opinion. For one, he played starter minutes and finished a lot of games. W/ Thabo, Scotty Brooks often looked at matchups as to who would get more mins/finish because OKC was that DEEP perimeter-wise. He's also a pretty solid one-on-one defender, stays low, doesn't gamble too often with steals. Like you said, "intelligent". "Flop"? When he's playing against bigger two's who post him up, what do you expect? LOL
Your 2nd statement I can agree with, though I think he's more capable of being athletic than he lets on. I mean, I just think Westbrook's explosiveness kind of hide, over shadow Harden's athleticism. I've watched a ton of Thunder games and team USA games/scrimmages and from what I saw, Harden can finish with the best of them. The Iggy comparison isn't fair, as Harden's a 1-2 hybrid and Iggy's a 2-3 hybrid.
I think Bensational made the Ginobili reference and I agree 100% with that. Harden, in my eyes can easily duplicate his success, stats from OKC and build on them on a team, preferably Orlando.
