King Ken wrote:Pelly24 wrote:King Ken wrote:Mid range v. zone defense at 195 when you can't shoot threes isn't a great value in all honestly. You can easily bump him off coverage with a defender like Middleton who's 6'8 240 and force him into Lopez and Giannis. Easily.
His numbers went up with OKC, in Houston is only drops as he is the system and you are forcing others to beat you other than him. Which you can do with hard traps, soft zones and putting a defender like Iggy, Exum when he was healthy, on him and using Gobert or Green to protect the paint and using Green to do that and protect the lane.
And outside of GS, it really hasn't been super effective in his recent run. You still got to outscore the Rox which is not easy to do whatsoever especially when at times you are playing 3-5 trying to scheme out Harden.
Not sure what this even has to do with the fact that Harden is just a more difficult matchup for any generation than Jordan is. Especially with today's rules.
Against HOU, you almost have to do a soft zone just due to Harden's playmaking skills. Against Jordan, I would go with nothing but hard zone and force him to beat me from modern 3pt NBA range.With a hard zone, I would also force MJ to create for others as well without slashing. That's when he struggled heavily. Of course in his era, I couldn't do it with Randy Wittman, Craig Elho, and guys like that. It's not possible. They just don't have the ability which is the biggest problem with MJ's era. The ability just wasn't there to defend him. The personnel just wasn't available.
I think you're underestimating MJ's three-point jumper. He was at like 33-34% for his career in an era that didn't stress three-point shooter. Sure, he wasn't a great shooter from that range, but in this era a big part of the game is your willingness to take the shots, and he was a noticeably better shooter while also being every bit as athletic and 3 inches taller. I could see MJ hitting 35%>>> of his threes and making about 100 per year...
I need to know why you guys are so sure of this. When I watched most tape, his three point shooting looked awful. Shot was always flat from distance. He never really looked comfortable. Most guys didn't really defend him heavily unless it was close to zero on the shot clock. He liked to double clutch for to try to pass it. He mainly took threes with the shot clock running down or if the defender was playing his weak hand in more difficult situations and it was still a last option type of thing. MJ tales are always interesting. It's never anything factual, it's Basketball Chuck Norris talk.
You can't use a three-point shooting contest for this, otherwise Joe Harris is a better shooter than Stephen Curry.
The fact is, he shot about 33% from three for his career, and he also shot like 80% from the line and is statisically the best high volume midrange shooter ever. When you consider that, why is it so hard to believe he could make 1.8 threes a game at 35%? Like, you don't think in an era where that is emphasized and everyone tells you to work on it and you're a natural jumpshooter with perfect form that he couldn't manage to do that? He had seasons where he made like 1.5 threes a game. He has playoff runs where he shot 38% from three.
The real problem here is that you basically put no significance on the playoffs. Harden is honest to god not even a better scorer than LeBron. Kawhi has a very MJ-esque game except he's much slower and much less dynamic of an athlete, and he just put up a better playoff than Kawhi ever had, and MJ has multiple playoff runs just like this one.
Harden has to start dominating in the playoffs for people to respect this take. I can definitely understand the better regular season argument if you don't want to take into account the stylistic differences of today, but the playoffs make it a done deal for me. It's MJ.
