The James Harden Thread (2019-20)

[90sAllDecade]

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[thekdog34]

Mediocre for an all-time great? Sure.

Doesn't change the fact that his team has lost to simply better teams for the most part.

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The reason the warriors and Spurs were better is Curry and Kawhi are better than Harden

Sure. And none of that takes away from the greatness of Harden.

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Well I never said he was a bad player. He's good. I think he keeps himself from greatness with the way he chooses to play. He should play like he did in 2015

[Jaivl]

Mediocre for an all-time great? Sure.

Doesn't change the fact that his team has lost to simply better teams for the most part.

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The reason the warriors and Spurs were better is Curry and Kawhi are better than Harden

Sure. And none of that takes away from the greatness of Harden.

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Huh? No, not "sure" at all.

[Colbinii]

The reason the warriors and Spurs were better is Curry and Kawhi are better than Harden

Sure. And none of that takes away from the greatness of Harden.

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Huh? No, not "sure" at all.

Sometimes you must concede a point to continue a conversation.

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[Dr Spaceman]

Bump for 60 points in 30 minutes. Rockets put up 158 points in regulation. Holy crap.

There’s been chatter about Luka taking his mantle as best offensive player in the league. I don’t think it’s his time yet.

[Dupp]

The luka stuff is very premature.


Wish harden played 4 quarters

[freethedevil]

Last 6 games (winning streak)

Rockets’ ORtg w/Harden on court: 111.9
Rockets’ DRtg w/Harden on court: 93.7
NET On court: +18.2 per 100 possessions

Rockets’ ORtg w/Harden off court: 96.9
Rockets’ DRtg w/Harden off court: 113.4
Rockets’ NET with Harden off court: -16.5 per 100 possessions

Harden NET On-Off: +32.7

42/8/7 on 65.2% TS

Why do you keep using raw net like it means something? If you're goign to use +/-, use stable +/-

[AdagioPace]

Bump for 60 points in 30 minutes. Rockets put up 158 points in regulation. Holy crap.

There’s been chatter about Luka taking his mantle as best offensive player in the league. I don’t think it’s his time yet.

48.3 points per 100 and 122 Ortg(career best if we exclude his pre-prime 2012 season). He's going even a bit "nuttier" than last season

[Pillendreher]

The luka stuff is very premature.

Isn't that always the case with young players? Ever single time they're not as good as advertised, simply because of their general lack of experience, and yet the exaggerations never stop.

[limbo]

Peak Harden is better than peak Durant. Anyone of y'all can fight me on that.

[Freighttrain]

Peak Harden is better than peak Durant. Anyone of y'all can fight me on that.

I'll fight you on that.. 2017 playoffs KD was on another level than Harden has ever been. The fact is, no matter how good Harden plays, most of his critics will admit he's a regular-season champ, but they'll evaluate him once he proves he can win a meaningful series, which he has yet to do.

[limbo]

Peak Harden is better than peak Durant. Anyone of y'all can fight me on that.

I'll fight you on that.. 2017 playoffs KD was on another level than Harden has ever been. The fact is, no matter how good Harden plays, most of his critics will admit he's a regular-season champ, but they'll evaluate him once he proves he can win a meaningful series, which he has yet to do.

Unfortunately, Warriors KD is disqualified from history books due to having an insanely outlier broken supporting cast that allowed him to optimize his game while simultaneously play bereft of defensive attention a guy with his offensive skillset would usually get on most teams. It's not even remotely a leveled playing field.

Harden played a far bigger role in carrying his teams to success than Durant in both their primes and took them further.

Harden is by no means perfect, i have my personal qualms about some stuff he does, but i think it's clear by now that he can carry a better offense than Durant can, and i don't think the defensive gap between the two is enough to offset that.

Also, if Harden is a 'regular season champ' and 'playoff choker', what was Durant before joining the Warriors? Plenty of bad series, getting locked by Tony Allen and throwing away a 3-1 lead is suddenly erased from our collective minds?

[Freighttrain]

Peak Harden is better than peak Durant. Anyone of y'all can fight me on that.

I'll fight you on that.. 2017 playoffs KD was on another level than Harden has ever been. The fact is, no matter how good Harden plays, most of his critics will admit he's a regular-season champ, but they'll evaluate him once he proves he can win a meaningful series, which he has yet to do.

Unfortunately, Warriors KD is disqualified from history books due to having an insanely outlier broken supporting cast that allowed him to optimize his game while simultaneously play bereft of defensive attention a guy with his offensive skillset would usually get on most teams. It's not even remotely a leveled playing field.

Harden played a far bigger role in carrying his teams to success than Durant in both their primes and took them further.

Harden is by no means perfect, i have my personal qualms about some stuff he does, but i think it's clear by now that he can carry a better offense than Durant can, and i don't think the defensive gap between the two is enough to offset that.

Also, if Harden is a 'regular season champ' and 'playoff choker', what was Durant before joining the Warriors? Plenty of bad series, getting locked by Tony Allen and throwing away a 3-1 lead is suddenly erased from our collective minds?

I remember multiple years where Harden didn't perform or didn't show up when it mattered. Like against the Clippers when Josh Smith and the rest of the reserves carried him to the WCF. Comparing KD's playoff performances to KD is ridiculous. KD never had anything remotely close to some of Harden's abysmal performances. Also, KD is/was a far superior defender than Harden. I'm not hating on Harden in any way. He has been a top 3 MVP player for the last 3 years, but he has yet to win against a playoff team that actually matters. If he wins against the Lakers or Clippers this year, he'll get some credit, but I feel like he's at a point in his career where only a ring can validate his success.

[Peregrine01]

Harden's averaging a historically unprecedented amount of free throws and his ability to draw the ref's whistle prevents defenders from really being able to even play any defense. I can't see that this kind of play as being very popular and I have a feeling that the NBA is seeing Harden's extreme exploitation of the rule system and thinking about tweaking the rules to counteract it. Kinda like what they did with the rip-through rule.

[limbo]

I remember multiple years where Harden didn't perform or didn't show up when it mattered. Like against the Clippers when Josh Smith and the rest of the reserves carried him to the WCF. Comparing KD's playoff performances to KD is ridiculous. KD never had anything remotely close to some of Harden's abysmal performances. Also, KD is/was a far superior defender than Harden. I'm not hating on Harden in any way. He has been a top 3 MVP player for the last 3 years, but he has yet to win against a playoff team that actually matters. If he wins against the Lakers or Clippers this year, he'll get some credit, but I feel like he's at a point in his career where only a ring can validate his success.

Josh Smith was horrible that series. People remember that he made some wide open threes and a couple of nice passes (all because defenses were busy stopping Harden and he actually had no one guarding him) and now he's suddenly the savior of Harden's legacy or something?

The specific year you mentioned was also arguably Harden's best postseason run, only being stopped by a 67-win, 10 SRS Warriors team. And excluding Curry, he was the best player in that series. Except Curry didn't play with Josh Smith, mid-life crisis Dwight, ancient Terry and Corey Brewer...

How is this being categorized as 'choking' or an 'abysmal performance'?

Since 2015, the only team Harden has been losing to in the playoffs is the Warriors, and a 61-win, 7 SRS, #1 defense Spurs team.

Why are people also ignoring the fact that Durant's last two postseason runs with the Thunder were just not great for superstar standards.

If we take '14 and '16 Thunder, most data says Westbrook had more impact than Durant in those runs. Not to mention Ibaka was right there too.

I'm not trying to deny that Harden got elite help too, for example in 2018, CP3 looked like the better player a lot of times and the defense/shooting they had also pulled a lot of weight. It's not like i'm giving all the credit to Harden.

What's happening is pretty obvious at this point. Both Harden and Durant had elite help at times in their career (at times is an understatement for Durant, but oh well), and both managed to look like the 2nd best player on their teams during some of those runs and overall very mortal. However, only Harden's 'demons' are being aired out at every chance, while KD's are not. And the answer to that is simple. KD got rings, Harden doesn't. Doesn't matter that the only reason KD got rings is because he went to play the game on easy mode. The fact that he got them is enough for most people. And i disagree with that viewpoint. Because if Harden went to the Warriors instead of KD, the same would've happened. So it doesn't really become a question of which guy is better but rather which guy had the better team around him so they could win the title. That's not the question i'm looking to answer.

[G35]

Last 6 games (winning streak)

Rockets’ ORtg w/Harden on court: 111.9
Rockets’ DRtg w/Harden on court: 93.7
NET On court: +18.2 per 100 possessions

Rockets’ ORtg w/Harden off court: 96.9
Rockets’ DRtg w/Harden off court: 113.4
Rockets’ NET with Harden off court: -16.5 per 100 possessions

Harden NET On-Off: +32.7

42/8/7 on 65.2% TS

Why do you keep using raw net like it means something? If you're goign to use +/-, use stable +/-

So boring arguing over which metric to use. You could change every one of those numbers and who would really care:

Rockets’ ORtg w/Harden on court: 114.9
Rockets’ DRtg w/Harden on court: 91.7
NET On court: +16.2 per 100 possessions

Rockets’ ORtg w/Harden off court: 94.9
Rockets’ DRtg w/Harden off court: 111.4
Rockets’ NET with Harden off court: -12.5 per 100 possessions

Harden NET On-Off: +36.7

44/9/5 on 66.7% TS

[Texas Chuck]

Bump for 60 points in 30 minutes. Rockets put up 158 points in regulation. Holy crap.

There’s been chatter about Luka taking his mantle as best offensive player in the league. I don’t think it’s his time yet.

Luka has been great. Harden is still the king though. The chatter is because Luka is the shiny, new toy and because so many people just hate how Harden plays.

I just love that Luka is already at a point where you can compare him to a guy like Harden and it's not a complete joke. 90 games into his career that's insane. Even if in the comparison he falls short, which he definitely does.

[Peregrine01]

So a quarter of the season has already passed and Harden ranks above 7 WHOLE teams in free throws made per 100 possessions. This is just so absurd haha.

[CKRT]

47/5/7 on 78% TS in the past week. Nutty.

[Peregrine01]

47/5/7 on 78% TS in the past week. Nutty.

There’s probably no better player in history who can shred a bad defense during the regular season with those types of scoring numbers.