I prefer This Less Efficient Harden to the Old One

As long as Dwight and Dmo are grabbing offensive boards it's all good. Dmo getting more playing time means he's gonna be a beast come Playoff time.

 

Way too early to be saying his offense "took a hit". He usually hits his stride later in the season

 

Its fine for now, but there are gonna be times when the Rockets will need Harden to get some clutch shots and shooting sub 40% is not gonna cut over the long haul.

 

I am fully expecting his offensive shooting % to pick up over the next few weeks especially when we start facing the more elite teams in the West. That said, I love how he is involving nearly everyone else in the offense and is willing to give the ball up when he realizes other teammates have better/higher % shots available thanks to his creative drives into the middle of the court. His passing is absolutely fantastic 99% of the time and he rebounds better than most SG's. His only major weakness is his t/o % when he gets tired. Quite honestly he is close to a shut down defender as he will ever get so far this year and yet is still creating and facilitating others in the offense at a high rate. Dude is balling right now and the Rox are winning and winning big as a result.

The commitment to defense he has made this year is astonishing given how poorly he played defense past year, all the media coverage and Youtube bashing had to have had a major psychological affect on him and the addition of Ariza seems to have been a major affect on how he has approached playing on the defensive end of the floor. I am loving it !!!!

 

He's still having 58% TS, which is still pretty good. He's shot worse from the 3 point line but he's actually getting more foul call's than last year.

In addition his assist and reb are also much higher. Once again, 58%TS is not bad at.

 

As long as Rockets keep winning.

 

Harden has had slumps before and will have slumps again. I don't think it has much to do at all about his defensive effort. He will end the season shooting about where he always does. Can't wait for the stretch of games where he just can't miss.

 

If it's because of defense, then I'm ok with that.

But if so, his conditioning needs to improve.

 

What I want most from James Harden is to bring his turn overs down and play at least solid defense. I trust him to get his team mates involved and to put numbers on the board whether it's efficiently or not. I originally thought he was going to be near 29ppg before the season started, but I'm starting to understand that he probably needs to worry about getting the rest of the guys involved rather than himself scoring.

It would be awesome though if he could be like 47 FG%< and 37 3FG%< while at the same time being 90% FT%.

 

its too early but he needs to shoot better. not many good playoff teams have their best scorer shooting 40%.

 

It's pretty clear the reason for the lower % is due to defense, its no coincidence the a lot of the best scorers tend to be bad defenders (Stephen Curry, Nash, Cp3, Love, Rose etc).

I think he'll get used to it as the season goes on, but the thing is in the playoffs everyone has issues with offense anyway so its better to better to have defensive Harden than offensive dynamo Harden.

 

I prefer a more efficient Harden who is in shape and takes his job seriously. Something tells me I will never get that Harden, but I do appreciate his junkyard quasi playmaking skills.

As Rockets fans, we must get used to taking Harden at his face value which is a bare minimum athlete. He will do the bare minimum acquired to win while giving the least amount of physical effort on either end of the floor.

Harden is the Anti JJ-Watt.

 

harden shot like this the first month of last season, and his defense was still ass

 

I'm ok with it being lower but shooting sub 40% is just too low. Should improve like he usually does.

 

LOL...KUDOS on your username!!!!....:grin:
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We have seen Harden have slow starts shooting before, but we haven't seen defense like this from him. So with his passing ability to say Ariza, Canaan & Terry, I'll take his current shooting %.

 

Ten assists last night. Three steals. Nuff said.

 

he's as inefficient as chandlers parsons right now (purely based on fg%)

 

Harden started off poorly from the field last season too(although that was due in part to a foot injury). His shot will round into form. What's remarkable is the start they've gotten off to with him not shooting well coupled with the injuries to 2 starters.