Harden's shooting slump and turnover issue started way before the difficult schedule really began to set in.
McHale does go with the unfettered mode of talk to be engaging at times. No too mean, not too diplomatic either, gonna be some "real talk" in there. Kind of like a snarkier Jeff Van Gundy. I dont blame him for bitterness either. Can't say I'm too surprised by it lol. But it'da been nice to hear more positive tone about Harden without the personals
Again, like someone allready mentioned, we want james to be flawless and that is really what every fan should do. But he is still a human being and especially athletes in any sport have some kind of flaws. If we want him to create our offense by himself, shoot well, get it done in every aspect of our offensive game AND being a great defensive player with maximum effort on D, aren't we asking for the GOAT at this point? Just accept that he is not quick enough on D to keep up with those fast guards. At some point you got to ask yourself if you would rather have him sit out games and get injured more often or you would rather have him not hustling back on D for every turnover and play 82 games, while carrying a huge offensive responsibility, like he has done it for multiple times now. Stop asking for the GOAT, just appreciate our franchise player who is the only reason we are somewhat relevant in a league where 4 all-stars team up to share those responsibilities.
Hard to explain that considering it's been a season long issue, not to mention the month of January you argued was at the epitome of the worst part of it. You don't want to factor in fatigue, cool I get it. I'd like to hear your thoughts on LeBron? Who can't play the minutes Harden has, carry the offensive burden he has or played the games he had. The almighty great one has to take days off regularly, and has players to help carry the offensive load. None the less, he still takes plays off arguing calls after a turnover or missed foul. With regularity and likely more so than Harden.
I gave up on that a long time ago. Honestly I think the current version of Harden is his pinnacle. This is it- maybe two more years of this and the decline will slowly begin. He just needs some more help, and/or for Gordon to magically become bullet-proof.
I'm not very high on LeBron this season. Also, Zach Lowe and Howard Beck just picked KD and Kawhi as their MVPs during Lowe's podcast, not even mentioning Harden. You can cry foul all you want, but there's no denying that people were not impressed by Harden's January performance.
Neither carry the offensive burden Harden does. I'm glad Lowe and beck said that but it's not the majority, but rather the minority. With kd it shouldn't even be discussed respectably tbh. I give Durant for putting much more effort defensively. But surely you must realize that he is able to exert that effort because of the extreme amount of offensive help he has. With Kawhi he deserves extreme credit. But he gets lots of rest, tho. Doesn't carry the offensive pressure but has the significantly better defense. He's 2nd or 3rd in the discussion depending on how you feel about wb. But he's just not as dominate as harden and can't completely take over a game the way harden can. I'm not against criticizing Harden, but to think one slump disqualifies his MVP dominance is ubsurd. This guy is playing at an all time level, and that's with "bad" defense (more like average - below average honestly). What he is doing offensively is purely amazing. It is only being over shadowed because westbrick is chucking his way to a great season himself. Not to discredit anything he is doing tho. But please, continue to point that in January he had efficiency #s that Westbrook maintains year long and discredit the other dominating months.
Harden's PER in January was 25. That's nowhere close to Westbrook's; not that I care since Westbrook is overrated IMO. I was just responding to the ridiculous comment that Harden was the best player in the world in January. Apparently, you seem to have a problem with that rebuttal.
Dude you are either too thick or deflecting. Harden's January was like any MVP's worst stretch of the season. An MVP is the MVP of an entire season. We have won 70% of our games - including games in January - and Harden has been the MVP. Just because he had a bad month due to the schedule being f*cked, doesn't mean he is not the MVP. It means he is the MVP who was tired, beaten up, and facing an unusually difficult schedule. And he played like it. Your stupidity is necessitating pulling out stats like the worst month of every MVP players' season but I'm just realizing no matter how many times you are wrong, you will just keep pointing at something random. So I'll just remind you of the bottom line. The people who crown the MVP are calling James Harden the MVP, and they watched our January, as well as all the other months, as well as watching Lebron and Curry and Durant and Westbrook. They still call him the MVP. And they aren't Rocket fans. They don't have a particular incentive to pick him. Not only is he MVP, but with a mediocre roster, we are on pace to almost break the franchise record. We are 3rd best record in the NBA with the easiest part of our schedule remaining. If that doesn't get through to you, then you are just intent on hating and that's your right. Sucks for you. Like I said, you are the inverse homer. I'm not showering him with only compliments. I tell it like it is, instead of the fantasy imaginary BS you're spewing. And the people who pick MVP are not showering him non stop with compliments and ignoring his weaknesses lol. It's called perspective. It's called the big picture. He has been the best player in the world AND he has weaknesses. That's what you don't get.
1. Leaders are made, not born. The only thing I disagree with McHale's interview. Everything else was spot on. 2. Yes, the leader has to sprint back and play defense. Yes, he has to grind defensively along with the other guys. This "be a offensive juggernaut while not playing defense" is total bull. Name me one champion that played that way. No. Don't bother. Russell, Jabbar, Bird, Magic, MJ, Duncan, Shaq, Kobe, Kawhi, Lebron, Wade, Curry, even Dirk.......they all played defense, even guys like Bird who were physically ill-equipped to be great defenders. They all played defense! Harden is never going to lead a team to a championship playing this way. You need to face facts here. It's not going to happen unless he matures enough to knuckle down on defense and share the offensive load with other playmakers. McHale knows Harden the basketball player as well as anybody. You can gripe about his coaching but that's a hall of fame player mind you, that spent several years very close to Harden. If anybody knows where Harden is in regards to becoming the type of leader that can win championships....it's McHale. McHale says he's trying. That's the best he can give Harden. Because Harden is trying. He's busting tail trying to lead this team to a championship playing his way......everybody else do the dirty work then hand him the ball and get out of the way. Absolutely Harden is giving it all he's got trying to win playing his way. But it simply ain't going to happen unless and until Harden finally melds into the team and leads from the inside. He has to lead in defensive effort. And he has to be willing to share playmaking responsibilities and embrace playing off the ball for stretches of the game when it makes winning sense to do so. McHale has Hardens number folks.
You're putting a lot of blame on Harden, here. Remember, nobody expected the Rockets to be the 3rd seed in the western conference heading into the all-star break this year. In fact, most didn't have us in the top 6 in the west. Why? Because the supporting cast isn't up to spec and injury prone. You could put Kobe or Lebron or Kawhi or Curry on this team right now in place of Harden and I guarantee you our record right now wouldn't be better than it currently is, in fact it would probably be worse. The only thing different would be your narrative on why we would never win with one of those other guys at the helm. You would still be here digging up BS narratives as to why the Rockets aren't the clear cut favorites to win the championship. Thing is, most of us know that we aren't the clear cut favorites but that has nothing to do with James Harden and everything to do with the level of talent he has surrounding him. Hakeem had more talent surrounding him in 1994 than the current Harden Rockets have. Yet, we're on pace to win around the same number of games this year as the 1994 team did.
Yeah, I mean if Harden stops turning the ball over and becomes a 1st team all defense player while maintaining his same offensive numbers he would probably go down as the best player to ever lace them up. Funny thing is, even if Harden did all of those things it still wouldn't make us favorites to beat Golden State. We would need a few more all-star level players for that, GS has four of them.
Mathloom must have really short memory span, or just a pathological liar. This is what you said. Harden in January : - FG 42.9% - 3PT 30.5% - TOV 6.4 - Played noticeably worse defense - Team went 10-7 - Wasn't even considered for player of the month award I wasn't talking about Harden's performance for the entire season. Even specifically mentioned that he still has a good chance at MVP. Don't move the goal post.
January was a tough month for the western conference. I think the Spurs went 10-5, Jazz were 10-6, Grizz 7-7, Clippers were 8-4 and the Warriors only lost 2 games but they have 4 all-stars so that is to be expected for them. Harden is our only all-star so keep that in mind. Rockets played more games than all of those teams that month, more B2B games too and more road games. All things considered, I think we can chalk January up as being a poor month for the Rockets as a team. But, it's not as if any other team really blew the doors off of January except for Golden State but they don't really count. Also, if you're going to post Harden's stats to prove a point on our January record, it may do you some good to also post the stats of our other players. Most of the team sucked in January, btw. You could blame it all on Harden, but if you actually watched the games and were a real fan of the team you wouldn't do that.
This isn't about causes of Harden's poor performance in January. My very first comment in this thread was about how Harden's poor shooting, turnover issue and lack of defense cannot occur at the same time and that is what happened in January. So, Mathloom either thinks that didn't happen (which doesn't make sense, because facts clearly show it did), or have an agenda to twist my words to discredit any slightly potentially negative comment on Harden. I'm very well aware of the schedule issue, but Harden's shooting slump and turnover problem started even before January. All I said was Harden cannot continue to play like he did in January, if he wants to be considered MVP or best player in the world. And if the brutal schedule theory of Harden's poor January performance is right, he won't. So, no problem then.
I realize what you're saying but it doesn't make much sense. How many all-star level teammates does Harden have to pass the ball to? How many teammates does he have that he can rely on to make a play? When opposing teams can simply zero in on Harden someone else has to step up and make plays, who are those guys? How many all-star teammates does James Harden have to throw the ball to? Lebron has some, Curry has some. Harden has zero. Despite all of that, though. James Harden isn't whining or complaining about that, instead he's trying to make the most out of what he has which is ****ing respectable given how much the league caters to primadonna's these days. Remember back in the early 90's before the Rockets had won any titles, there were people in this city who wanted to see Hakeem traded for Ronny Siekaly. RONNY ****ING SEIKALY. Hakeem was not consistent, had bad months where he didn't shoot the ball well or would foul out. The Houston Post/Chronicle would do all sort of hit pieces on how Hakeem wasn't a winner or wanted out of Houston and how he lacked leadership, wasn't a team player, you remember those times? I do. Well, history often repeats itself my friend. It's time to lay off of Jim Harden and focus more on what we can do to surround him with the talent he deserves. He hasn't turned his back on this city, and it's not even a city he has any ties to. We need to appreciate that, he wants to continue the legacy here and surpass it. Throwing him under the bus simply for having a bad month isn't very productive and is stupid. Stop doing it. He's not a p***y like Durant or Lebron, he's the Alpha dog.
Has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Harden had poor stretches in January, whatever the causes. You're keep bringing up the relevant cause for the poor peformance (which is unprovable, frankly), when my comment was centered around pure results. You don't get extra credit in MVP rankings for having tough schedule. It's 100% based on results. So, what are you disagreeing with me here? Did Harden had good January based on results? That is objectively wrong because Harden was not a legit candidate for player of the month in January.
