Harden is clearly better but I thinks it's fair to say TMac is closer than "nowhere near". Guy is going in the HOF and spent 5.5 years as a rocket - his most with one team. Fine. Lol. Nobody is a champion until they're a champion until they're a champion. And every player could maybe someday in the future become a champion. Dream was a great amazing top offensive talent. And one of the best defenders of all time. Harden is amazing offensively and horrible defensively. They're night and day in terms of overall player my. I remember differently on Dirk. He was "soft" but took his squad to the Finals as noted at 27. He wasn't a great rebounder but rebounding great in the playoffs. He wasn't a great defender but was part of many solid and top defensive teams. See how that's different than Harden? At the end of the day the same arguments you make about Harden can be made about a lot of players throughout history. TMac, Yao, Francis, Melo, Nique, Stockton, Nash, Malone, Barkley, Ewing, AI, Reggie, Dwight (hey he finished 2nd in MVP voting one year too!!), etc, etc. the fact is it's just math. There's no parity in the NBA. The supreme stars of the league win titles and get there repeatedly. If the question is, can harden do that, probabilistically the answer is no. I don't think you'd find a statistician or professional gambler in the world who would legitimately put money in Harden winning a title as the #1 guy over him not. Just math. That the same might have been said about Dirk at one point, doesn't change the "math" behind Hardens likelihood. I agree with those likely gamblers. I'd also be way way way more than happy to eat crow on his one lol
Agreed. You think Harden is a capable competent defender. The rest of people who watch basketball, ESPECIALLY those who do it for a living, disagree. Lol.
This whole discussion ended when you compared Harden to Steve Francis and called that "facts." Not interested in continuing the discussion, honestly
Lol. Show me where I did that??? I said you can make the same arguments. Eg. Good at x,y,z ... flawed in other areas .... but might get better and could get there eventually. That's he argument you're making about Harden and that's the argument plenty made about Francis here. I'm sure you remember. Harden is a higher level. Great. I never said Harden is comparable to Francis. I'm not sure why you think I implied they were?? I very clearly noted what I was saying. If you don't want to argue your point anymore... then don't.
I guess I kind of feel like basketballholic now. I mean seriously. I have one guy arguing that Harden is or can be a decent defender. Never mind the fact that absolutely no nba analyst anywhere agrees with that. Google James Harden Defense for a nice laugh lol. And another taking offense to the fact that I noted you could make comparable arguments to Francis about him being flawed but eventually getting there... which I know was true because I was here on this BBS when we had Francis and that's what people argued.
Not chiming in on either side of this discussion. But since when do NBA analysts not named Jeff Van Gundy know what they're talking about at least half the time?
Harden is not a good example of a defensive player. Fact he hasn't won any defensive awards, no first team , not DPOY. You put James Harden on D against the other team's best offensive player ? No.
Meh. I value regular Joe's opinions just as much in many cases. But I think clutchfans BBS generally has a tendency to undervalue analysts because they think here is some media conspiracy against the Rockets. There's no media conspiracy to make Harden look really bad at defense for example. He does that himself.
Ppl who think harden is better than tmac are smoking crack. Tmac would annihilate harden and it's not even close...
I cannot believe how many think that CP3 will not fit. They complement each other perfectly. Harden will keep CP3 young and not worn down as well. You need two killer creators, Durant and Curry and LeBron and Kyrie. Everybody runs through them. The Rockets we dangerous this season because they had multiple shooters and EG and Lou could create their shoot but the offense still stagnated at times trying to get the same PNR with the same guy. With CP3 they are lethal. CP3 can fix all of the weaknesses with Harden, most of which come from being worn out carrying the offensive load every possession for the majority of the game. This is not news, you can see it. He loses attention and becomes sluggish, sloppy, and careless (3 WTF TOs in a row careless). Harden draws so much contact it wears him down. With CP3, say goodbye to at least 5 turnovers a game and probably add 5-7 points to the margins. Go back and look at the games we lost and tell me how many now. This wouldn't work if Harden was selfish. Does anybody really believe he is? CP3 would take so much of the leadership burden off of him and get him to focus on fixing his own weaknesses. We have all seen James play defense, he can do it well. A 25-7-7 Harden that plays defense and has limited TOs is better than the Harden we have now. I bet his overall efficiency also improves. I don't want a stat champion or an MVP, I want a Finals MVP. We have all seen when he has no lift. Pair this with another star and this is at least the 2nd best team in the NBA and can challenge. We were going 1 on 5 all-stars and were about as competitive as the Cavs at our best. I like our chances 3 on 5. Who knows what happens? At least we know that the best possible team was assembled and we can enjoy watching how it plays out. These are your choices EG or CP3, Ryno or George/Millsap/Griffin. Sadly, the best contracts and fits are George and Cousins with Paul but there is just no way to make it happen. Depending on what the Clippers lose they may have a hard time fielding a team and be open to taking back salary because once the stars leave I don't see them coming back. They drafted Griffin #1 and were gifted CP3 after the league nixed the Lakers trade. That could open up the BAE and full MLE. If the Knicks stretch Melo and we have something special assembled and LBJ is unable to get anything more done does he automatically go to Cavs?
Wow these comments are all over the place. Some of you really missed the "derailment" chapter in Forum Etiquette. I propose we get back to discussing Chris Paul/Rockets talk.
A Paul, Harden, George, Cousins core is very feasible. If we get Paul, I fully expect to get at least one of George/Cousins If not both.
