(The Ringer) Can James Harden Convince Russell Westbrook to Change?

Great post. Nailed it exacty.

 

I don’t know that your post is exactly accurate.

Westbrook Net rating for various benchmarks

Season long(24 games) : +1.8
Last 12 games : +1.7
Last 10 : +5.6
Last 7 : +0.8
Last 5 : +1.6
Last 3 : +1.3

And to add almost all of these are very close to team worst at these benchmarks. We just aren’t doing well with him on the floor so far.

 

Meh. With Gordon, we are still easily a top 2 or 3 offense. We don't have an offensive problem at all.

The only convincing that needs to be done is for the owner to address our biggest need: one more 3/4 who is an excellent defender and not a liability on offense - without giving up Capela or Tucker.

 

You gotta let Russ be Russ-James Edward Harden

@J.R.

 

Need another 4/5 and/or 3/4. Tucker is being run into the ground.

 

Three things I got from that:
1. The Ringer KNOWS MDA can't do anything to change anything.
2. The Ringer appears to have some faith in Harden to be more cerebral than he lets off.
3. The Ringer doesn't have too much faith in Russ to adjust to Harden, placing the onus on Harden. <-- this is where I feel like they're missing out on not watching the games. Russ clearly is making strides to adjust and is finding real success. With that said, I agree overall that the onus is on Harden to adjust to Russ, which for the most part he's showing progress in moving without the ball and trailing Russ in transition - things that never happened with CP.

 

Harden isn't changing anyone with a heart to heart come to Jesus meeting it's just not in his character.

 

It's simple, Russ' strengths play against Garden's strengths. You either convince Harden to play off the ball and take the ball out if Russell's hands or vise versa.

Harden is the marginally better passer but is a significantly better shooter, but out of all of his offensive genius none of his strengths include spot shooting off the ball. Russel isn't great at it either.

Someone is going to have to learn how to score off the ball, otherwise this experiment is going to tank.

The CP3 experiment only failed because of a hamstring injury in year 1, year 2 failed because Chris Paul and Harden became stubborn and didn't want to compromise when it came down to it (also we lost Ariza and Luc so our switch heavy defense suffered significantly).

Also we keep in mind that "elite skills" are typically worked on in the summer and don't normally come out of nowhere during any given season. It's too bad that we gave up on CP3, even with his age he gave the Rockets their best chance at a winning formula.