~{ James Harden's Philadelphia 76ers }~

But for some reason, people keep acting and writing as if he just played the same way in Brooklyn.

He had the 3rd highest usage rate and played the most minutes.

 

I hope not because if you had any more salt you'd melt in the rain.

 

Oh, he certainly played differently. He absolutely adjusted his game. Though I seem to recall many Harden fans disputing that last year.

 

Nets season looking bleak. Harden escaped at the right time.

- Durant out for at least 2-4 more weeks.
- Joe Harris probably done for the season. Set back after setback after his surgery.
- Bembry was not good but he probably one of their better rotation players lately and they just cut him to save $$. Nets fans wanted Sharpe, Brown, Edwards, cut over him.
- Kyrie can only play road games and the Nets have mostly home games remaining. Also Ramadan is coming up from April to end of May. Kyrie struggled during Ramadan last season.
- Ben Simmons hasn't played basketball in a very long time. It will take him awhile to ramp up and get into basketball shape.
- 10 losses in a row and currently the 8th seed. I can the Hawks and Hornets making a push past them. Play-in scenario will be scary if they haven't built chemistry and they have to play a surging Hawks to get in.

 

This is the biggest thing. Forget the playoffs for a second. If KD doesn't get back soon AND Ben struggles to find chemistry in such a short amount of time, the Nets might not even make it into the play-in.

KD's physical health.
Ben's mental health and physical conditioning.
Kyrie only playing in like 12 of the remaining 27 games, in addition to all the religious observances you mentioned.
Nets' overall roster looking like hot trash despite the addition of Curry and Drummond.

3 of the next 10 Nets games are winnable on paper (SAC, NYK, WAS) but they just lost to Washington. NYK just beat the Warriors so they might be riding a high. SAC might be rejuvenated with Sabonis. Then you have Miami, Boston (twice) and Toronto (twice), all very good AND surging upwards. TOR has won 8 straight, BOS 6 straight and MIA 4 straight.

And Kyrie can only play in 5 of the next 10 games.

It's going to be scary hours for BKN - they might fall out of the playoff picture completely by the time KD is healthy.

 

Some interesting stuff about Nash and Harden concerning Kyrie.

 

Can't see the pic.

 

What did he do in game 7?

Rocket River

 

I'm not sure you understand usage rate, and maybe i don't either. Basically, "usage" means you end the possession: shoot, get fouled, or make a turnover.

So dribbling a lot and then shooting or making a turnover would give you a high usage rate. (I'm actually not arguing about how he changed his game last year -- he totally did, and I for one was impressed.) I don't think usage rate necessarily shows that.

https://thedatajocks.com/what-is-usage-rate/

Iverson was like 33% or so for his career. The ultimate ball-dominant chucker.

 

Harden led the league in usage rate most of the time he was with the Rockets, and yet he is 3rd on this team, so I don't understand how it detracts from my point?

What are you debating?

Do you think he dribble dribble dribbles and then gives up the ball so somebody else shoots at the end of the possession?

If you also think he has changed his game, I don't know what you are debating here?

 

The best publicly available stat that reflects/measures ball-dominance is https://www.nba.com/stats/players/touches/?sort=TIME_OF_POSS&dir=1&Season=2020-21&SeasonType=Regular Season

Harden along with Trae, Westbrook & Luka are the only players consistently above 8+ to 9+ minutes the past 4 years. Not surprisingly they are also the most heliocentric players in the NBA. Which isn't a bad thing, but could present problems if they can't adjust to not having the ball as much.

 

I remember Harden in his first game back with the Rockets, when his critics claimed he was out of shape ..... and he dropped 45/17 against the Blazers... he almost single handedly won that game.... and in the press conference after the game Silas complained about one player dominating the ball..... Harden would score 34 points and 33 points the next two games, yet Silas again complained about the offense.

After that Silas got exactly what he wanted... Harden took an average of 14 shots a game for the Rockets after that.

Be careful what you ask for.

 

Spoiler

Adrian Wojnarowski Trades Away the Story

I’ve wanted to veer from writing up Adrian Wojnarowski’s ESPN reign, despite its fascinating Nixonian aspects. Sure, the articles have done well for this site, but it can seem petty if you do it too often, like you’ve got a myopic focus. And so it’s been two months since the last Woj piece.

Yet, how the hell am I to resist commenting on what happened this week? Adrian Wojnarowski, endlessly sold to ESPN viewers as an NBA transaction know-it-all, tried to convince those same viewers that the trade deadline’s biggest deal, the James Harden-for-Ben Simmons swap, actually wasn’t happening. He did it at a moment when many around the NBA knew the deal was going down. Why did this occur? We’ll get into that because much of sports media certainly won’t. Out of fear and deference to a powerful NBA figure, the move will be to memory hole this awkward public ****-up as though nothing happened. Can’t say I blame anyone in media for that, as I’d be doing the same if I worked for a major institution, but this is the fun of Substack, right?

I can say what others won’t, just based on the medium. There have been meetings about me at ESPN, literal meetings. I understand that sounds crazy, and it feels grandiose just to write it, but I don’t chalk it up to being anything special. There just aren’t many sports media people positioned outside traditional sports media publications. There’s no easy way to leverage me if you hate being the article’s subject. And that’s a problem for a company that increasingly views publishing as a transactional game. There’s no trade that can be made here, no solution beyond internal improvement. That’s tough when the internal situation is such a mess.

Not only did Woj try to convince viewers of a falsehood, but he publicly contradicted his colleague Brian Windhorst, who was reporting the truth about the Nets and Sixers working on a Harden-for-Simmons package. On Wednesday, Woj said the following in reference to Windhorst, on Mike Greenberg’s show:

Right now, there’s no negotiation going on between Philadelphia and Brooklyn. … The idea that they are going back and forth that’s been surmised by some, I don’t believe that to be accurate.

Wojnarowski went a bit further than simply denying the accuracy of Windhorst’s report, concluding (emphasis mine):

Again, deadlines create action. People hold out and there’s always a lot of posturing. But, I think Brooklyn thinks right now its best path is to get Kevin Durant back, James Harden healthy and Kyrie Irving on the court — get those three together again after the All-Star break. It’s not a perfect or ideal scenario with James Harden right now, but I think barring a flurry of negotiations and activity that hasn’t happened yet, I think James Harden is likely to be with the Nets.

Well, that was better for Brooklyn’s momentary leverage than it was as a record for posterity.

ClutchPoints noticed the rift and wrote up a story that featured an amusing image of the two men boxing. From the post, “When in doubt, go with Woj. It’s pretty funny that he blatantly contradicts his fellow ESPN reporter, with the two men clearly getting their information from different sources.”

I’d argue that the actually funny part had yet to happen. Come Thursday morning, the day of the trade deadline, Windhorst’s position was clearly inevitable. Woj had to pivot, through labored breath, and update his position with a heaping of adverbs (emphasis mine):



“Today is really the first day that Brooklyn and Philadelphia really started to seriously engage each other trade ideas on a possible trade. That’s been ongoing today, it may continue right up to the trade deadline at three o’clock, but uhhh listen. There’s some real … listen, there’s motivation on both sides to figure out if there’s a way to get a deal done. James Harden wants the trade to the Sixers.”

Really, really, seriously. Today is the day it started, folks! Yesterday, when I said this deal wasn’t being discussed? Totally still true. I believe in Yesterday.

Then the trade happened officially, which led to more public backpedaling. Here, we’ve got Kendrick Perkins giggling in the background as a dyspeptic Wojnarowski has to explain “how the deal came together.”



Again, Wojnarowski hammers away at the “today” narrative, kicking off with it when asked to recap the deal (emphasis mine):

Well, Brooklyn and Philadelphia really started to negotiate in earnest today. I was told Philadelphia checked in in previous days, had lobbed offers that had been returned without a counter, but today, Brooklyn started, uh, to talk about with Philadelphia what a deal would look like.

In this ludicrous framing, Brian Windhorst must be the luckiest sports journalist in history. He reports on Wednesday that two teams are in the process of consummating a trade that isn’t even being discussed and the damn thing happens within 24 hours?! What are the odds of this? Did Windhorst speak it into existence?

Obviously not. The odd aspect of Wojnarowski misleading viewers here is that the NBA world knew otherwise. Hell, I knew otherwise and I’m barely in the NBA transaction sphere. This was being discussed in the shadows, with increasing volume, since the start of February at least. So what happened here? Did Woj simply screw up? How could that occur, given all that was known around the league?

There’s more going on here. I believe what happened isn’t random and it helps explain why ESPN’s NBA coverage has deteriorated over the years.

 

You should start a thread to discuss -- Woj and few others who were reporting that the trade wasn't happening (when it was clear that it was) really had their heels dug in until they had no choice but to make a full pivot. Anyone have access to the full article?

 

That's the nail right there.

To counteract this, I'm anticipating teams dropping their bigs on the pick and roll vs Harden/Embiid, while completely sagging off thybulle and slightly off Harris/Maxey. Green, Korkmaz will probably have the tightest coverage w/limited help from their defenders.

Embiid will have to either triple his rate of rolling to the rim or take a lot more shots from the perimeter (which he is very capable).

Fully switching against the Harden Embiid pick and roll would likely be the last option as it would lead to what you described.