Yup when's the last time the world has seen a legit "star" be this bad defensively. Not just lapses bc that's going to happen to any player but to just be consistently that bad. And it's not even about the having the tools with him. It's just plain effort.
Maybe he doesn't have the tools? Maybe he has poor cardio health and can't sustain running around constantly and chasing opponent shooting guards. Maybe he's just too slow?
Pretty much this. He plays off his heels. That is his biggest problem. He needs to play off the front of his feet so he can move laterally and keep his balance.
Maybe he has been hanging around too much with two other fatsos who have never seen a gym in Daryl Maury and Keith Jones? May be he is on their diet? Harden doesn't have to worry about D. He has Maury by the cojones and Murray will go battle for him on twatter.
And well deserved, until he gives any kind of effort on defense. No matter how good you are on offense, if you don't defend you hurt your team. Plus he's the leader? No wonder no one else is playing any defense. Seriously, I wouldn't mind trading him for a 2 way player now thay he still has some value. Curry is not needed to beat this pathetic team. And not even a draft pick to show for their mediocre play.
It's really simple actually. James loses defensive focus far too often and the defensive scheme sucks. The team rarely covers each other's mistakes on that end of the court so it comes out looking 10x worse than it probably should.
The dude is lazy - period! If it's not something that is going to show up on the stat sheet and pad his numbers, then he ain't interested.... I've been sayin it for over a year - FOOL'S GOLD!
The ability is there, however the guy is very lazy. When is the last time he made a hustle play? Tbh I'm over him and Howard. James at least can say he's young and hopefully "gets it" pretty soon. But the guy just does not bring the effort needed to be a champion.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Charles Barkley says "James Harden was 479th" in the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DPOY?src=hash">#DPOY</a> voting <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NBAOnTNT?src=hash">#NBAOnTNT</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Warriors?src=hash">#Warriors</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Rockets?src=hash">#Rockets</a></p>— nbabeau (@NBABeau) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBABeau/status/722306051626774528">April 19, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
