(Sam Amick) Harden slimmed down, fired up for upcoming season

Hakeem delivered, but all those guys launched careers off of playing with Hakeem. Does Drex get a color commentary roll with the Rockets without Hakeem? Does Horry learn what it takes to win without him? Is Elie a coach? Is Kenny Smith on tv? Is Vernon Maxwell still a god in Houston? Does anyone in the NBA care about Bullard without Hakeem? Do we have this site? Does Houston still have a basketball franchise? Is Cassell a coach right now? Hakeem is underrated even by Houstonians. People owe their entire lives to Hakeem. Leslie Alexander could literally give Hakeem 25% of his team to him and economists could step back and come up with numbers that suggest that 1/2 a billion dollars is not enough. Hakeem is the greatest basketball player to ever live and because he's humble, he's left room for argument.

 

Don't be so quick, Roc Paint. You never know. Harden has a propensity to figure it out. I know we all want it to have happened in the playoffs already, but he's smart as a whip. He's figured out thing none of us expected. Dude just finished a year as a starting point guard. Who knows what else he's capable of? What if he wins one this year and it triggers something unstoppable in him? We have no idea. I love Hakeem, he's why I'm here, but there's zero wrong with Harden surpassing him. That just makes us lucky witnesses.

 

No you're not. I am.

 

dayyum... you killed it. I'd give 47 more likes if possible.

 

If you need to find another team to root for, I think he'll be okay without the money you put in his pockets.

 

no that won't be even close to keeping super team GSW close in games much less beating it

so you admit you were really making an apples to seeds comparison

if you want to fairly and honestly compare how close harden is behind hakeem or lebron then we compare them what harden and them has achieved so far after playing 8 years in the league. so far all 3 haven't won anything any championship yet and hakeem and harden stayed and carried their teams while lebron joined with 2 other superstars and got beaten in the finals vs a 1 superstar team

apples to apples comparison, is Harden "really faaaaaar away" from Lebron and Hakeem at the same point in their careers?

 

So you're saying that we need more offense more than we need defense?

 

The name of the game is buckets.You score points to win. Defense only keeps you in the game by limiting how much your opponent scores. This is why a great offensive player is worth more than a great defensive player.

 

Can I get a witness?

Go Rockets!

 

1st, are you a tony allen or iman shumpert fan?

2nd, how would you rate Hardens defensive effort and outcome last season?

 

Lol. Oversimplifying much? What happens when the other team just keeps getting offensive rebounds over you because your team can't get the defensive rebounds they need? Is that just buckets? This team isn't ever going to shoot with efficiency the way Golden State does so what they have to do is be able to get rebounds to compensate for that while not letting Golden State not get offensive rebounds at a high rate. Your 'buckets' oversimplification doesn't account for any of that. Nice try, though. There's more than one way to win and defense is a key cog in that. There aren't many that would argue that the Rockets didn't get enough 'buckets' in 2016/2017. Last anyone who knows what they were seeing saw, it was Harden getting gassed from guarding Aldridge that stopped our 'buckets.' Very much a defensive reason.

 

no it was really a roster talent/no super star reason. RA can't guard ****. nene was injured and we had harrel and chianu left.

harden was gassed from single handedly carrying the team the entire season because we had no other superstars plus he hard to guard LMA because of the role players we had in the front line.

which defensive role-players/non-supertars do put around harden/cp3 assures us of beating GSW?

 

I'm not a fan of theirs because they can't shoot. I'm not talking about players that can't shoot. Our team's offense was plenty good with just shooters and it has already added Paul as a playmaker. Last I checked neither one of them are interior players either. I could have been more specific in saying that we need people who can shoot, but they don't have to be superstars. Due to not having anyone to guard Aldridge, Harden ran out of gas and our offense immediately crumbled which is why we need someone else on the interior that he can at least throw lobs to with the ability to hit free throws. Don't get me wrong, I'll take an Anthony Davis if we could ever get that, but barring that, I'd take a versatile player who can hit shots and play defense over a player who only hits shots and doesn't rebound or play defense. Just look at Golden State. Iguodala and Shaun Livingston aren't superstars but it'd be hard to make that team go the same way without them (not that they wouldn't still be great). I'd rate Harden's defensive effort high but his conditioning low, and that's something he looks to have worked on this offseason.

 

Nobody in the league can assure us that we beat them, but players like Millsap, Jimmy Butler (who was had for relatively cheap), Gordon Hayward could go a long way. They were overpaid this year but we did have an opportunity at Butler at least. Moves like that would go a long way for us. Also, who knows if we could get a chance to get Giannis Antetokounmpo in the future. Milwaukee isn't the best of situations and a collection of players along that line, players who aren't quite 30 a game but who are competent on offense and dynamic on defense, would make us very competitive with Golden State. If we could get those kinds of capable players on offense, then you could even look to get a Rudy Golbert type player for defensive purposes and that would put a stop to Golden State's defensive rebounding. I know we both want the best possible players on this team, but if we only look for offense we might not be able to ever catch Golden State.

 

do you know how many games lebron rested last year enroute to a 5th overall finish being in the east with iriving and love by his side?

as compared to how many games harden rested enroute to a 3rd overall finish being in the west by himself and MVP runnerup season?

 

FYI they're superstars. I thought we were talking about role players?

You are aware they were the best players of their team last year right?

 

They're not superstars due to their offense, if anything they're superstars because of their versatility, which was my point. I'd much rather have those kinds of players than others who are better scorers but not as good defensively Jimmy Butler also could have been had this offseason. You're kind of preaching to the choir in that Harden is my favorite player, but are you really going to argue that his conditioning was all it could have been last year? Offensively he's likely the best player on the planet, but defensively he just couldn't be as great as he should be last year, and I feel that it was because of his conditioning. I'm sure he'd agree with me, and it's why he went out and lost weight this offseason.

 

Um... no? It is not an oversimplification, but rather a fundamental truth. You don't need a top 5 defense to win, but you DO need a top 5 offense. The Rockets had a 55 win season last season despite being one of the more terrible teams at defensive rebounding and were "meh" at defense for most of the season. You know why we won? Because we were able to score points. This includes off offensive rebounding as well, where we were actually above average per 100 possessions and right above the Spurs.

No one is going to outshoot Warriors. That's inevitable when you have a team with 3 pure shooters, including one of the best scorers in recent history. The fact that they have 4 great offensive players is also a big part of the reason they are good defensively, as they can conserve energy. See that? More offense leads to better defense. What we DO need is the ability to sustain a high efficiency on offense when Harden gets tired. Now see CP3 for Harden. We got CP3 to help sustain our OFFENSIVE consistency. Some people with lesser understanding of basketball might call that redundancy. I call it CONTINUITY instead for our offense.

You want to know why we really lost in the playoffs? Because Nene got hurt, forcing Harden to defend bigs and taking away his ability to keep scoring. Again, SCORING is the key here. Let's go back even further. Remember how everyone wanted JVG or This for... wait for it... DEFENSE! Remember how we went in an entirely different direction and picked up MDA (offensive genius and innovator), Ryno (best stretch 4, defensive sieve), and Ego (pure shooter whose defense fell off a cliff after injuries)? That resulted in one of the best seasons for us. Again... OFFENSE WIN.

This offseason only reinforces this point. We got defensive depth (not starters) to increase offensive efficiency among our starters. Everything we have done and continue to do is to boost our offense and it's overall efficiency. We may not be able to ever outshoot GSW, but maintaining the ability to keep up our own offense will give us a puncher's chance.

 

Wtf....ummm no.

I have a chance to pass up Tom Hanks too, all I needs is a few Oscars.

 

100% agree with you about Nene getting hurt, but that kind of goes back to my point when I said that we need an interior presence. While Gordon and Anderson were certainly great for us this past season, I think that players like Jimmy Butler and the Greek Freak are kind of better to have despite the fact that they can't shoot as well. Harden couldn't have had the season he had without those two, Ariza and everyone else who contributed, but I felt that we started to see the limitations of having players who were too geared towards offense.