hello friends it's the 2018 NBA Playoffs, a place where dreams GO 2 DIE

his game def has some serious issues man idk

the mvp is not given to 'bad' players

harden is a d-league scrub

i bet if he shaved his beard he'd average 10-3-2.1

he's an incredible scorer but i think he'd do well to diversify his offensive game a bit. only taking 3s or layups/dunks is the best way to play mathematically but i think in the playoffs if you're gonna be a guy who singlehandedly drags his team to the finals you need to be able to score in more ways than just step back 3/steamrolling to the rim. like it seems like he's rarely moving off the ball... ppl say he's stout as a post defender but he has no post game... he could get more creative around the rim... i think guys like lebron, KD, steph etc all finally got over the hump when their skillsets expanded, we'll see if harden has it in him (and if the system can accommodate it)

i think a lot about how shocking it will be when harden finally shaves his beard... i bet there's like a 20% chance he does it this offseason to build up some inner soul searching offseason narrative

he's an incredible scorer but i think he'd do well to diversify his offensive game a bit. only taking 3s or layups/dunks is the best way to play mathematically but i think in the playoffs if you're gonna be a guy who singlehandedly drags his team to the finals you need to be able to score in more ways than just step back 3/steamrolling to the rim.

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, May 29, 2018 12:39 AM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otfm the best shots are —open shots—

also needs to ditch the novelty foul begging shit, only take real shots

i do wonder if he'll eventually just become a guy like lebron/durant who gets calls routinely at the end of tight playoff games, or if he'll always just kinda be getting punked by the refs

his game def has some serious issues man idk

― G.O.A.T. rodeo (Clay), Tuesday, May 29, 2018 12:36 AM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah like leading the win shares in 3 of the past 4 seasons.

Harden is a fantastic player who might never win a ring because the Warriors and LeBron exist.

also bc he shits the bed in the playoffs

let's not deny james harden's agency...

he has at this point had many notable playoff failures and the reasons for them are pretty obvious and make sense by the laws of basketball and the offs

he made strides towards making his game more realistic and less theoretical this season but theres still a lot of work to do, obvs he got put in a pretty impossible situation with cp3 out but he also made a ton of unnecessarily bad plays

building so much of his game around the idea that you have to respect that stepback three well i dont love it, that shot is insanely difficult

also he's travelling

hes not tho

I'm not going to argue that he is the best player in the league either, of course someone like Harden needs to improve, it seems also fairly obvious that the difference between this season's Rockets and last was the addition of CP3 and the blossoming of Capela (who I find to be an exciting player). However the skip-baylesque narrative of clutch and ringz is very tiring, like give or take he is in top 10 players in the league, he was a key component for a team that had top 4 finish and that's just not good enough for some basketball fans.

Saying that he should diversify his game even more is true and I think Jordan is otm, but that's not the same as saying he is a gimmick or has deep issues.

im (mostly) joking, he's extremely good and has been a top 5 player in the league for several years, will be a first ballot HOFer at this rate. if bron goes to HOU its lights out. harden is definitely a worse player in the playoffs, tho, and that is extremely fun to point out as a spurs fan.

my boy damian lillard's another one who relies on a tricky three move to open up floor (the super deep three vs harden's stepback, tho dame can do both i suppose) and also has a game that seems to break down in the offs (also historic problems w/ effort on D, tho both have improved notably, with occasional bad lapses)

I think my root problem with the perception of Harden is that the gap between being great in the playoffs and being great in the regular season is widening to a degree that makes the regular season rather kinda obsolete? The Cavs were a mess that required slightly dramatic trades midway through the season and you had the feeling the Warriors were coasting just to peak at the right time, having learned the 2016 lesson the harshest of ways. Now they are both in the finals for the 4th consecutive time and whatever great stuff Harden did over 72 (!!!) games is almost moot.

ha the regular season/playoffs split is one of my fave things about the league

Rockets general manager Daryl Morey: "We should have won tonight. I don't have much else to say."

— Tim MacMahon (@espn_macmahon) May 29, 2018

poor daryl

Stephen Wardell Curry

warriors didnt deserve to win this series imo. perfect gameplan from dantoni to beat them, great roster built by morey to do it. CP injury (and the Luc Moute injury) really ended it. the margin was always thin and they got the break they needed with andre going down. they had their chances in g6-7 but just couldnt push the lead enough... then ran out of gas. feel bad for ariza really.

steph's defense and effort was so good all series. durant series was very weird, lots of weird energy and some really poor effort (first half in both games 6-7) and yet he dropped 34-5-5-1-3 tonight idk

i thought durant forced shots terribly in the last 2 games in houston. steph should've been handling the ball every time down.

yup

they ran one KD steph high pnr in the 4th and it resulted in... a kd layup.

Warriors plus/minus by quarter this season (regular season and playoffs)
First quarter: -3
Second quarter: +130
Third quarter: +501
Fourth quarter: +6

— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) May 29, 2018

if he'll always just kinda be getting punked by the refs

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, May 29, 2018 12:46 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark

i feel like refs kinda hate reffing for harden because half of harden's game is like One Weird Trick That Gets You To The Freethrow Line Every Time

haralabob was throwing some numbers out about one of the refs from last night who gives harden absolutely nothing.

stunt foul drawing is def a double-edged sword and not something that should relied on in possessions that actually matter.

dang yeah

Harden has taken 262 shots with Callahan as a ref and Callahan has only called a PF_S on 2.5% of them. Avg for Harden is 5.45% on average to draw a shooting foul when he shoots.

— Haralabos Voulgaris (@haralabob) May 29, 2018

btw the new frontier of nba schedule takes is going to be that going every other night in the conference finals isn't reasonable

― call all destroyer, Monday, May 28, 2018 11:19 PM (yesterday) Bookmark

i haven't done the comparison with previous seasons but i suspect it has to do with stretching out the season to avoid back to backs etc. while still hitting an early june finals

would also account for some of the scheduling weirdness we saw earlier in the offs, playing games at 4 PM, scheduling 4 games a night etc.

if true d'antoni teams are definitely disadvantaged since he's asking a 6 man rotation to give 100% for 7 games in 14 days (m/l)

he's asking a 6 man rotation to give 100% for 7 games in 14 days (m/l)

The whole point of drawing a top seed in the offs is to have a chance to coast a bit, maybe finish your first two series early, and grab some rest if you can. By the conference finals and NBA finals, there is no rest, just maximum effort. A 6 man rotation is going to break at that level.

even with an extra days rest only playing 6.5 guys is pretty hard to pull off, they just get tired over the course of the game, especially when youre playing that insane swarming D houston was (at least in the first half lol)

the dantoni suns teams never played enough guys either

Hard when they’re suspended for standing up

otm

i think we did see how the warriors die in this series which is via the deterioration of their supporting cast, its pretty much inevitable theyre forced to overpay to bring back aging guys like iggy and livingston and then fill out the roster with late draft picks over the hill ring chasers and whatever small exemption theyre eligible for, they ran out a ton of guys in this series that basically didnt have to be guarded, the rockets had a real good shot to win before cp3 went down and wldve had an even better one if they had one more live body out there say a healthy and locked in mbah a moute, which is why i think a healthy deep celtics team with tons of young legs has such a good chance to win it all next year, they have the roster to play the kind of D houston was for a whole series while still getting buckets

just started wondering why shouldnt lebron go to the celtics then i remembered oh yeah kyries there lol

The Celtics were lucky to have so much hoops talent and maturity attached to such young legs. Now they have recent deep playoff experience to go with that. It bodes well for them.

bron going to the celtics just to annoy kyrie wld be his crowning bitch achievement

we did see how the warriors die in this series which is via the deterioration of their supporting cast

seems likely to me. that was the biggest challenge for the Big 3 Heat, too.

TNT’s 2018 NBA WCF Game 7 (Warriors/Rockets) delivered cable television’s second highest-rated NBA game telecast of all time and the highest rating for an NBA game this year across all of television (cable and broadcast), based on a 10.3 metered market rating

— TurnerSportsPR (@TurnerSportsPR) May 29, 2018

good stuff, i wonder how having two game 7 conference finals will impact revenue this year + revenue sharing, cap etc.

i suppose two game 7 conference finals will be balanced out by a 4 game finals sweep that nobody will watch lol

seems likely to me. that was the biggest challenge for the Big 3 Heat, too.

― A is for (Aimless), Tuesday, May 29, 2018 1:10 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah the league really set it up so you can get a super team but you cant keep it

even more so now with the super punitive repeater luxury tax

just started wondering why shouldnt lebron go to the celtics then i remembered oh yeah kyries there lol

― 龜, Tuesday, May 29, 2018 12:56 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark

"You put my mother on the floor, and if she were in a Boston Celtics uniform, I'd break her face." -- LeBron James, in an interview with me six years ago.

— Lee Jenkins (@SI_LeeJenkins) May 28, 2018

heh