houston has had a better team defense, and it is harder to separate out the individual contribution of harden from that broad context than measure the team context itself. his on/off defensive impact hasn't been very significant from the numbers. i put more credence towards a large sample on/off drtg change on the team than individual drtg score.

as far as the tracking numbers go, he is showing much better results defending the 3 and long jumpers in general. but those are high variance shots and not sure if real trend.

TheMusiC

United States1054 Posts

November 25 2014 06:52 GMT

#904

you really gotta watch the games to see the improvement... perusing the box scores and numbers every night won't show how much better he is in terms of effort and attention (granted he had a very very low bar to clear)

Ace

United States16096 Posts

November 25 2014 07:07 GMT

#905

careful with dws and individual drtg. I think Harden's actually been showing much effort on defense this year. Probably explains his poor efg% in him using up so much energy on that end. Iirc his block rate is much higher too.

Scarecrow

Korea (South)9175 Posts

November 25 2014 07:08 GMT

#906

I'm going off seeing him guard monta and dirk late vs the mavs. Pretty sure it's substantial improvement and not just variance.

pokerface

507 Posts

November 25 2014 10:04 GMT

#907

On November 25 2014 08:47 Scarecrow wrote:
"Kevin Durant (foot) went through some contact in practice on Monday.
He has a big evaluation coming up on Thanksgiving, but his return is getting close. At the very earliest, he could play Friday"

I reckon they'll be okay.

Friday december 5th? Thatd be awesome :D

oneofthem

Cayman Islands24199 Posts

November 25 2014 14:41 GMT

#908

harden's shooting is dragged down by a handful of truly awful performances. might just be the number of games played. although he tends to have these clunker games against the few decent teams they've played.

karazax

United States3737 Posts

November 25 2014 14:55 GMT

#909

Harden started off shooting poorly the past two seasons, and got better as the year went on. Still even if he doesn't improve significantly, the defensive effort has been worth it. I always said he doesn't have to be first team defense, just getting to "average" would be a huge improvement from where he was. His defense so far has been great as a whole, but I have to say that video is funny (I think he was trying to take a charge on Larkin, but set up way too early and then gave up on the play). Also the video in the link above it looks like they add slow motion to the second right before Larkin passes by Harden which makes it look worse. The video kind of stutters right when Larkin makes the pass. Here is the play at full speed the whole time:

oneofthem

Cayman Islands24199 Posts

November 25 2014 16:09 GMT

#910

someone painstakingly went through all of hakeem olajuwon's videotaped games during his peak and compiled some stats. pretty interesting. that offense could have been so much better too with more weapons to work with, some truly scrub 'supporting cast' for a championship team.

http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=1330591

some thoughts:
hakeem sometimes gets dinged for low %/efficency, but this is failing to take into account how houston's offense was dependent on him most of the time. as a result he had to take a fair proportion of midrange shots particularly near the left baseline.

note the very high 75% finishing and the paint area efficiency. isolation in general is low efficiency, even in the era of illegal defense rule. it's still impressive though that he managed a 1.5 ppp on isolation drives, shaq/lebron territory. with hakeem's quickness, it is also not out of the question that he would improve these numbers in the modern game where help defenders have to come from outside of the paint rather than stack inside it.

so somewhat counter-intuitively, with a more 'limited' player, pure efficiency numbers could actually improve because he would not be asked to do some of the things hakeem did.

on defense, that on/off drtg is amazing mostly to show how horrible houston was constructed during those years. some all time carrying job right there.

Ace

United States16096 Posts

November 25 2014 22:04 GMT

#911

don't forget the 96 year with the shortened 3pt line. Houston was on fire so Keem wasn't necessarily "carrying" on offense. Still one of the most dangerous scoring machines the league has ever seen.

oneofthem

Cayman Islands24199 Posts

November 25 2014 23:49 GMT

#912

hakeem's peak was relatively short after his championship years, and he wasn't the same defensive presence after 95, particularly when they got barkley.

those 90's classic offenses would be considered very stilted by modern standards. no spacing lol.

Doraemon

Australia14949 Posts

November 25 2014 23:53 GMT

#913

i wish i had a chance to see jordan and hakeem play.

Jerubaal

United States7684 Posts

November 26 2014 00:05 GMT

#914

I wish they showed games of Oscar Robertson. I don't know if those even exist.

icystorage

Jollibee19350 Posts

November 26 2014 00:34 GMT

#915

Ace just got temp banned.

time to post your arguments

Jerubaal

United States7684 Posts

November 26 2014 01:04 GMT

#916

On November 26 2014 09:34 icystorage wrote:
Ace just got temp banned.

time to post your arguments

He posts in other forums?

VayneAuthority

United States8983 Posts

November 26 2014 01:16 GMT

#917

a harsh as fuck ban at that lol. guess thats why its only 2 days tho.

chalmers doing work

zev318

Canada4306 Posts

November 26 2014 02:04 GMT

#918

On November 26 2014 08:53 Doraemon wrote:
i wish i had a chance to see jordan and hakeem play.

there are videos of jordan playing everywhere, unless u meant like live in person or something

Doraemon

Australia14949 Posts

November 26 2014 02:18 GMT

#919

On November 26 2014 11:04 zev318 wrote:

Show nested quote +

there are videos of jordan playing everywhere, unless u meant like live in person or something

of course there are videos lol. not even in person, but just growing up and seeing him on tv and following the league. i was too young back then and didn't even know that NBA existed

also..curry...just stahp