Is James Harden Truly an Atrocious Defender?
There are currently hundreds of GIFs, Vines, and YouTube videos of James Harden's bad defense. And with the Kevin Love to Cleveland move, and the San Antonio Spurs stifling the Miami Heat in these past NBA Finals, defense is certainly all the rage right now.
However, it’s still an area of basketball where the "eye test" can directly conflict with a lot of the available advanced statistics.
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interesting
I remember reading a stat that last season, opposing guards shot 59% while Harden was defending them. Looking at how the Rockets perform when is off the court doesn't necessarily mean Harden is a decent defender, it means the back up might be an even worse defender. Howard also makes up for a lot of Harden's (and the rest of team) defensive mistakes and laziness on rotations. He is still probably the best SG in NBA but his defensive laziness should not be overlooked.
Harden is a ball watcher and doesnt play team defense well. 59% is 1v1. Once they switch on him though, it's quite embarrassing
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He's actually doing a pretty good job on defense in the FIBA tournament right now, if anyone's watching. Racking up a decent amount of steals.
Yeah he is stealing the ball from guys who 90% of aren't good enough to play on a D1 college team.
That's more false than true, but I get what you're saying. Obviously FIBA competition isn't on par with the NBA, but Harden isn't playing 35+ minutes a game in the FIBA tournament and he isn't the franchise player on Team USA where the offense runs through him on every possession like in Houston. The point is that he CAN play defense (like he did in OKC), whether he actually does as a Houston Rocket or not.
Houston's front office is known to rely on advanced metrics pretty heavily. It's not outlandish if they believe it's more productive if Harden saves his energy for offense than if he exerts himself on both ends of the court.
He is definitely taking off more plays on defense now that he is carrying the offensive load. When he was on OKC he wasn't giving up easy drives like he is now. He also played less minutes and didn't need to rest on defense like he does now.
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