James Harden: $80m Extension With Rockets

Ras Algethi wrote:Harden will come down to earth. Teams will start preparing for him like they do other elite players.

Basically my point. When a guy is good its one thing but when teams start to plan for you it is another. Hardens strength was that teams had to plan for Durant and Westbrook as starters for OKC. Harden on the other hand may have had some mention but really got his burn with the second guys on other teams. Yes, he is a starter but his game excelled coming in as the power punch for OKC. Now, he is the best player on the team so there is nowhere to hide anymore. He'll get numbers cause he has talent but no way IMO is he going to be superstar James Harden again.

So the Wizards turned downing trading Beal/Singleton for Harden because they didn't want to pay the contract that Harden wanted and pay luxury tax......

Wall/Harden backcourt would have been nasty.

^ and that's why Wall will bounce from Wash the first chance he gets

Doc Brown wrote:So the Wizards turned downing trading Beal/Singleton for Harden because they didn't want to pay the contract that Harden wanted and pay luxury tax......

Wall/Harden backcourt would have been nasty.

What the... Then, why did they get Ariza, Okafor, and Nene? So bizarre.

abeer3 wrote:my expectations for harden were 25/5/5 on 45% shooting or less (numbers i've seen thrown around by others). the key beyond that is whether his team is winning with that production. those numbers aren't far off from what kevin martin did in his sacramento heyday or what joe johnson did in atlanta. were they considered superstars? no. were they worth 15 million per at the time? probably.

harden will be worth his contract for its entirety, barring injury. but max dollars doesn't = top tier player.

20 game sample now: 25/5/5 on 43% shooting thus far.

as for the the washington thing: i think i'm ok with them declining the deal. give beal a chance to work out; if he does, he's a better fit next to wall. if not, you haven't sunk 80 million into a player who doesn't mesh with your franchise player. i don't think harden would have made them a luxury tax worthy squad.

abeer3 wrote:

abeer3 wrote:my expectations for harden were 25/5/5 on 45% shooting or less (numbers i've seen thrown around by others). the key beyond that is whether his team is winning with that production. those numbers aren't far off from what kevin martin did in his sacramento heyday or what joe johnson did in atlanta. were they considered superstars? no. were they worth 15 million per at the time? probably.

harden will be worth his contract for its entirety, barring injury. but max dollars doesn't = top tier player.

20 game sample now: 25/5/5 on 43% shooting thus far.

as for the the washington thing: i think i'm ok with them declining the deal. give beal a chance to work out; if he does, he's a better fit next to wall. if not, you haven't sunk 80 million into a player who doesn't mesh with your franchise player. i don't think harden would have made them a luxury tax worthy squad.

I don't buy that Harden is a franchise player or a superstar. He's shooting 25/5/5 with 43% but his number are highly inflated by his first 2 games, and Rockets fans dissected that you take those 2 games away and basically he's shooting under 40% with 20 ppg. His ISO rate is down from 50% in OKC to 25% in Houston, even though he ISO's much more in Houston. Doesn't seem like much of a superstar to me. I think he's more of a 2nd/3rd option on a good team, Rockets will probably need another real superstar to be a #1 option to be contenders, although that's only if Harden continues to improve and if Lin pans out.

And 25/5/5 with 4.2 TO a game, one of the worst Assist/TO ratio in the NBA, he's a actual real turnover machine this season.

I don't think the Tebow comparison is valid. Tebow is a terrible starting quarterback. Lin isn't a terrible starting point guard. He's just average.

I think you have to loook beyond his numbers.....that roster has no business being a .500 ball club...or being in the playoff chase. I think harden has brought his toughness and clutch playing ability to the Rockets and it has rubbed off on a few players there (parsons, delfino, even Lin). They are a tough team that never quits and harden really pushes that team. He's right at 25/5/5, where I thought he'd be according to my last prediction in this thread....and I expect him to stay there all year, with his fg% maybe going slightly up.

Texas Lakers Fan wrote:I don't think the Tebow comparison is valid. Tebow is a terrible starting quarterback. Lin isn't a terrible starting point guard. He's just average.

Eh. I was talking more about their effectiveness. Tebow, when given a roster built for him, will win games. Because he's charismatic, athletic, and honestly he's a winner. However, a team built around him will have too many holes to be effective in the long term.

Just like Lin.