100%.

Classic Harden move. Leverage you contact to hold a franchise (specifically Morey) hostage.

Man, idc what version of Harden would come here. I don't want him. He's a loser. A cancer to a team and the reason Houston's basketball culture has the reputation of being ***** For the same reasons I don't want Harden back I also want them to get Jalen Green out of here. Jabari will never reach his potential with someone like Green here. He's a stats guy with no desire or ability to elevate his team.


We needed Scoot Henderson and imo we should trade Jalen to get him. Do whatever to move up to 2 and get him and if it doesn't involve trading green then trade him after for whatever you can get.

It would also be a good move to being in CP3 to help mentor these younger guys. We need a facilitator and hes still excelent at that. He can play reduced minutes and be a great mentor to scoot.

Is cp3 a fa?

No but you can get him for nothing if you take on his contract and the rockets have the cap space.

Wow

I don't want Brown either. He want to be THE guy, but he can't dribble for ***** His hands are absolutely terrible and he needs to stay a #2 or even a #3

Woods Ag said:

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No but you can get him for nothing if you take on his contract and the rockets have the cap space.

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Even better, if he isn't traded by June 28th, he probably gets waived. Only half guaranteed and they can spread that out over 3 seasons so his cap hot goes from 30mm to 5mm this year

I'd like to give Jalen at least 1 year with a defensive minded coach who will hold him accountable. His mentality is all wrong, but Udoka could fix that. His athleticism is top 1% in the league, need to give him a little more time before giving up.

Scoot has the same AAU/G-league pedigree as Jalen. No reason to think he'd be any better in his 1st 2 years of NBA ball.

He's so young and talented that I understand that point.

The old saying "when someone shows you who they are, believe them." I was reminded of that one from the Bill Simmons podcast the other day, but I would like to apply that to Jalen here. He's shown us for 2 years who he is and we should believe him. I listened to him on the Bill Simmons podcast last summer. His goal for this year was to avg 24points a game or something like that. Not to build team chemistry, work with jabari, improve as a team, etc etc... to score 24 points a game was his goal.

We should get off of him now before the rest of the league is in agreement on who he is.

Quote:

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Green went on to list three personal goals for the 2022-23 season:

Win more than 20 games (the Rockets went 20-62 last season)
Make the 2023 All-Star Game
Average 20-25 points per game

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You seem to have conveniently left off his first goal. And how dare he have personal goals for his own improvement.

I forgot that one. I'm not without my biases. I remember him dwelling on the points.

JPN06 said:

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Woods Ag said:

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He's so young and talented that I understand that point.

The old saying "when someone shows you who they are, believe them." I was reminded of that one from the Bill Simmons podcast the other day, but I would like to apply that to Jalen here. He's shown us for 2 years who he is and we should believe him. I listened to him on the Bill Simmons podcast last summer. His goal for this year was to avg 24points a game or something like that. Not to build team chemistry, work with jabari, improve as a team, etc etc... to score 24 points a game was his goal.

We should get off of him now before the rest of the league is in agreement on who he is.

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OR, maybe you could have his new first real NBA coach teach the young talented superstar how to have more team-oriented goals and surround him with leaders instead of other children.

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Agreed. He's 21. Most players take until they are 24 or 25 to start to actuality into what they are. It's crazy to just deem him a lost cause at this point.

Exactly and not gonna be good for developing the young guys on team. Can't imagine that locker room.

We need to get to 40 wins so we can get out young guys legit experience. You think the next best option is better? Fred van fleet???

Woods Ag is having a rough stretch of posts these last few days in here.

Nah. Fans are in love with their players. More time and we will see Jalen Green's mindset evolve and he'll become a team player.. like a butterfly from a caterpillar.

Because players change who they are all the time.

Yeah - 40 wins of harden ISO ball while the rest stand there is exactly what this team needs to develop.

The first stint developed so many great players. We should definitely do it again.

The dude wants to come back bc he doesn't want to win. He wants to get paid, not practice, and spend his evenings in strip clubs and not catch **** for it.

Let's have him mentor our young guys.

How are you blaming moreys inability (or lack of desire) to bring in young players on harden? We had 2 first round picks his entire tenure here. One of them was Capela, who harden single-handedly made his career.


Look, harden is a choker. Period. But we should focus on getting to the playoffs before we worry about what would even happen there. Harden has never missed the playoffs and would be huge in helping us get there. I don't wanna give him a long term deal, but we have to spend the money next year somewhere! Would rather it be harden than like grant williams.

Harden has had issues staying in shape, and by coming here, he'd basically be throwing in the towel on championship aspirations. Very high risk that we'd be getting fat suit Harden rather than a motivated Harden. I think signing him would be a very bad idea.

Great.. we made the playoffs bc Harden carried us playing losing basketball by having a 35-40% usage rate and dribbling around for 18s every possession before he either goes and initiated a foul or step back 3 and all our young players stand around watching him do his thing. How is that good for us?

Best case scenario we get a nonfat harden (bc being in-shape is asking too much) and he gets us to playoffs for 2 years doing Harden things. Then he retires and we have 22-24 year old players that have been watching for 2 years that we now ask to go play real basketball.

James hardens usage rate has been hovering around 25% since he left houston. He's a different player now. His ability to set the table as the best distributor in the nba would open things up for jalen and Jabari in a way that Kevin Porter junior can't dream of. His presence has allowed maxey to flourish in Philly.

Do you have a better free agency alternative? If we stand pat and don't surround our young guys with valuable vets, they won't be able to play in big time games.

I don't give a crap about the off the court stuff, it's not relevant to this basketball discussion.


Certainly it's not a slam dunk to bring him in, and he shouldn't get paid anywhere close to max money. But it's not the "hell no" you make it out to be.

Yeah. I could pick a dozen better veteran character guys over James Harden.
His usage rate is down bc he played briefly with KD and then with Embiid. That is a completely diff situation.

AND he's put the word out that he wants his own show again.

Do you ever wonder why SP would trade Harden to Houston? One of the best talent evaluators in the game. Do you think he saw was James was and what Russ was and knew they could only have one of these dudes? Or do you think he just didn't know?

If SP was the best talent evaluator in the game he would have gotten more than jeremy lamb and Kevin Martin for James harden.

He didn't know what he had, chose to pay ibaka instead of harden and let him go. Mismanagement.

Also, would love to hear these better veteran free agents or realistic targets you keep mentioning that would come to houston and actually get these young guys into the playoffs, where we can see what they are worth.

I'm just saying him and Westbrook are the same player with different skill sets.


Geez. I got several of you just looking to pounce bc I don't like Jalen Green. You didn't even fully read my post. I said he traded him bc he realized they could only have one of these guys that had to have the ball in their hands to be effective. I didn't say anything about what he got. I doubt he realizes Harden would be one of the best offensive scorers in league history.

But his style has been proven by both him and Russ and currently by Doncic that it doesn't win when it matters.

We did pounce, I apologize. I love some good spirited argument. I think the thing with Jalen that makes him different is his ability to produce off the ball. He's more of a Jamal murray than Russell Westbrook in both the good ways (more active movement) and the bad ways (not as good of a distributor)

OKC and everyone else knew he was good and still developing, but being a super small market with owners that couldn't pay luxury tax and Harden disappearing against Miami in the playoffs plus both Harden and Russ sucking at defense, the owners wanted to keep Ibaka for his defense presence and he was also still developing. Ibaka was 22 and led the nba in total blocks two years in a row and missed DPOY by 4 votes.

KMart put up 24ppg the previous year and Lamb was the 12th pick that year, plus two firsts and a second. Not a great haul, but starting SG, 12th pick in the draft, plus two first and a second for the 6thMOY isn't awful, but best player always wins. I'm sure if OKC could have gotten more, they would have.

That's a similar haul to what Denver traded for Iverson.

The Chris Paul trade was Gordon, Kaman and 1 first and Paul was significantly more established.

The Deron Williams trade was the 5th pick (Harris) and two firsts.

Two firsts and a player was a big haul in a trade at that time. It was before teams started throwing 4-7 picks out for a star. In any event, I still blame OKC owners for not biting the bullet and paying both Ibaka and Harden

All good.

I'll summarize my position here. I hate James Harden. Not personally, I don't care at all who he is off the court. I hate his style. I hate iso ball and I hate foul hunters bc it doesn't win when it matters and iso ball is the worst thing to watch on TV.I admit he's one of the best offensive talents ever to play.

I think Jalen Green is incredibly talented but I think he has too much of that in him and I think we will waste a talent like Jabari with Green on the team and I think Jabari is much More suited to play for a winning team than Jalen is, so I would get what I could for Jalen now when you still can.

mAgnoliAg said:

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Clearly you would like to field a team with nobody who can put the ball in the net.

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THANK YOU.

Ignorant statement that gets stars and pats on the back lol

I guess there's no such thing as a player that scores and doesn't play iso ball 24/7