If we have any hope of going far in the playoffs (or even making the playoffs), harden needs to be benched moving forward. His mere presence is making Pg and kawhi play poorly, and is causing the offense to be very stagnant. Additionally, our rebounding ability is dwindled massively. That one possession in crunch time where the nets got like 4 offensive boards and ended with a mikal putback literally lost us the game. And don’t even get me started on how poor his defense is.
I was called crazy all off-season for saying that we’d be better without harden. We ended up getting him anyway, yall happy now?
The lineups moving forward should be:
Russ, pg, kawhi, pj/kobe, Zu (or another FA/trade center)
Bench
Harden, mann, norm, pj/kobe, zu/plumlee
nail in the coffin. So much of the last season’s bright side was pace and movement. Harden just shuts it all down. The best approach would be to bench him and close games out with him instead of Westbrook