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
Harden needs the initial screen to be solid, preferably set high and preferably with a good roller — even if they’re not a good lob catcher, like old man Nene, he can make the PnR work with no-look bounce passes.
Even when Zubac isn’t fumbling passes in the PnR or stopping his roll, trying to kick it out and turning it over — he’s setting poor screens and often Harden can’t even use the screen because the defender sees his huge body slowly plodding up and shades/adjusts, and Harden tells him to re-screen on the other side (and the shot clock dwindles down).
Even last season with Philly, Harden would often get doubled and blitzed off the PnR leaving EMBIID the freaking MVP wide open at the middy. That’s how deadly Harden can still be as both a scorer and a playmaker in the PnR.
Even in Houston his entire game was built off Capela coming up to set a high screen for him the second he crossed half-court (which they eventually had to abandon because Harden would simply get doubled/blitzed on every single pick, so he just isolated on whoever they put on him lol).
People think both of Harden’s 40pt games against Celtics last playoffs were flukes, but they both happened in Game 1 without Embiid when Reed and PJ set high, effective screens and rolled hard to the rim, and in Game 4 after Embiid put his ego aside after popping to the midrange all of Games 2-3 and clogging up the driving lanes for Harden. Game 4 starts with Embiid setting 2 high picks and rolling hard, and Harden feeds him an easy assist the first time and hits a fairly easy floater the second.
When the initial screen is solid, defenders have to make gambles and choose what they’re going to focus on and what they’re going to give up, and Harden will always take the high percentage look that they’re giving up. He can force the right switches for either himself OR his team mates. So we can see isolations on mismatches instead of currently seeing the initial play break down and forced isolations at rhe end of the shot clock.
Not to mention with all the open 3s Harden creates being missed, the spacing is worse and driving lanes are more clogged for him.
Tldr; Once PG and Kawhi start making open 3s and once either Zu gets more reps in with Harden or gets traded for a more athletic big to run PnR with, the offence will look completely different.