Paul George: Harden will have too many things, which leads to his mishap in the Clippers Nuggets G7

Philadelphia 76ers forward Paul George talked about the situation on his podcast about James Harden, a former teammate who played for the Los Angeles Clippers, who also defended Harden's poor performance in the G7 against the Denver Nuggets Series.

George said: Harden is definitely my brother, and he has invested a lot of energy in basketball. The problem is that sometimes he doesn't know whether he should be a scorer or an organizer. Sometimes he may play a little dull, but his idea is that I want to be the supporter of the team. Sometimes I may fall into this state, which makes me seem too passive and forget how to take the initiative to attack in the game. I sometimes lose my aggressiveness in the game because I always think that I want to help my teammates create an easy scoring opportunity. George continued: His talent is sometimes both his strength and his burden. There are so many things he can do on the court that sometimes he may not even know what role he should play in a specific game or at a specific moment. You may only see his performance on the court and the final result of the game, but you cannot pay attention to other factors.

In the NBA regular season this season, Harden played 79 games in 82 games, averaging 35.3 minutes per game, averaging 22.8 points, 5.8 rebounds, 8.7 assists, 1.5 steals and 0.7 blocks, and 4.3 turnovers and 2.1 fouls, shooting percentage of 41%, three-point shooting percentage of 35.2%, and free throw shooting percentage of 87.4%. In the playoffs, Harden averaged 39.4 minutes in these 7 games, averaging 18.7 points, 5.4 rebounds, 9.1 assists, 1.3 steals and 1 block, and 3 turnovers and 2.3 fouls, shooting percentage of 43.6%, three-point shooting percentage of 36.4%, and free throw shooting percentage of 81.8%.

As George said, Harden seemed to lack aggressiveness in the series against the Nuggets. He shot 2 of 8 shots, 1 of 4 from the three-point line, and 2 of 2 free throws, scoring 7 points, 5 rebounds, 13 assists, 2 steals and 1 block in the game time, and had 2 turnovers, with a plus-negative value of -29. It is obvious that Harden has the ability to provide more scoring help for the team, but he has not done this. He has not performed as much as he deserves on the offensive end, which has also largely led to the team's final defeat. For Harden, he has been repeating similar performances in his career. When the team needs him to stand up, he often "takes the overall situation into consideration" and dares not take more actions. He clearly has enough scoring ability, why did Harden perform like this at a critical moment?