All By Myself – James Harden and Kevin Durant sat down with Bill Simmons and Jalen Rose to talk about The Harden Trade, amongst other things. With unusual candor, Harden talks about how lonely he was when he first got to Houston.
Most interesting snippet: Durant says, “I think he’s the best guard in the league right now.”
Russell Westbrook and Chris Paul just spit out their coffee. So did Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson, but they will react like that until they are 80. J.R. Smith and Nick Young would have, but they weren’t paying attention.
Good Grades – Houston is so totally pulling down a 4.0 GPA on it’s offseason right now, and Royce Young of CBS Sports just gave the Rockets another A+ in his offseason report:
But check this: Morey turned Kevin Martin, Jeremy Lamb, ostensibly Steven Adams into James Harden and Dwight Howard. That’s good, right? That seems good. His blueprint for building wasn’t about drafting and developing, it was being the most opportunistic general manager in the league. When there was a chance to capitalize on a player, Morey did it, and did it in a way that opened more doors in the future.
When Daryl Morey submits his resume for the Nobel Prize for Sports Management, that paragraph will be in the cover letter.
The Trinity - Jason Friedman of Rockets.com interviewed Dwight Howard, Hakeem Olajuwon and Kevin McHale after the three giants held a workout session together. Howard explained what’s going through his mind while learning from the two most skilled post players in history:
“It’s not about emulating Dream. That’s the thing. We get caught up in comparing players, trying to do what this guys does just because you work with him. The thing is, when you workout with a guy like Hakeem or Kevin McHale, you take away certain things. You don’t try to do everything they can do. I could workout with Michael Jordan, but I’m not going to be able to shoot the fadeaway like Michael Jordan.
“The biggest thing when we’re working out is I’m always watching his feet. Today we were working on spin moves and I was doing a spin move with my left foot in the back and I saw him doing it with his right. So once I caught that, I adjusted. It’s little things like that where you see something and you put your own mix to it – that’s what makes it great.
“We’ve been working out for years and I’ve never tried to be Hakeem Olajuwon. We made jokes about the Dream shake – he’d call mine the milk shake – but I don’t want to say I’m going to be like Hakeem Olajuwon. The moves we’re doing and how we’re doing them, it’s not about doing it just like Hakeem or doing them just like McHale. It’s about understanding why and how you do certain moves.”
Howard’s post game has been planted in a greenhouse and soaked in Miracle Grow. Hopefully it will bear fruit this season.
“You’ve Changed, Bro” – Jeremy Lin has a new video with jokes and cameos from James Harden and Steve Nash.
I don’t care* about Patrick Beverley’s RAPM, WARP, Win Shares, Points Per Possession, True Shooting percentage, three-point percentage, PER or any of that other sabermetribabble. Until he can crank out a funnier video, Jeremy Lin is my starting point guard.
*(I really do care. I’m just yanking your chain. Chill out, guys.)
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