Better to have the occasional stinker when it doesn’t matter, and come through in the clutch, than pull a Harden and choke away almost every meaningful moment of your career. Idk why we’re comparing these two

It’s harder to be efficient when your teammates shoot 25% on wide open 3s.

So you could say he rises when it matters…

I was talking with my friend about this yesterday

He made this exact comparison of sga and harden

And I reminded him that he had terrible series against teams that were swept, he is 9-0 against 8 seeds with horrible efficiency (for his standards)

Outside of that he has good efficiency

Where harden frequently has great efficiency in early rounds but loses the close out games

I think if shai lost to the nuggets tho people would act very differently. I think shai is a bit of a front runner who takes his foot off the gas but also has that clutch gene for when he needs it

Game 7 of the finals was weird. His shooting numbers weren’t great, though I feel like it was because he kept trying to “ice” the game with a statement 3 and it wouldn’t drop. He took 12 3s in game 7 (9 in the 2nd half) his equal most in a game ever. But he played better than ⁸⁄₂₇ from the field would indicate.

His defense was great and he had maybe the best playmaking performance of his career (12 assists) with only 1 turnover which came late in the 4th

Hes got plot armor

Shai had multiple bad games against the nuggets too that got dragged to being good by his really good games. Game 1 he had a 55 TS, game 3 he had 37, game 4 52.

Not trying to insinuate that he isnt an elite player, but people remember that series as if shai was clearly better than jokic all series while thats just not exactly true.

I was about to hop on this and bring up all the game winners shai had in the playoffs last year until I realized you were talking about harden. Lmao

But when did he ever have an amazing supporting cast?

Assuming you are talking abut Harden, but Shai doesn’t have a clean reputation in elimination games either (⁸⁄₂₇ in game 7 of the finals).

Reggie Miller I think is the other exception.

It obviously makes sense because the average opponent in the Playoffs is better defensively than the average regular season opponent. The deeper you go into the Playoffs the more that tends to be true.

Don’t tell anyone Kobe was awesome in the playoffs through his entire prime. They’re not ready to hear it. He went to 7 Finals out of sheer happenstance.

It’s not just round one. He was very inefficient in the finals, where Indy was the #16 defense in the league

Okay…. for reference, Luka’s numbers are 53.2% efg and 57.3% TS in the playoffs, while also being over 5ppg higher than SGA and 8ppg higher than Harden.

As much as I love a bunch of players on the Lakers I believe that OKC will beat them on coast mode this year.

If Luka and AR are back that’s just gonna make it easier for SGA to have a good shooting series. He’s not gonna face a test unless until/if he faces the Rockets, the Spurs, or the Celtics like you mentioned.

MJ regular season TS%: 56%

MJ playoffs TS%: 56%

SGAs peak is higher than Hardens at this point. So naaa

7.6 for Shai and 7.4 for Harden

The reason that it’s not “talked about enough” is because anyone who actually watched the playoff games could see clear as day that it was a hard carry from Shai on offense. The entire team went 11-40 from 3 in G7 of the finals. The team shot 33% from the in the entire postseason.

Was Jdub getting constantly doubled and picked up at full court bringing the ball down? Opposition teams entire game plans were to get the ball out of SGAs hands.

But I guess you would have to watch games to know that, right? Doesn’t show up when you just look at box score.

He also doesn’t have the play the OKC defence like the other stars in the west.

Dude won a chip while averaging 30 pts lol.

Tatum’s postseason stats are actually about the same as his regular season stats lol a simple google search helps

Since being the #1 option from 2020 Tatum’s regular season averages are 27/8/5 and 26/9/6 in the postseason

Last postseason Tatum averaged 28/12/5 before the injury in the playoffs. He has led the team in almost every major stat in the playoffs

People focus on Tatum’s 1-2 stinkers but never judge him on a holistic level

Tatum was ECF MVP in 2022, is 21st all time in games dropping 30 or more in the playoffs and has 5 40+ point playoff games and the most points scored in a game 7 ever

Casuals out themselves so easily by using phrases like ‘merchant’. Nobody who has played basketball beyond middle school level uses terminology like that, stick to 2k dork.

Damn bro just said he’s the young Peyton Manning or Justin Herbert of the nba

OKC literally won Game 7 of the Finals with Shai going ⁸⁄₂₇

Harden had a super well balanced team during his career and his team were always the favorite going into the playoffs. Every series that he choked he was always the favorite to win.

Are we talking about the same James Harden? It’s literally the exact opposite, like 8 or 9 of his last 10 series he lost in were because either his co-star was injured or because he was up against the most stacked team of all time.

CP3, Kawhi, Embiid, Kyrie or Westbrook all literally got injured in the playoffs when playing with Harden. The only series he lost that he was expected to win in the last 10 years is probably vs Spurs in 2017.

his team were always the favorite going into the playoffs

This is revisionist garbage, holy shit.

There’s maybe two or three playoff series’ at most (realistically it’s probably just 2017 vs SAS) where he was on the team that was favored to win the series going into the series and ended up losing. He’s played in over 30 series’ in his career.