[Bill Simmons Pod] Bill: “Harden or Brunson for their entire careers, which guy would you rather have?”
I actually like BS but his content from the end of the NBA season to the start of the NFL season is generally a wasteland
That being said, im taking Big Body Capt Clutch Action Brunson all day every day
How can anyone pick harden? One guy has the reputation of failing in the playoffs, the other guy is an endless ocean of clutch buckets.
James Harden has an MVP, 3 MVP runner ups, and 6 All-NBA 1st teams. He led the league in scoring 3 times and took a warriors team with Curry, KD, Klay, and Draymond to 7 games. Choosing Brunson over Harden makes sense to me, acting like it’s not close does not.
Of course everyone is going to pretend its not close, in fact it never was and they all knew it long ago.
Nobody seemed to muster up the courage to speak up before Brunson won a ring though.
Fucking ring culture.
Edit: To everyone spamming the everliving fuck out of my inbox with the same argument that’s completely missing the point; I’m picking Brunson over Harden too. I’m just saying I think y’all are tripping with “it’s not even close” takes.
I mean, Harden has the most notorious history of playoff burnouts of any MVP player, only Karl Malone even approaching it. Compared to a guy who just had one of the great clutch performances in NBA history.
Yes, it was after Brunson did this that the conversation happens.
Do you think Harden would have done what Brunson did in that Game 5?
Nah, Embiid had the largest ppg drop off and still hasn’t made it out of the second round.
Hardens career is a couple of injuries away from looking very different. Both his and his teammates.’
Harden’s career is not facing Steph Curry and the Warriors every post season away from a couple of rings as the 1st option. These children really pretending Brunson and the Knicks wouldn’t be waterboarded by that Warriors dynasty.
Then if harden wins that series he’s gotta face prime LeBron. Lot of very disrespected and forgotten players during that era bc of ring culture. Knicks ain’t winning shit with prime steph in the west and prime bron in the east. That would automatically make brunson suck if he didn’t win a ring. Ring culture is fucked.
Or a couple made threes in the 27
If you asked every single GM in the league, over their whole careers? Brunson over Harden? Everyone will choose Harden.
Well, notably none of the GMs who have made that choice have a ring
None notably faced the KD Warriors
Harden got very close in 2018, I will give you that. I rarely hear people hold 2018 against him. Now explain the entirety of rest of his career, which are full of choke jobs that are NOT against KD Warriors.
Brunson Knicks will likely lose to KD Warriors too. But Harden, regardless of teams he’s been on, will almost definitely got beat by this Spurs, with Harden giving you something like a 3⁄11 shooting in elimination game.
2018 Rockets lose against this years spurs?
2018 Rockets woulda obliterated this Spurs team lmao
Why not? What make you so sure?
In 2017 when Kawhi went down, Harden wrote letter to fans in Houston to support them in G6, everyone was thinking “There’s no way Rocket lose now! Kawhi was everything to that Spurs! And Rockets are playing on homecourt!”
In 2019 when KD went down in the middle of G5, everyone was so sure “there’s no way Rocket lose now! They almost beat the Warriors with KD last year, this year they are totally gonna win!”
As long as you have Harden on your team, he can always find new innovative way to choke away a series in ways you didn’t even think is possible.
Didn’t know there’s only one perpetual 2018 Harden lmao
Wow I must have missed the last few years of the KD Warriors! Did they win 10 straight?
Be honest, do you think the KD Warriors don’t win in 4 against this years Knicks?
Agree with you. When people say this is one of the greatest teams ever, people forget the KD Warriors were so good and win by so much that people were complaining it was unfair. No one’s saying that about these Knicks, as much as I loved watching them play. KD Warriors were up there with the 72 win Bulls as the most dominant team I’ve ever seen.
exactly. Warriors would have been solid favorites even without KD in 2017. But then they got KD.
Nope
Dubs in 3
Imagine if this year’s thunder just got to add Luka to their roster for free and that gives you a taste of what the KD warriors were like
Yeah but there is a warehouse full of Analytical NBA Champions for all those GMs.
Daryl Morey is the Analytical GM GOAT
Can we please stop acting like Brunson hard carried the Knicks to a fucking ring. That team is amazingly constructed, and had it not been for that idiot Thibs running every team he coaches into the ground they may just have multiple finals appearances.
Put Brunson on the Lakers or those Rockets teams and they’re not automatically contenders. This entire conversation is stupid.
I’m gonna have to hard disagree with you. What does his offensive output matter when he’s a liability on defense and disappears when it’s time to be clutch and put the team on his shoulders? A GMs job depends on winning, and not just in the regular season. Harden is not a winner.
Flags fly forever
The fact that people in the comments genuinely have HARD beliefs in both directions is proof that this is a great question and content that succeeds at what it attempts to achieve.
It’s a different perspective on the classic “do you value rings or stats more?” question when evaluating a player’s career. Viewing it purely from the owner/coach/team’s perspective, who would you want?
Because Brunson just won in stylish fashion, that is literally all some people need to know. He’s a winner. They want that guy. They can’t believe you’re even entertaining the better stat guy who could never win. It’s appalling.
And the Harden takers are appalled that one of the top 35 greatest NBA players of all time is getting passed on just because Brunson, who has had an obviously inferior statistical career thus far, recently won a ring.
Recency bias is a huge part of it, yep.
isn’t the argument that harden’s stats aren’t that great in the post season, so that is why people have brunson over him? i think if harden was able to perform really well in playoffs despite losing, he’d be rated higher than he is in this thread
As a sad spurs fan it’s actually therapeutic
This is true for literally all of these sports talk shows on ESPN. They’d rather talk about OTAs or spring practice or what Aaron Rodgers had for lunch than baseball or MLS or anything else currently ongoing
Because the average person doesn’t care about those. They know what people want to hear them talk about. Shit, how many people are gonna know what a Carolina hurricane is?
Unpopular opinion: casual/trivial conversation like which player you’d rather have is a lot of fun. To me this is the basis of all sports debate
Specifically Brunson versus Harden is a decent conversation
It’s been way worse lately, ever since signing with Netflix he’s been doing the hot take/clickbait style of coverage.
You’re saying he wasn’t doing that before that?
I haven’t noticed an increase in this at all. “Turn the TikTok camera on Kyle” has been a hot take Schtick of his for years.
Imagine there were another major sport or two being played at the moment they could discuss to fill the dead space.
With that said, Brunson 100%
You really want them talking about a sport they have no interest in and know very little about? I’d prefer they stay in their lane. Who wants a BS hot take on the World Cup?
TBF I don’t really expect Bill to cover soccer / tennis, they aren’t his sports and I think its better to let people who actually really watch them talk about them.
That said he should probably just take a bit off time off from the NBA stuff other than draft maybe and do rewatchables / other interesting projects but I get thats not really how the podcast industry works.
Baseball is also happening
Yeah and my Red Sox suck, can’t really blame Bill for not wanting to talk about them.
I enjoy Bill in his unleashed form. You get some ridiculous takes out of him when he hits peak boredom. It’s like watching a cornered animal just throwing everything to escape.
His nfl content isn’t very good either, unless your a pats fan
I think people have let Harden’s late career cloud their view and forgot how good he was in his prime.
Bro took a healthy 2017-2018 Warriors (Curry, Durant, Thompson, Draymond, Iguodala) to 7 games in the WCF, AND kept it close the entire series, even leading at one point.
*2018 Warriors. Anyone who is a Harden fan would prefer to not acknowledge the 2017 playoffs (or any other playoffs really)
2017 was brutal but 2018 hurt so much more due to how close we were before the Chris Paul injury. It was our best chance.
Even after, we were up double digits in game 6 and 7 and then the 27 straight
The 27 straight will never not be ridiculous. My memory is fucking horrible and I don’t think I’ll ever forget this game
I watched that live and it actually feels so hazy as a memory, like something out of a dream. Doubt I’ll ever see a team go that cold again, it didn’t feel real.
I remember Eric Gordon laying that shit up like it was nothing and they proceed to just chuck up 3s for no reason.
I remember Eric Gordon driving to the basket and getting jumped mid air by 2 warriors and not a whistle in sight
2019 is another “good playoff year”. He was really good vs the Warriors that year in the semis, probably one of his best if not playoff series stat wise. The problem was CP3 looked washed / wasn’t the same as the year before. Their lack of finding a proper Ariza replacement all year hurt them too. Harden averaged 34.8 points, 6.8 rebounds and 5.5 assists on 59.4 true shooting in six games
They win that series (and the title) if paul doesnt get injured and they don’t have the refs intentionally try and make them lose
And the 27 missed 3s
I’m a certified Harden hater but the refs intentionally didn’t call multiple fouls on 3s where the defender stepped right into him and his landing space.
They called off 2 made 3s as on the floor when they werent and there were 3 others where the shooter was clearly fouled and it wasn’t called
And somehow still only lost by 9
That series is one of the most overlooked instances of ref ball in recent memory.
No guarantee they beat Lebron, playoffs is all about match-ups
As someone mentioned below, it was in 2018. Iguodala got hurt game 3 and missed the rest of the round.
I’m so tired of people pumping up Harden for literally one “almost won” non-Finals series.
This dude has had a 17 year career, 14 of which were prime years as either a #1 guy or 1a/1b guy, and the best he ever accomplished was “almost” beating the Warriors in one conference finals.
Meanwhile, he’s shit the bed over and over and over again in the playoffs.
He’s a gifted player who simply doesn’t have that clutch gene.
It’s insane like he hasn’t pulled disappearing acts. People act as if he wasn’t healthy so many of these series or something lol. He’s an mvp caliber player who doesn’t bring mvp caliber performances to the playoffs consistently enough to win. Just a player built for the regular season and that’s it.
He averaged 36% fg, 16% from 3, and 4 turnovers in those 3 wins. Wow what a legend.
Iguodala wasn’t healthy
As a Rockets fan I adore Harden. But he doesn’t have whatever you define as “it” , which Brunson so clearly does.
He spent his prime running up against a dynasty. I’m not a Harden fan but it’s not the same road.
Then when he was about to beat that dynasty, his entire team fell apart and historically missed 27 straight threes…
Idt 2026 Knicks even get to a point where they can miss 27 straight 3s to lose the game. They’d most likely get swept by that Warriors team
Yeah, obviously I’m glad we got the chip this year, but it still feels like a fluke. This Knicks team never felt like a dominant juggernaut that you could count on to easily win games. They came into the finals as the underdogs. But they just somehow manage to execute just well enough, make enough tough shots when it matters, to pull out these wins. And it took some help from Spurs inexperience and mistakes to get us there too. If the Spurs didn’t fuck up so much and played closer to their potential, I still feel they would’ve beat the Knicks.
Now those Warriors… that was a dominant team. That was where it felt impossible to beat them. You had to play a near perfect game while they could be going at 60% throttle just to have a shot.
That’s the beauty of the game. The analytically “best” team doesn’t always win. There’s variance, there’s the mental side, there’s a bit of luck, and it takes having the heart of a champion. Luckily this year everything lined up, fell in place, and against all odds, against all doubters, Knicks pulled one out. Incredible, man.
Yeah they swept the Finals including the game LeBron scored an efficient 51. They 4-1d the other teams before the Rockets and Steph didn’t even play in half of them.
The only thing that beat the KD Warriors was KD’s leg exploding
This Knicks team doesn’t even come close to beating the Warriors that Harden went against.
Harden shot 2-13 from 3 he was part of the problem lol
I mean I think he’s had too many games during elimination where he underperforms.
14 points when he got eliminated in 2015.
10 points when he got eliminated in 2017.
And in 2018 his 3 wasn’t falling at all but still pushed the 2018 warriors to 7 games.
So it’s ok to doubt his playoff stuff. But it wouldn’t have made a difference those warriors teams would’ve found a way to win.
because prime harden had to hard carry his teams every game lol. brunson for like the first 3 games of the finals was just chucking up bs and his team was managing just fine. prime harden would get blown out if he wasn’t doing everything for the offense from the jump. so sure he’s had some bad performances later in the series but that’s after giving it his all to survive the earlier rounds and earlier games cuz his team was just never that good, not to mention the generational regular season carry jobs. and hardens teams were much less versatile, aside from a few rounds with a non washed cp3, he never had anyone, all teams had to do was load up on harden and force him into crazy shots or dare other bums to beat them. give prime harden this knicks team and a much easier eastern conference and they’d have won this ring
Yeah that’s the thing, Brunson’s team is so much more capable, where they can have games where he can play poorly for most of the game, and the team can still be in it.
It’s amazing what he has been able to do during clutch moments, but it’s also a team advantage to be able to play shit and still have chance at the end.
Harden for most of his career has been so important to his teams, that a poor game by him almost always meant his team would lose. Huge difference in the weight each of them have had to carry imo.
bro him getting close to those Warriors team is a testament in itself, none of the teams today take 2018 Warriors to 7 game series. None
Brunson ain’t beating the Warriors lol
Brunson would never have a chance against prime warriors and Lebron, y’all don’t know ball.
Imagine prime Harden against Fox and Castle.
Prime Harden on this Cavs team is odds-on favorite for the chip.
Ring culture just creates a fake “it” factor that just resolves to whether or not they won a ring.
If Chris Paul didn’t get hurt in 17 they probably would’ve won a chip while taking down the greatest team of all time and we’re all sitting here talking about how Harden does have “it”
So Brunson doesn’t step up in big moments and harden doesn’t fold? That’s how I define “it”
Also I hate that 17 is just guaranteed when he’d be going against the Lebron Cavs without CP3 healthy.
Everyone thought Spurs would beat the Knicks and look what happened. That’s why you play the games.
The point is the discussion is too dependent on outside factors.
My exact point is what you’re saying - you’re saying it’s not a given they would’ve won *because CP3 was injured*. How can the discussion on “it factor” be dependent on whether a different player was hurt?
It’s easier to rise in big moments when your 4th best player is Mikal bridges than when your 4th best player is Eric Gordon. It’s easier to rise in big moments when your opponent is a bunch of 22 year old rising stars than when it’s the greatest basketball team ever put together.
Brunson is incredible and I’m not trying to take anything away from him. My point is that if the Knicks lost with Brunson keeping his exact same stats the discussion would be entirely different, which devalues basketball talks.
A really well built team around him?
Idk gang I think we gotta factor in strength of opponents as well
Bron got so much credit for getting a single game off that golden state team in 2017 in hindsight. But Harden took the 2018 warriors to 7 and lost CP3 mid-series.
One of them ran into potentially the greatest team of all time. The other had guys literally tossing the ball off their teammates back ij crunch time.
It took an absolutely historic night of offense to win that one game. People are absolutely forgetting how legendary that 17 warriors team was.
Put Brunson against the warriors and he wouldn’t have it either.
Tbf, having “it” isn’t the only thing that matters. Chauncey Billups had it, won FMVP, and earned his Mr Big Shot nickname, but I don’t think you can make an argument for him even being a top 100 player all-time.
Yeah I don’t even want it to sound like I’m shitting on Brunson because I’m definitely not. We’re just splitting hairs at this point
He’s always folded in the playoffs. Thats never changed.
He won more playoff games than any active player, after Lebron obviously. More than Giannis, Jokic, Steph, KD, Kawhi, whoever you like…
He individually outplayed both prime Steph and prime KD in 2018 and again in 2019
In 2020 he also started on fire. Was the best played of the entire playoffs in the first round. Got hurt in the 2nd and was never the same again
Harden does get worse in the playoffs. His worse was historically better than most players bests
Harden’s averages in playoffs are better than people remembered. He’s a historic floor raiser. But he also chokes more than almost everyone else. His playoffs always started great then ended in disaster.
Most notable example: 2017 Harden had what looked like decent playoffs in hindsight, averaging 28.5 ppg. But look at how it ended - the infamous 2⁄11 shooting in G6 against Spurs, eliminated at homecourt, a historic blunder. This is the game everyone remembers that summarize this whole run. And runs like this is what everyone remembers that summarize Harden’s career.
I saw a video saying he doesn’t have lethal scoring in all 3 levels and that’s why he doesn’t have postseason success. The paint is clogged come playoff time and physicality increases so that cuts off drives. Closeouts are better due to the intensity so you have less room for 3s. That leaves Harden at the midrange and he’s not good there.
Harden was good from the midrange. He shot it a lot in his early Houston years but Morey pushed the 3 & layups which became high variance in the playoffs. If he would have shot it more in the playoffs specifically game 7 the warriors series may have gone differently
Regular season merchant
IMO, Harden taking the legendary *and healthy* 2018 Warriors to the brink is at least equally impressive to what Brunson pulled off this offseason.
And Brunson’s playoffs were *awesome.*
Maybe Harden’s 2018 Rockets lose to Bron in the finals. I definitely don’t think that series would be a sweep, but we can’t just ignore that Harden, in his prime — playoff efficiency troubles and all — gave by far the best team of this century its toughest test at its absolute pinnacle.
That 2018 Rockets team should be very, very high on a list of the best teams of this century. Top 10, or so, and that’s more on Harden than this Knicks team is on Brunson.
Harden would have a ring if he didnt have to play the greatest team ever assembled.
We can’t just remove context. The 2026 Spurs are awesome, they don’t hold a candle to the 2018 Warriors.
Don’t forget he also went up against the 2012 Heat in the Finals
Averaging 12 points a game
He wasn’t a starter..
And if he were to win as a non-starter, averaging 12, it suddenly validates his post season career against the brunson show we just saw, barely few days ago?
The 2012 hypothetical ring doesn’t mean much either way. But arguing against a what-if is too stupid to begin with.
Because he was their sixth man you casual
He had objectively a bad series. As 6th man people knew he was special.
No one knew Harden was that special otherwise Presti never would have let him go to Houston
He averaged 30+ minutes per game in that series, casual.
Harden would have ring if he wasn’t 2 of 13 from 3 and wouldn’t set game for Gordon who was 2 of 12 in closing game.
It’s the context.
Houston went to a game 7 vs the best team ever and they had a legit shot to win, that’s insane
It’s gotta be the most overrated feat in NBA history. The LA clippers took the same team to 6 the next year is Lou williams an all time great?
He would have a ring if strip clubs didn’t exist either but let’s keep on with the hypotheticals
Unfortunately you cant just make up hypotheticals to give credit where theres no credit to be given
Idk there’s a pretty objective difference in quality of team faced. If you asked the 2018 rockets to run through this years ATL/PHI/CLE/SAS they would’ve
Lets give them credit then. That Houston team pushed the greatest team ever assembled to the brink of elimination.
Which is more impressive, taking Jordan’s Bulls to 7 or beating the 2022 Celtics in 5?
What happened in 2019 when Durant was injured??
Even if he makes it past the Warriors in this theoretical world it’s not a certainty he makes it through the Cavaliers.
In a team sport, it’s generally incorrect to conflate “better career” with “better player”. The majority of people would probably agree that they’d take the championship career, but to say that Brunson has been a better player than 2017-19 Harden is probably inaccurate, particularly his 2017-18 campaign.
probably inaccurate?
KD was absolutely correct to go to the Warriors for his legacy and this Simmons take is proof
Like with what’s happening to Harden now, people will forget the context eg losing to the Heatles and just remember the championships.
Harden was leagues ahead of Jalen Brunson as a player, a perennial MVP candidate and one of the best offensive engines ever. Has Brunson even had a top 3 finish?
This is why I don’t watch the nba as much as I used to. A player could average 50ppg and lead his team to 60 wins but if he never won a finals people act like they were trash.
Nobody appreciates great players anymore
There’s a reasonable conversation to be had that it’s possible for players to put up incredible stats that don’t actually make their team the best version of itself. Westbrook and his triple doubles are a good example of this. Yes, his team was better when he put up triple doubles, but he was also focusing on that as much, if not more than winning the games.
Harden put up great counting stats. He was also way too ball dominant, dribbled way too much, and was never engaged when he didn’t have the ball in his hands. Of course, when you have such a high usage rate and all of your teammates are there to catch and shoot, you’re going to put up points and assists. And Harden is incredibly skilled in his style of basketball. But we’ve seen for decades that this style of offense doesn’t translate to winning the way team basketball does.
James Harden replacing Brunson would’ve made this Knicks team worse without question. There’s just no way Harden would buy into the “always see the next pass for the best look” type of offense where he wasn’t dribbling in an iso every possession. There’s no way he’d embrace being off ball and letting KAT embrace that role. There’s no way he’d have stayed engaged. And there’s no way he’d have put in the effort on defense that we saw from Brunson.
I’m not talking about who’s the better player. But I’d absolutely make the case that Brunson fits better on most teams than Harden, even if they’re the best player on the team. Harden runs one style of offense and will never buy into a winning system of ball movement basketball. His game requires way too much dribbling. Asking him to do that is like asking prime Westbrook to not take pull up 3s.
You can dominate the regular season with Harden because raw talent wins out easier. When you get into a best of 7 series, team basketball wins out.
In general you may be right but whenever people discuss KD now it’s clear that the context of his move is still fresh in people’s minds. Nobody has forgotten the context yet. We will see if that changes.
Personally I suspect that the context will remain fresh until the point where most NBA fans don’t even remember KD at all and the 2010-2020 era is like the 70s is now, where most fans only really remember/talk about like one or two guys (it’ll be LeBron and Steph). I don’t think there is ever going to be a point where KD is both remembered for his rings AND the context of his career is forgotten. He’s not done himself any favors the past couple years either.
This is a good point.
If people are gonna act like this, and push out stupid takes of this brand just because someone wins, then yeah, selling out for the ring is plausible.
Brunson’s career isn’t even close dude.
It’s subjective though. IMO winning a championship as the main guy on the Knicks is pretty untouchable. There’s little I’d trade for that
Well yeah but id still take James Harden if i was starting a franchise he is just clearly a better player. He was arguably to best player itl with Prime Steph, KD, Kawhi, and Bron. A player on that level is just better than Jalen Brunson, whom a lot of people dont even have close to the top 5 right now.
Yeah, by this logic you would take Joe Flacco, Sam Darnold or Trent Dilfer over Dan Marino.
Championships matter, obviously, but Brunson didn’t win on his own, he was the best player on the Knicks, but they won because every player on the Spurs that wasn’t Wemby was worse than his Knicks counterpart.
Brunsons story is not over.
He’s just not a better player than Harden. It’s that simple.
You don’t think prime Harden is winning with KAT, OG, Bridges, and all the great role players?
The Rockets would’ve sucked without him, the Knicks are still a scary team without Brunson.
The Rockets built a team around him to compliment him and fully allow him to be what he was.
Acting like Harden brought the Warriors to 7 games by himself is like acting like Brunson won the title alone.
In the end, you play to win the title, not to take the Warriors to 7.
Comments like this are crazy to me because you’re acting Warriors wouldn’t have been resting their starters against the Knicks in the 4th after going on a 20-0 run in the beginning of the 3rd while a Warriors chant was blowing the sound out of your TV lmao.
Yeah maybe but what Brunson has done time and time again in the playoffs is seriously special. Like if you can be the guy who just brings your team back over and over in the 3rd and 4th while being guarded by a generational defender then at some point thats who you are.
Just like if the teams you are on flame out over and over then eventually that is who you are. No ifs or buts.
Yeah but Harden is just better. harden just had a worse team and went against better teams.
Harden has been surrounded by talent his whole career. His problem is that _he_ shrinks in the postseason.
Not when he was in his prime. His team was way worse than Curry’s
It’s not until I’m in the offseason each year do I truly remember how much I fkn hate the offseason
It’s also annoying because as a huge Knicks fan it’s like oh right this is how widely liked players slowly become hated
Yup and the internet seems to just be going down the list of comparisons to get people riled up. First Luka, now Harden.
Wemby will be the new Draymond by the beginning of the season lol
The World Cup is here, friend, and Wimbledon’s on the way. Basketball will be right where you left it when you get back.
dont forget baseball baby!!
Brunson is awesome but man, we can’t just forget 18-19 Harden
He was great in the previous 2 seasons too
Averaged 44/8/6 with a near 40% 3P for 6 weeks mid Dec to end of January
Based on alot of responses here we clearly can
Pretty easily Harden
nephews forget how good Harden was
he averaged 41 ppg over a 35 game span or some shit
he was dropping 40-50 like every other game it was insane
But since he didn’t win a championship apparently he was never good. The nba has some of the dumbest fans of any sports league
I feel like this is the “would you rather win a ring or mvp” type discussion
it’s not super comparable still. The competition in the league this year is significantly weaker than the years of hardens prime and I don’t think anyone would really debate that
prime Harden with his Houston teams pretty easily handles the Knicks imo.
Brunson has better playoff moments but there’s a lot more context that goes into that conversation then just “Brunson won a ring so he’s automatically better” and if that’s the way you view these kinds of things I think you should take a step back and evaluate your inability to think with a bit of reasonable nuance
It’s not at all. If you are building a team to win a championship you should take prime Harden over Brunson. It’s just very hard for some people to rap their heads around that given Brunson has a ring and Harden doesn’t.
NBA fans need to pick one of two things, A. Anyone who didn’t win a ring during the warriors dynasty is a bum because they didn’t win a ring. Or B. Kevin durant joining GSW is a cupcake move and his rings are worthless because of how great the team was.
We can’t shit on harden for having no rings when he had to go against the greatest team ever seen, and then also shit on durant for winning said rings.
We never shat on him just because he lost to warriors and that 27 misses.
He’s given up early in playoffs rounds way too many years. At that point he’s basically synonymous with doc rivers. They don’t close. And they never will.
Saying rings is the only thing that matters is dumb at some point. Nobody would rather have Mitchell Robinson’s career than Chris Paul’s
I mean that’s a false equivalence.
Brunson and Harden play the same role for their team. Chris Paul and Mitch Robinson do not.
Nobody is putting Chauncey Billups (1a PG with a great supporting cast like Brunson) over John Stockton, Nash, CP3
Agreed, and that is a more apt comparison than Mitchell Robinson and CP3.
Chauncey Billups wasn’t even the leading playoff scorer on his own team. Rip Hamilton averaged (21.5 PPG) and Billups averaged (16.4 PPG)
Billups was 27th in the playoffs in PPG, 5th in total points
Brunson was 1st in the playoffs in PPG and 1st in total points Brunson
First player to win the championship and lead the playoffs in PPG since LeBron (2012) and Shaq (2000)
It isn’t even a comparison. Brunson is a lot closer to those guys than Billups
It becomes very clear if you look at the NFL.
By this line of thinking you’d take Joe Flacco or Trent Dilfer over Dan Marino.
Harden has never missed the playoffs despite being on some pretty rough teams at points. He might retire with the all-time record in playoff appearances. If I’m a GM I would take Harden in a heartbeat, he is one of the all-time greatest floor raisers in NBA history. I’d build a different team around him than they had in Houston though.
It’s wild how much shit Harden is getting for helping the Cavs break through and finally make the ECF when he is way past his peak ability. I find it kind of bizarre that KD is viewed as unquestionably top 20 all-time while Harden is put below Brunson somehow. I guess it does pay to ring chase and Harden should’ve done it at his peak like KD did.
Always makes the playoffs. Always folds when he does.
He simply plays too well in the regular season to not make the playoffs. And he simply doesn’t perform that way in playoffs, not even fucking close.
Though it’s funny to think about, does it have to do with night clubs? Is the only difference that his opponents would go with him in regular season, but decline his invites during playoffs?
As a Harden fan I think it’s definitely fair to say you would take Brunson if the role is clutch star scoring, I just think Harden does everything else at a higher level all time.
People can have their knocks against Harden’s playoff performances and general volatility, but I still think he’s better all time in most aspects, though Brunson takes the cake if you need a player to rely on for resilient and clutch scoring.
On Paper, Harden is better, it’s just unfortunate knowing that Brunson has intangibles Harden’ll never have
Brunson’s run this year was extremely impressive but he has never even been 1st team All NBA like come on
Really losing the plot that basketball is a team sport. Yes having the best players matters a ton, but the Knicks have 3-4 very good players, and then guys like Hart and Mitch Rob who are great at their roles. They won the title because Brunson, KAT and OG all played very well. Not because Brunson was just on a different planet all post season
So would bill put brunson over charles barkley too since he has a ring. This ring culture shit is so annoying becuz no way ppl think brunson is better than prime CP3 and Harden who were clear top 5 players in their primes.
I mean it’s not like Brunson just popped out of nowhere
Over the last 4 years he has the 2nd most playoff wins
2nd in ppg only a hair behind SGA
Most 30 pt games
Most 40 pt games
He’s been near dominant in the postseason
why does he never finish top 5 in MVP voting then?
is the regular season just an 82 game preseason now? why do we even watch if the only thing that matters is the postseason
But he has finished top 5 in MVP voting.
I don’t rank a bunch of games against tanking teams higher than the hardest games vs the best teams.
This isn’t to discard the regular season either, he averaged 26⁄7 it’s not like he’s just out there doing nothing. He just rises to an even better level when it matters the most
Are we going to pretend that every player who plays in the 2020s is better than the generation in front of them? Luka, Jokic, Tatum, Hali, Brunson, SGA, etc not a single one of them would have made it to the NBA finals if their primes coincided with the Warriors dynasty and they played in the Western Conference
Shit the players in the east wasn’t getting past LeBron
classic overreaction. if this spurs team was Harden’s toughest competition from 2015-2019 in the West instead of the KD Warriors, they make the finals at least once and probably win a ring or two
I hate ring culture so fucking much
Would you rather have insane regular season stats and playoff collapses or good regular season stats and playoff rises?
Harden is the better individual player, but Brunson’s style and unselfishness yields better results. Harden was never the team player that Brunson has been. With Harden, your team is going to run through him entirely and when he’s off ball, he’s just gonna stand around and do nothing.
Ah yes. lets compare the recency bias of Jalen Brunson winning a title literal days ago to the recency of Harden who is 36 and no longer a first option. Harden had a 2 year window to win the title. it was cancelled by the Warriors dynasty with KD and injuries to co stars. Took them to 7 games in 2018, then lost to them in 2019 in 6 where he averaged 35/6/7 that series and the rest of his team played like ass. Cant expect Harden to carry a team of 3 and D average players to a win over those Warrior teams when LeBron himself took them on basically alone and was getting swept.
Harden has def come up short in the playoffs many times, but those 2 years he was doing his thing and played well enough to win a title. I personally think that if you think Brunson is a better ball player than Harden prime for prime, you’re a victim of recency bias.
Is Brunson more clutch than Harden? without a doubt, not even close.
But Prime Harden did literally everything else better than Brunson.
Harden was completely unreliable in clutch moments even during his prime, I really think Brunson has surpassed him
extremely dumb guy’s idea of a smart question in the immediate aftermath of Brunson winning a title lol
I think something lost in this debate is that Brunson is a major part of the culture they’ve built in NY. Harden was a better player, but I don’t think he was the same type of teammate and leader that Brunson is.
From that perspective I would rather have Brunson, I think his personality is more conducive to playing winning basketball.
Harden changed the game for the worse and always fades when it matters.
Brunson getting the Jalen Hurts post SB boost. Calm tf down.
Not even remotely comparable, Brunson has been a playoff wizard for a few seasons in a row now
He had 19 points, 5 turnovers and -18 in their elimination game to Indiana last year. Can’t say he’s a playoff wizard especially if the narrative is Harden shrinks in big games to boost Brunson.
Brunson is 29 with 3x 2nd team all NBA, 1FMVP
Harden at 29 was 5x 1st team all NBA, 1x 3rd team, 1MVP ,2x scoring leader, 1x assist leader.
Like no disrespect to Brunson at all but adjusting for age these two players are not in the same tier.
harden is a better player than brunson and would’ve won in brunsons spot too
Prime Harden was one of the best scorers of all time wtf are we talking about?
I’m no James Harden fan. But he’s got virtually every metric in his favour here. No single Brunson season tops Harden’s average season over his 17 years in terms of VORP, WS, PER or BPM.
Value for money is certainly a different story and a championship is a championship but the answer to this question is not “Brunson in a landslide”.
If championships are the be all and end all, then you’re clearly taking Robert Horry over Charles Barkley and John Salley over Elgin Baylor.
Harden running into peak dynasty Warriors 4 years has done crazy damage, people really think it was impossible to win with him as your star when in reality he just couldn’t get over the hump that practically nobody else besides LeBron could either when GSW was healthy
What’s with this sub and bill simmons all I see is shit takes from him
Have people not watched james harden in the playoffs even during his prime? He’s a regular season merchant and always has been. His game doesn’t translate to the playoffs and he was never willing to adapt it.
Terrible take if you are building a 2k team. Correct take if you want to win a real life NBA championship.
The recency bias on here is hilarious.. Harden has had a better career. Brunson had a great postseason this year
Brunson literally did what we’ve wanted to see Harden do and that’s just execute in big games.
Probably the guy with 4x the career earnings and a successful shoe that’s also big in china.
Also more vacation time lol
Harden could have been a 3x mvp arguably.
James Harden is 9th on the all time nba scoring list. 2nd all time 3s made. 12th all time assists. Apart from rings culture bullshit I’m not sure what the case for Brunson is at this point in their careers (could change when all is said and done)
Ah yes, the Knicks ONLY won the title because of Jalen Brunson and his *checks notes* 53% true shooting % in the finals. Definitely not because of his other elite teammates.
Harden is better. This is moronic.
People who say Brunson should not be allowed to participate in basketball discussions.
11x all star and MVP
3x all star and Championship/finals MVP
Prime Harden went up against a dynasty.
Jalen went up against a budding young team.