BEARD

We met Lamont Smith with last summer in Novi Sad.
Smith is currently the first assistant coach of the New Mexico University to look at potentially interesting players from this part of Europe for his college. Why is Smtih relevant to this story? In the 2008-12 season, Smith was an assistant coach at Arizona State at Herba Sendeka and spent most of his time working individually with James Harden. The story of the then still neatly shrouded bush has a tendency.

A good number of them are unfortunately not in these queues and mostly concern James's venture out of the field. Those in the field are equally interesting ...

"James is a boy from Calif. People born in California generally have a lighter approach to life, there is no hurry than most Americans." Harden is sometimes too relaxed but loves to compete. What I was thrilled with at the first training with him is what they have all the reactions to the attack in a fraction of a second. "Nothing is done in advance, but reacts at a given moment." He has a perfect instinct. "

What would you tell me, Harden knows he's playing basketball. It is not particularly fast, not particularly jumpy, not particularly strong but will effortlessly stride 30. Approximately 10 free throws, two to three trophies and an infinite series of intersections from different angles to the ball underneath the knees ...

"On the second year he had already had the reputation of a big shooter so that most of his opponents in his position were burned to stop him. One match was played by a guy two or three times with a good defense against him and then he spoke ... James looked at him then he has us on the bench and then asked for the next ball to go to him and he put 20 points in a row without fail in the upcoming 8-9 attack. "I was following his reactions ... it seemed to weep," Smith remembers.

Sam Presto was prepared in detail to draft Hardena. It has done a lot of homework. It was as long as Harden had filled up various types of tests and what did not, all in order to complete the dossier ... Oklahoma liked the fact that the attacking Harden could do anything.

If he needs to stand in the corner, he can. If he needs to translate the ball, he can do it. If he needs to play one by one or two on two, it's not a problem.

Harden needed Thunder to bring complete assault flexibility, as he did. Entering as the first reserve from the bench, Harden has passed the road from a stabbing spur from the ankle to the player who created the OKC attacks in the finals of the match to receive the best sixth player award. As Nick Collison said,

"You are surprised how many tricks you have in the attack and how much you have a natural feel to play."

Durant, Westbrook, Harden and Ibaka.

All are extraordinary in their own way, no one over 23 years at that time. A team that will likely win at least two NBA titles. The Nucleus that lets you out of this perspective make you feel when you think about what everyone can do. In reality, they played an NBA Finals where they were defeated and that was all. The sketch of leading people in Oklahoma is also out of this perspective unmanageable. All the stories about costly maintenance of such a team, the famous luxury taxi, drop into the water when you say just one word - the dynasty.

Oklahoma might have been the Sheriff of the West, the team through which all the way to the title goes ... now that story looks like a distant past.

In essence neither Harden did not help himself, playing probably his worst NBA partying career just against Miami in the final. Probably not even at its usual level, Oklahoma would not grab a wallet, but as if they were barely receptive to the story of how Harden is not a player for the maximum contract.



He did not mean the "dumbbell" from Houston Darryl Morey. He had Harden's Agent Rob Piggy promised the maximum contract and soon was agreed on the exchange of players in Oklahoma's journey to Martin, Jeremy Lamb and the choice of the draft that was later transformed into Steven Adams ...

Harden has been armed with a $ 80 million contract, a move to Rocket's celebrated in his favorite habitat - the Strip Club. Since joining Houston, "the beard" was armed with self-confidence and went quite aside as it did in Oklahoma.

Of the guy who talked about team and team victories, we came to James to declare himself to be the best player in the world, both he and Howard the game bearers, and everyone else in the "role players" team, and then pointed and Lotte Moteijunas with a statement that "Harden and Howard never eat with the rest of the team." His year-long vacation in defense during last season was a Youtube compilation.

Houston since joining Darryla Morey as a general manager trying to make the concept of the game form what advanced statistics say. Experiment with NBDL's Houston, Rio Grandeo, whose players simply silenced for three points and a free-throw racket, mostly ignoring a shot with poludistance, further convinced Morey that it was the best way to win them (the experiment was also brought by the players like Troy Danielsa, Isaiah Cananna, Roberto Covington who have developed into the right specialists of this kind of basketball