Has to be Harden or Malone, off the top.
Has to be Harden or Malone, off the top.
Yeah Harden might take the cake. But one can argue he doesn’t choke. He just becomes outright disengaged and quits the tougher it gets.
First Team:
G: James Harden
G: Chris Paul
F: Kevin Garnett
F: Karl Malone
C: David Robinson
It hurt to include David, but if we're just counting the regular season, he's up there with Harden and KG as a top 10 player of all time. The drop off in his production in the playoffs was just too steep. The rest were obvious.
Because the way to stop the spurs was to collapse the paint vs the spurs when their perimeter players were Lloyd’s Daniels, Negele knight, Avery Johnson and Vinny del negro.
Notice how when it was rod strickland, a rookie Robinson didn’t choke.
As much as I love to talk about Malone's choking ass, no one touches Harden. I still can't believe he let himself get blown out at home in a closeout game against a Spurs team with Kawhi sitting out. That 39 point loss at home to end their season to Jonathan Simmons and Pau Gasol will never stop being funny.
It's easily James Harden. Notwithstanding Russell's RS fake news triple double scam, he still performed just as well in the playoffs (team cancer both ways). Harden has historically relied on his teammates in the post season, he gets that 1000 yard stare (must be about how far the club is from the stadium) all glassy eyed and giving up. The year JSmoove and JET dragged his broken ass to the WCF, he was like ing jelly. Then he gets raped at home by the Spurs bench in a closeout game, and again the following year and so on.. and as far back as the Thunder, Harden choked in the Finals. He's just not a player who does well in the post season. Perhaps he doesn't overcome defenses well, and teams in the RS don't play defense well.
He's not the first to choke in the playoffs, but he's by far the biggest delta in the playoffs vs RS. In the RS he's Michael Jordan. In the Playoffs he's De'Andre Jordan.
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