by David Zizmor

The Houston Rockets have James Harden and he gets some help from Dwight Howard whose been injured for most of the year and they lost a couple other good players to injuries in various stretches of the season. Harden has done a lot for the Rockets in helping them achieve their success so far and that’s the main reason why some folks argue that Harden should be the MVP instead of the Warriors Stephen Curry. For a good portion of the season Harden was by himself because Howard was out hurt.

I don’t agree with them but it’s a fair case to make, Harden is a fantastic basketball player and at times is unguardable as we’ve seen in this series. If you watch that game on Thursday in the fourth quarter when Harden really got going it was nothing you could do about it. The Warriors Klay Thompson and Harrison Barnes had great coverage on Harden.

Thompson and Barnes provided good strong defense and they forced Harden to take some really difficult shots but he was hitting every single one of them. Guys that are as good as Harden go through periods like that where no matter what you do and no matter how strong your defense it’s never going to be enough.

Curry is the same way and Thompson can be the same way, Thompson scored 37 points in a quarter because of one those hot streaks, we’ve seen it plenty of times in Oakland where a Warriors player gets on fire you can’t stop them no matter what you try to do. Harden is that guy from the Rockets there’s not a lot of those guys in the league.

The Warriors are unfortunately playing several of them in this post season, like the New Orleans Pelicans Anthony Davis, the Memphis Grizzlies have some offensive players Marcus Gasol and Zach Randolph, and with this Rockets team Harden is as tough as they come before Golden State has to possibly face the Cleveland Cavaliers and LeBron.

David Zizmor does Golden State Warriors commentary each week at http://www.sportsradioservice.com listen to the podcast below