http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/draft2009/columns/story?columnist=ford_chad&page=PreDraftTour-090515 Interesting that Brandon Roy now has his own label.
Well he was the best player in the 2006 draft, a recent one obviously and he has a solid future ahead of him as well.
hmm, I think he is a little more stocky than Brandon and little less athletic. He looked really "choppy" in his movements during the tourney, but he could end up being a good player.
I got to see him play down here at OSU. He is a very silent type player like Roy. He does a lot but it seems so quite, like at Blazers games I will look up in the 2nd/3rd quarters to see Roy has 20 points already, and I'm like when the shit did he score all of them?!?! Harden has that aspect to him. He can penetrate and knock down the 3. Now, I am not saying he is as good as Roy, just that kind of style.
I like Harden a lot. I don't think he's quite the playmaker and distributor that Roy is, but I wouldn't be shocked to see him have a very good career.
The only thing that could hurt him is he had trouble in the tournament, and that could drop his stock. Personally, I think he's top 3.
harden will be the best player to come out of this draft. roy is a good comparison to the way harden plays the game, but i don't expect harden to ever get to roy's level as a player. roy is a lot more smooth, while harden can get pretty choppy at times. he needs to work on polishing his dribble a little bit. if the draft order stays like it is right now, i'd expect him to go 4th or 5th and be a playmaking sg next to westbrook or foye.
Harden is 6'5" according to his college. Roy is a legit 6'6" according to the NBA. I'm guessing Harden measures at closer to 6'4", and he doesn't seem to have the length or leaping ability of Roy by my untrained eye.
6'5" in shoes, according to his trainer...as I was saying, and I notice his vertical isn't addressed. Flat out, the guy was shut down in the NCAA tournament. Why?
i like his game alot but his performance in the NCAA's is a little troubling. i also don't expect him to have the rookie season that roy had, as he is coming out as a sophomore and doesn't have a polished game like roy. i do expect him to have a nice career but doubt we'll be seeing him as a 2nd team all nba guy any time soon.
the main reason i posted that was because of his length. roy's wingspan is 6'8. harden's was talked about as being 6'11. clearly that would make harden longer than roy. and it was 6'5.5. there is a difference. though honestly, it doesn't matter. oh and why was he shut out in the tournament? because there was no one else on the team that could create their own shot.
Not only was he shut out in the tournament, also in the Pac-10 championship game, averaging just under 10 per each 3 games. All other 4 starters scored 20 in one of the two tournament games.
There will be no "next Brandon Roy". Nobody in the game today has Roy's combination of skills. That said, Harden plays a similar style to Roy's, but I doubt he ends up being an All-Star.
I would NOT call Roy a "silent player" or a "sneaky scorer". Anything but. He scores the majority of his points by abusing his man one on one in isolation sets. He's about as silent a scorer as Dwayne Wade or Michael Jordan.
I think "silent" is more in the sense that they arent (usually) above the rim, fancy dunks. There have been COUNTLESS times in his career where you wouldnt even have thought Roy took more than 10 shots, but you look up and by the time the game is over he has 27 points.
