Podcap: Houston 117, Cleveland 112 (or, “The Golden Turd”)
2017-03-13Have you ever encountered someone that drives you absolutely nuts? Someone so talented and advantaged, yet they still do annoying little things constantly to diminish their greatness? Such is James Harden and his penchant for over-exaggerating every single foul and reacting like he’d been shot on each contact. Since we can’t call him what we’d like to call him, we’ve dubbed him, the Golden Turd. That’s his NBA award for being the league’s biggest actor and fraud.
Cleveland lost a tough one in Houston Sunday night as James “The Golden Turd” Harden laid 38 on the Cavs, along with 10 boards and 11 assists. Cleveland played tough till the third, when a big Houston run saw the Cavs’ lose the quarter 32-19. Cleveland briefly held leads in the fourth at around the six minute mark, but the Cavs had no answer for Harden and Nene late, and LeBron finished the game 1-9 after starting 11-13.
The telling stat was Tristan Thompson’s -23 and James Harden’s +23 in their time on the floor. Thompson was routinely asked to guard Harden on switches, and routinely forgot that Harden was left handed. The TT drum was beatrn to the basket time and again. Thompson finished with eight points and eight rebounds.
Richard Jefferson had a perfect 6-6 first half to notch 16 points with several defensive stops, and then failed to get a shot in the second half, which was, as EG and I noted on the pod, unacceptable.
Houston killed Cleveland on the boards to the tune of 52-38, and an amazing 20 offensive rebounds, which allowed them to take 16 more shots than the Cavs. The Rockets only turned the ball over six times to Cleveland’s 15. They also got the majority of the whistles. Cleveland shot 13 free throws to Houston’s 28.
Kyrie dropped 28 and eight, but he and LeBron’s misses and turnovers late fueled Houston’s closeout.
Nate Smith, Mitch Suchan, and EvilGenius discussed his Turdness, how the NBA can’t allow him to be MVP, the Cavs’ rebounding woes, the inability to get stops, the madness of NBA scheduling, Larry Sanders, NBA officiating and the free pass some guys get (we’re looking at you Harden and Nene). We also bantered over Lue’s coaching brain farts, J.R. and www.pleasestopdribblingshump.com, LeBron’s gas tank, the Eastern Conference playoff race, Kyrie Irving’s defense, and so much more.
You can check us out above, on iTunes, on the Allmighty Baller Podcast Network, and making it’s triumphant return, Google play.
I was so fired up about the Sanders signing and then they reported he is going to the D-league. ???
Guess it makes sense – hoping we can get him for the playoffs of course but awful march is going to continue to be bigly bad. Just terrible. Watergate bad.
60 million people, man…..
Haven’t read this anywhere. Where did you see?
I don’t have a link, unfortunately, but I read that they plan to have him practice with Cavs and play in D league until playoffs. Hard for me to imagine him playing much in playoffs. So more minutes for TT, who clearly looks tired…
Reported here https://twitter.com/daldridgetnt/status/841312808784580609
This is ridiculous. What’s the point then? We need minute relief NOW not in the playoffs when he likely won’t get any minutes…
Exactly. Unless they have plans of signing another big later which I highly doubt or KLove is soon to come back from his injury which I doubt too.
I think people forget that the Cavs nearly got beat 4-1 on last year finals. They didn’t dominated GS to their championship. Sure they will cruise against the East, but all the talks about them turning it up when playoff comes is nonsense. All their wins against good teams have been closed games while the loses are blowouts. It’s March already and they’re playing pathetically.
This is true, but game 4 was very winnable so it could have been 2-2 heading back also. I see your point but still, it wasnt all chance and circumstance we righted the ship after the first 2 games we changed our strategy and outplayed the warriors.
We dominated the east playoffs last two years and almost won back to back titles.
LOL…that is a huge ‘almost’…but you always go huge…
The loss last night is a shrug. The Cavs battled and played hard but fella bit short on a night where the refs put the Rockets on the line constantly and they got out rebounded. Put Love on last night’s Cavs and they win by 15-20 points. There was a ton to like about last night.
I really don’t expect Sanders to do much. He hasn’t played in forever.
I think Kyrie really wants to have an All NBA citation and push his brand. Nothing wrong with that except he is going about it the wrong way. The big guy who shoots too much, does not pass enough and play awful defense. Lots of guys are unaware that Kyrie’s 19.9 FGA is 4th in the league in the league, behind only lone wolf Westbrook’s 24, and nearly on on par with De Rozen’s 21 and Davis’ 20. Kyrie’s averaging more than 21 FGA for the months of January, Feb and March. He probably leads the lead in no-pass possession… Read more »
Well said.
And waiting for the Colsbot response…but yeah he has a Kobe mentality, minus any semblance, besides one or two plays a night, of defense.
Well the Cavs once had two Mamba disciples together- Kyrie And Dion. All they did was rule the throne of Cleveland Hoops wasteland
At the same time I think that mentality and confidence is why he is willing to take and makes so many big shots at the end of games. So it is kind of a tradeoff. The hero ball can back fire, but I more have, and likely always will have serious issues with his defensive effort and lack of focus. I think it is the only thing that separates him from MVP candidacy.
Defense and playmaking. The Cavs’ offense is humming whenever Kyrie gets at least 10 assists. Don’t know why Kyrie deviates so much from that winning recipe.
Yeah, he’s a crappy Kobe without the size or D, basically. And I don’t think Kobe was all that good.
Kyrie is the least of this team’s issues. He had a couple few bad moments like the rebounding last night, but that kinda stuff usually doesn’t happen to him. His positives far out way the negatives Mr. P. I also think Kyrie does not get a lot of calls going to the basket compared to a lot of others at his position. For what reason, I’m not sure.
Sorry to disagree. When you are a supposed future MVP point guard who takes so much shots, passes only on bailouts, consistently play terrible defense, gets your teammates out of rhythm, could not hold on a lead with LeBron resting, then you are probably the biggest issue. It bothers me really, to note that Kyrie is just INNATELY, habitually INDOLENT on defense even in big, critical moments. Go back to the iconic LeBron block on Iguodala in Game 7. After Kyrie got stuffed, everyone scrambled to get back on defense except one-Kyrie. The supposedly knucklehead Jr Smith was the first… Read more »
I think he gets fewer calls because he finishes so well with contact and actually seeks it out compared to guys like Curry. Unfortunate, but I think that could be a subconscious factor with the refs.
Shump was complete garbage all night. He couldn’t stay in front of anyone and his inability to hit 3s/fear of them now is hurting the spacing.
Wish we’d run an offense in the 4th quarter
This has happened all year. Teams switch on defense and bait the Cavs into attacking mismatches.
The Cavs regularly forget about guys who are absolutely on fire. Kevin Love hardly touches the ball after the first quarter. It happens all the timmmmme. We just stop going to a person who completely lit it up.
Nate, uncharacteristically you have a few grammar errors in this article and the Sanders’ one. I’ll blame them on Cols lol.
EG cleaned em up. Thanks for the heads up.
Yay podcast! Nice summary too Nate. But: did you ask permission to use “fraud” to describe non-GSW players?
We should get a ruling from the Office of the Cols on the propriety of the expanded use of “Fraud” (or, as NOMAD would say, FRAUD).