Originally Posted by
Pelicanidae
I feel like this is unnecessarily harsh to NAW. He was excellent through the first 2 games this year, very good overall in pre-season, and very good at the end of last year as well. The fact that he occasionally has a bad shooting night isn't particularly noteworthy: it would be more shocking if he never had them.
You say that we have to wait for consistency before we can ''start comparing players to Harden'': last season Harden shot under 40% from the floor in 10 games - he only played in 44. Nearly a quarter of his games featured him shooting 5 of 17 or 7 of 24 from the floor. And he shot below 36% (that is, below league average) from 3 in 21 games: there was a damn near 50% chance of Harden coming out on any given night and going 3/11 from deep or 1/8.
It's one thing if NAW goes back to having more bad games than good, but can be pump the brakes a little bit on bagging on him for shooting badly in one game so far this year?