Harden is the best shooting guard in the league. Nobody had to carry the lack of talent he had this year to a 7 seed when they were expected to be a bottom 2 seed before they acquired him. He also shoots a much higher TS% and is 4th in the league in win shares.

1. Harden
2. Wade
3. Kobe

And this is coming from an unbiased and objective fan/analyst

This is going to be quite amusing.

Wait for it......

"And this is coming from an unbiased and objective fan/analyst"

Love it.

Anon 416646....the question is who is the better SG at the moment. Therefore, we should only be comparing players on their last 1 maybe 2 years.

Based on that, Kobe has more talent on his team than Harden, as does Wade.

I think currently, Harden has had the better year of all 3....if you want to judge who is the better SG of the 3 then you would have to wait until they have all finished their careers but yes, you would predict Kobe to be atop that list at such time.

Lamar Odom from 04-07 was better than any player the rockets had this season to support Harden and that is not debatable

No, Kobe did not carry the lakers to a higher seed than the rockets. They were the 8th seed when Kobe got injured, and were able to overtake the rockets on the final game of the season when Gasol+Howard carried them.

What were the rockets record when Harden didn't play? the lakers were 4-1 without Kobe.

.800 without Kobe. Oh my.

LOL @ saying Parsons > Odom from 04-07. You're trolling, right? Ypu bring up his points and % but fail to mention Odom's strengths in his rebohnding, defense, passing and versatility. I didn't mention after 07 as they acquired Gasol, which simultaneously catapulted them to the #1 seed that year. Coincidence? What happened this year when Gasol want down? THEY LOST. What happened went Kobe went down? THEY WENT 4-1.

Harden outplayed Kobe this year and it isn't debatable. Notice how all the kobetards use baby statistics because Kobe doesn't have the edge in any meaningful advanced statistic.

Only a true Kobe homer could turn a wade/Harden topic (the 2 best SG's in the league) into a Kobe debate. Pitiful

Thinking it is Harden at the moment; Wade has had a few too many injuries the last couple of years. I don't think Kobe is at that level anymore, yes he played great this year but he had enough talent this year to get his team better than a 7 seed.

No they went 2-1 early in the season, then 2-0 in the last 2 games of the seasons. .800 without kobe, that is far above .500.

This is why I don't like talking to kobetards. No matter what you say to them, you cannot educate dumb people. Once dumb, always dumb.

Do not disrespect Magic Johnson like that

Harden had a fantastic year. Kobe also had a fantastic year. I think Kobe gets the nod here. He played some really well-rounded ball and had his most efficient offensive output in years.

If you compare Kobe from LAST YEAR with Harden from THIS YEAR, Harden gets it. But Kobe came out of nowhere to string together a great campaign.

You cannot say the lakers finished 4-5 when you include the playoffs as that is using a different sample from when we're comparing the lakers with and without Kobe. You're stretching. 4-1 in reg season without Kobe. 41-36 without. I'm comparing apples to apples. You're comparing apples to oranges.

Find me a comment where I said "curry isn't the best player on the warriors". I reckon I said its DEBATABLE or he isn't clearly the best player on his team like chris Paul is to the clippers. This was also around the time when his teammate made the ASG over him. Since then, his game has elevated and it has become clear he is the best player on the warriors. Also seems to have become the second best guard in the pacific division

Wrong.

1. Chris Paul
2. Steph Curry

Find me where I said the lakers would miss the playoffs. Find me where I said "rockets will finish 7th"

And your reading comprehension must be low when I wrote "around the time his teammate made the ASG" aka when he was selected.

You're the one discounting games. You're using a completely different sample to me. I'm including the reg season aka when both samples can be evaluated. If you want to include the playoffs, then you have to compare it to the lakers record WITH Kobe against playoff teams in the reg season. How many times has a team had a better record in the places than regular season? Not many

I think the fact that the Lakers sucked this year didn't have much to do with Kobe. He was playing pretty efficiently by any metric. They just sucked. With him or without him.

They were 4-1 in the reg season without him.
Wins v Pacers, Sacramento, Rockets, Spurs
Loss v Phoenix

Small sample size, doesn't mean a whole lot. You can't really glean meaningful out of a season like that. Everyone was just on a completely different page, on top of the injuries and effort problems, and they had a god-awful coach on top of all of that.

You could write a thesis on how bad this Lakers team was and how far they under-achieved before you even got to a chapter on Kobe's involvement in the mess.

The thing I would criticise him for is the intangible notion of failing to get this team to play together properly and doing the coaching that Mike D'Antoni is not capable of, but his individual output on the court was pretty damn good this season, especially when you factor in his age and his past couple seasons of inefficiency. Shot the ball at a great clip and took on the facilitator role for large stretches of the season.

What happened the first year Kobe was top dog when Shaq left? Missed playoffs lol (in his prime)

Exactly Ingles which is why you are barking up the wrong tree by bagging this year's effort by Kobe. If you were making the same arguments a year ago I'd be agreeing with you but you can't deny that he was an efficient all-round offensive player this season.

His defense, on the other hand, fell in a big way.

Harden , wades been resting up.

Offensively the Lakers were good because Kobe was playing good offense.

Defense was the problem though and unless you are a superstar rim defender, you can't make an amazing amount of difference on that side of the ball. Ingles, you can't expect Kobe to play defence for four other guys.

"Proven wrong"

Got to love the terrible anonymous trolls on this forum. I laugh multiple times when I see the crap they write.

If you want to call yourself an analyst, Ingles, you need to prove it aye.

You've shown nothing.