The Houston Rockets are currently third in the Western Conference and just three games behind the Denver Nuggets right now. With 32.1 PPG James Harden is having yet another crazy season and it looks like they will finally be able to get over the Golden State Warriors problem in the Playoffs this season (although the Christmas game says differently).
According to the reports that have been taking rounds around the league ever since the off season ahead of the season, it is believed that it was because of the fact that Harden did not like Chris Paul that he was traded for Russell Westbrook, a much closer friend of ‘The Beard’ and because the Rockets wanted to keep their star player happy.
The game against the Los Angeles Clippers was the perfect example of how Westbrook can takeover the game and explode for a 40-point night. We have seen this before. He did it for years with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
But you know what else we saw at OKC for years? Westbrook going overboard and screwing up the whole ball game for the team by taking horrible shots. He did it with Kevin Durant, he did it when he was the alpha wolf on the team and he has the potential of doing it with this new team of his.
And while everything seems to be going fine in H-Town right now, there continues to be a sense of nervousness in the air. Call it their ability to screw things up in postseason or overburdening Harden as the only option of scoring in clutch situations, but there exists an undertone of tension in Houston that their franchise will taste the dirt once again come April.
There is no doubt that Harden prefers Westbrook a 100 times over Paul but you know that sometimes, just sometimes, Harden wished that Westbrook could shoot from outside like Paul did.
Also, I am not overlooking the fact that Chris Paul is not all that different from Russell Westbrook. Both are hustlers who don’t back out from a fight and are all in under difficult situations but you’ve got to agree that when it comes to being crazy, the latter is in a class of his own. Oh and CP3 could shoot!
So if given the situation, would the Houston Rockets undo the Paul-Westbrook trade? I don’t know. But one this is for certain, the answer to that question is becoming more and more complicated as the season progresses.
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