How James Harden Failed To Win a Championship with the Houston Rockets

in summary:
1. James Harden failed big in a few crucial games
2. The Warriors

Harden wasn’t a disappointment. He was a bench player in OKC who got traded and single-handedly took a franchise from mediocrity to championship contention.

In summary:
2012-13: 8th seed and got knocked out by OKC (a surprise tho)
2013-14: Got beaten by an iconic Lillard 3 in Game 6 during the First Round
2014-15: Reached the WCF as a 2nd seed only to be knocked out by the Warriors
2015-16: Big turmoil and got McHale fired. Harden and Howard couldn't be on the same page and was knocked out by the Warriors
2016-17: D'Antoni basically made the offense a Harden show and made Harden himself point guard. Finished as a 3rd seed but got knocked out by the 2nd seeded Spurs
2017-18: Got CP3 and finished with 65 wins for the best record in the league. Reached the WCF but CP3 got injured and missed 27 threes consecutively to lose to the Warriors in 7. Harden won MVP
2018-19: CP3's performance declined and the Anthony experiment didn't help. Harden went nuclear to carry this team to a 4th seed. Lost to the Warriors in 6 even after they lost KD in Game 5.
2019-20: Traded CP3 for Westbrook which prompted the team to go completely small. Only reached the semis as the 4th seed and got eliminated by the Lakers.
2020-21: D'Antoni left, Westbrook got traded, and Harden would eventually follow suit, ending an 8 year stint with the team.

I’ve never seen a team challenge the KD
Warriors the way that the Harden/CP3 Rockets did. I remember watching the game when they went up 3-2 and it was amazing seeing the level of basketball that team played to get to that position. Say what you want about the Harden Rockets era but that team fought harder than any other team in the West at that time.

As a rockets fan it was disappointing never winning a ring with the Beard but would definitely not James Harden's time in H-Town a dissapointment by any means. With Harden we never truly had to worry about missing the playoffs and almost always got to watch a 50 win squad throughout his entire tenure. Yes the playoffs were a disappointment but there were great battles and it was usually exciting regardless.

I still feel bad for cp3 man. 2018 was supposed to be the year but bad luck struck again. Hope he still gets another chance at a ring before he retires

As a rockets fan, the harden years were absolutely not a disappointment at all. They were consistently championship contenders throughout his whole time here, fun to watch, and would have 1 ring at the absolute least if they didn’t happen to run into the greatest team ever constructed. (Also, the refs didn’t help in game 7, but thats a story for another day.) Overall, I’m happy i got to watch my favorite team play as good as they did for the last decade. A ring looks good on a Wikipedia page but the experiences are what really count.

I've been a Rockets fan since 2004. I'm not mad at Harden for leaving nor was I ever disappointed by what he did. I can confidently say that while Harden was here I was never concerned about missing the playoffs and I knew there was a realistic chance of winning it all every year no matter how small that chance was. Harden lost to the Warriors 4 out of 5 years and there's no shame in that. The Warriors were an all time great before KD and they became legendary with KD and even then the Harden led Rockets were the only team to push the post KD Warriors past 5 games until the Clippers lost to GSW in a Game 6. GSW was simply just a better team with more good players than Houston. I hate that we never won but Harden's time in Houston was no "failure" to me.

Can you do the rise and the fall of victor oladipo I think that would be an amazing video

Any “championship” team from 2015-2019 basically stalled if they even made it to the finals because of the warriors. Like the NBA paused for a few years.

The tale of James Harden and the Houston Rockets can be summarized with "27 consecutive missed 3's".

The Dwight Howard rockets were the most fun recent rockets, similar to how Embiid's first playing season was when the Sixers were the most fun (what I call the Stauskas era), and the 2018 hospital Celtics were the most fun. Tons of energy, boundless potential, but not actually threatening yet lol

Obviously the Thunder were dumb to trade harden, but people are sleep to the fact that Kevin Martin was really good for them for a couple years. The trade wasn't just for Jeremy Lamb and picks, that is a massive understatement because the purpose of the trade was to get Martin, a young wing in Lamb, and picks, one of which was Steven Adams.

As a rockets fan ...this hurts but looking forward to our future with our new youngsters.

Despite his shortcomings in the playoffs.. Huston Harden was fun as hell to watch.. especially playing with him on 2k 15-2k18 dude was unstoppable and the teams were fun as well to play with.

James Harden certainly did not play poor against the warriors in 2019, he played even better than the 2018 series. Him and Durant led the league in scoring in the post season of 2019

Video series suggestion: a Year in Review for every NBA season over the last 10 yrs. Each year gets its own review. So, it would cover the big moments (& some of the small ones) in each season, kinda like how a TV show gives recaps before the start of a new season.

The Warriors finished game 6 of the 2018 WCF on a 93-47 run over the last 3 quarters and held Houston to 25 in the second HALF.

For Rockets fans it still hurts to this day. That 2017-18 season I’m convinced we woulda won it all had CP3 stayed healthy. The local sports radio was depressing after the loss

As a rockets fan this brings tears of joy and sadness