Can DeMar surpass Harden?

[white men can't jump]

True. But the talent is already there. Now he just needs to learn and become a better leader. Whether that's doable for harden is another topic of discussion. Whereas you can have all the great leadership qualities but lack the talent to really become something special.

And again, has DD really shown us he can make his teammates better? If that's the case, bargs and rudy gay would still be here. Okay, I admit that's a bit extreme, but what I mean is if we're talking about leadership and making people better on the raptors, I'd give that to Lowry.

And I myself said Lowry is the primary leader, but DeMar's impact is quieter. And you can tell when they interview guys like Jonas and Ross, and they talk about DeMar's hard work, how it lead to an all-star selection and he keeps getting better, so they want to follow that example. That is one side of being a leader on a team, and one where DeMar excels. That is an area where typical "assholes" like Jordan and Kobe also excelled, where their drive inspired teammates to try and be their best, which is one way to elevate your teammates.

DeMar has a lot more learning to do in terms of being vocal on the court. But even off the court, you can see from interviews and behind-the-scenes things like "Open gym" that he is growing there, including as a locker room leader. He did seem like the 2nd voice after Lowry. And again, though Lowry is the main leader, DeMar takes his share of responsibility, and perhaps more importantly, they follow each other's example, which goes back to it being hard to be a good leader if your teammates see that you don't follow the right example. Why would they feel inclined to if the best player(s) on the team don't?

*Just to add to this, it's also hard to gauge the impact DeMar has had on Lowry. While Masai and Casey have clearly helped Lowry mature, has DeMar's presence as a friend/brother type as well as high-quality player who'll fight with him on the court been a big factor in helping to smooth Lowry's rough edges? It may be.

But yeah, he can stand to improve in some intangibles on the court, as well as tangibles to help directly elevate his team/teammates. No one's saying that DeMar is a complete leader, but his progress in that area has felt steadily positive, while Harden's progression has been much less encouraging, at least to me, since he left OKC.

[Pong]

And I myself said Lowry is the primary leader, but DeMar's impact is quieter. And you can tell when they interview guys like Jonas and Ross, and they talk about DeMar's hard work, how it lead to an all-star selection and he keeps getting better, so they want to follow that example. That is one side of being a leader on a team, and one where DeMar excels. That is an area where typical "assholes" like Jordan and Kobe also excelled, where their drive inspired teammates to try and be their best, which is one way to elevate your teammates.

Yes, but does that really manifest itself onto the court performances of his team mates? Just because you're a hard worker it doesn't exactly make your teammates better when you're in game. And if you're talking about out of court, you can't say that Demar's 'leadership' is what's causing improvements in Jonas and Ross' game. They have their own motivation to become better players. It definitely helps to have someone set an example for hard work, but you can get that type of motivation from any veteran leader in your team.

Bottom line is it's already established that Harden is better than DD talent wise. Now we're left discussing the intangibles in what they bring which is extremely subjective. He has definitely come a long way and has improved his game year after year. But he's been a raptor for a long time, and aside from last year, I haven't exactly seen how he has made his team mates better. And last year's successes had much to do with Lowry and the Kings' squad. Remember those 'behind the doors' player meetings we had over the years when there were locker room issues?

Harden has only really had his 'leadership' role for 2 years as a rockets player. Whereas DD has been here years. And as someone has mentioned, in those 2 years harden was able to contribute to the team's win total.

And if we're simply talking about on court performance and overall team success, put harden in derozan's role on this team, and we'd win even more games than we have now.

[ezz_bee]

Not to take a ridiculously convoluted argument and make it more convoluted, but heck, let's do it!!! One thing we haven't addressed is how basketball IQ factors into how we think about talent & leadership.

Bill Russel has tons of stories about how he would manipulate Chamberlain when they played against each other, including let him score A LOT in the first half. He claims that he had the ability to goad him into being selfish/making bad plays. How much is Chamberlain's lack of comparable success was selfishness, or just lower b-ball IQ?

The point I'm making, is that if I'm choosing teammates, I usually prefer taking bball IQ over talent. In terms of Basket-ball IQ, I wouldn't say that either harder or demar has a particular advantage over the other. In a vacuum I'd take Harden over Demar. Although, there is no hypothetically vacuum, and what you'd do in the vacuum has little baring how a TEAM wins games.

Some other random points:

Talent/productivity/winning is not a zero sum game (especially with two teams in different conferences). The relative success of Harden or Demar has zero affect on the other players talent, and only a minuscule effect on relative the relative talent of the other player (because it is also relative to all the other players). Player rankings of positions are not a great way to measure or predict the success of your team. I don't really care if Demar is the best SG in the league. I care that we get to the Eastern Conference Finals and that is more a function of team than individuals.

Question? How much is Demar's new-found leadership a function of maturity, and how much of it is a result of playing with Kyle Lowry? Although Demar was called upon by the franchise to be a leader, he really didn't seem to manifest much leadership before Lowry's arrival. In my opinion I do not think it's possible to extrapolate Demar's "leadership" isolated from Lowry's influence (but maybe I'm selling him short). If you swapped Demar with Harden straight up, how much impact would Lowry/Toronto's team culture have on Harden, how much would Demar's leadership impact Howard and the Rockets? I would argue that the Raps already have enough established hard working players (JV/Amir/Lowry), that IF we traded Demar for Harden (not actually advocating that, just a hypothetical) I think we would see more of a defense focused Harden a la OKC. Again, this is a player who used to be pretty good at defense. And it is more a function of saving energy for offense (aka being lazy) and mental lapses (ball-watching/being lazy) that results in his non-existent defense. But in this case you are trying to parse an individual's leadership abilities from team culture, which is very tricky and also subjective. Even looking Lowry, how much of it is him maturing vs. being influence by Masai? Would we even see Lowry and Derozan as leaders if we didn't trade Gay in December, and the Raps went on to miss the playoffs? (If Coangelo would have stayed on as GM I think we can all agree that the Gay trade doesn't happen, AND maybe even the Bargs trade...).

We over-value "success/winning/championships" as a measure of a player's talent/ability. I am a HUGE Lowry homer, but I do think that with a different coach/GM/other teammates, it's entirely possible that the narrative that used to surround him (difficult teammate, hard to coach) would still be hanging over his head. If you never win, then you were always a bad leader, until you win, then you were always a good leader.

How many finals/WCFs appearances would T-Mac have had with a healthy Yao Ming? If T-Mac was on a team with Ben Wallace (Rodman comparison) and prime Andre Igoudala (Scottie Pippen equivalent?) with decent to above average role players, would that team have gotten to a conference finals or finals? How would that have affected our perception of T-Mac as a "winner". It's entirely possible that there is an alternative universe where Micheal Jordan never had decent teammates and never got the finals or won a championship. How much would his "leadership" be questioned in that alternative universe? Wouldn't the narrative be that he was too demanding of his teammates? That he wasn't able to elevate their games? And that's why he never won a championship?

Anyway, in terms of intangibles I always value "b-ball IQ" ahead of leadership. Although an individuals "leadership" is certainly important, it happens within the context of the organisation, which includes the coach and GM. Again, how do we
allocate the credit of leadership to Jordan vs. Jackson or Kobe vs. Jackson. Can we really separate these things out? I don't think so. That's why I favour looking at B-ball IQ. Does the player make good decisions or bad decisions? Bad decisions can be exploited in the playoffs by opponents.

Anyway, to answer the question of the OP, can Demar surpass Harden? Don't care, bring home the hardware.