Can the Rockets build the MVP combination of Harden and Wei Shao win the championship? A lot of people are looking down on it because Harden and Wei Shao both need a lot of ball possession. However, in the history of the NBA, there have been two major cases of defenders joining forces to win the championship, that is, Fraser and Earl Monroe, who led the Knicks to the championship in 1973. Espn celebrity Mike Greenberg specifically said on the show that Harden and Wei Shao's goal was the New York double star of the year.
"Those two stars (Fraser and Monroe) joined forces and everybody was saying they couldn't be in tune, they all needed to control the ball, but they found a way to form a tacit understanding, they sacrificed for each other and won the championship in 1973, that's what Harden and Westbrook needed to do." Greenberg said so.
Let's take a look at what really happened that year. Walter Fraser and Earl Monroe were both superstars of the 1970s, making them one of the NBA's 50 biggest stars in 1996. Fraser entered the NBA in 1967 to start his career for the Knicks, helping the team win the first championship trophy in team history in 1970.
In the 1971–72 season, the Knicks brought in Earl Monroe on a trade. Monroe was already an All-Star guard at the time and was named to the regular season First Team in 1969. Fraser was named to the regular season First Team in 1970.
The combination of the defenders of the two first teams caused a huge sensation that year, and countless people questioned whether they could succeed. The Knicks are making a big gamble because the power of the team's interior core Willis Reed has been greatly reduced after a serious injury, and the Knicks must change if they want to win the championship again.
Known as the "Rolls-Royce backcourt," Fraser + Monroe was the league's most luxurious backcourt combination that year. They broke people's doubts, and the cooperation between the two was very tacit. In the 1972–73 season, Fraser and Monroe teamed up to help the Knicks win the 4-1 Victory over the Lakers in the Finals.
As Espn's famous Greenberg has argued, the success of Fraser and Monroe's cooperation lies in a willingness to make sacrifices. Monroe's sacrifice was enormous, averaging 20+ points per game for the Bullets, dropping to less than 20 points per game in the Knicks, including 15.5 points per game in 1972-73. Later, with some Knicks players leaving, Monroe's average of points per game returned to 20+ per game.
Harden and Wei Shao are mvp combinations, more luxurious than Fraser + Monroe at that time, and because of this, it is more difficult to make sacrifices among them. But for them to succeed, they have to make sacrifices, they all need to play more on no-ball offense, they need to be more involved in defense.
Rockets coach D'Antoni is full of confidence in the Harden and Weinson combination, saying that he will study how Harden and Wei Shao played when they were in the Thunder. "What we have to do is maximize the talents of both of them. I'll go research, go to the footage, find out the chemistry between them, see how they play together when the Thunder are, and how they performed during the Olympics. ”
In 2012, as an assistant coach, he accompanied the US men's basketball team to the London Olympic Games, when Harden and Wei Shao were in the lineup. De Shuai is convinced that the combination of Harden and Wei Shao will work.