Why should we expect a guy who has demanded trades at his last three stops to be content now?
No.
Just, no.
The Clippers are going to regret this.
James Harden got his wish. And doesn’t that sentence sound familiar, and aren’t the chances good that it’s going to sound hollow within a couple of months?
Harden has talked his way into leaving a team for the third time in four seasons. He was happy in Houston, and then he wasn’t, and he basically ate his way out of town and into the arms of the Brooklyn Nets.
There, he was supposed to be the third star with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, and we all know how that ended up. By the time Harden was traded to Philadelphia in February of 2022 – basically a swap of disgruntled players, with Ben Simmons going from Philly to Flatbush and a bunch of throw-ins and draft picks thrown in – the Nets dynasty as it had once been envisioned was a smoking ruin.
Harden was happy in Philly, too, for a while, signing a two-year deal with the Sixers in July of ’22 with a player option for the second year. And then he wasn’t. After averaging 21 points and a league-high 10.7 assists in just 58 games last season but not getting the long-term contract he sought – when he was about to turn 34, remember – Harden picked up the option for the second year of the current deal (at $35.64 million) toward the end of June and then demanded a trade, again, this time specifically to the Clippers.
This was a demand that came with the requisite degree of acting out. Harden called Sixers’ general manager Daryl Morey a liar during a promotional trip to China and said he no longer trusted him, for which he got fined by the league. He skipped Media Day and sat out a week of training camp, and ultimately was a partial practice participant while the team waited for an offer it could live with, with no leverage to speak of.
It took four months to complete before the final terms were hashed out Monday, and give Clippers president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank credit for standing firm, at least. The Clippers got Harden and didn’t have to give up Terance Mann. They did give up four players – role-players, essentially – plus two first-round picks, two second-round picks and a pick swap.
