James Harden, Rockets Left with No Way Out of Mess They Both Created
James Harden is finally back in Houston. He made his preseason debut Tuesday night, broke his media silence Wednesday afternoon and, at least for now, appears ready to show up to work until the Rockets can give him the trade he's made no secret of wanting.
Harden told reporters on a Wednesday Zoom call that he was "just training" for the start of the season during his week-long holdout, which included plenty of not-well-hidden video of the eight-time All-Star at clubs in Atlanta and Las Vegas with rapper Lil Baby, partying without a mask on. He praised new head coach Stephen Silas' communication during camp but said he's yet to have a conversation with new general manager Rafael Stone.
Harden's comments came on the heels of a report from ESPN's Tim MacMahon that detailed the many ways in which the Rockets organization has bent over backward to placate him in his eight years with the organization: allowing him to dictate the practice schedule, staying extra nights in his favorite cities on road trips and making massive trades (like last summer's Chris Paul-for-Russell Westbrook swap) at his behest.
Now, he wants out, and it's clear that isn't going to happen on his timeline. Maybe it happens in the next week before the start of the season. Maybe it drags out until the trade deadline—or even into next offseason.
Until then, they must coexist. Somewhere along the way, after blatantly violating the NBA's COVID-19 protocols, ghosting his coach and making his teammates answer for his obvious desire to play elsewhere, he realized he wasn't helping his desire to be moved by not coming to work.
Actually trading Harden gets tricky. The Rockets are right to hold out for an overwhelming offer, and teams are right to be hesitant.
What Houston is reportedly asking for—a young player with legitimate star potential and a lot of draft picks—is what it should cost to trade for a player who's led the league in scoring each of the past three years, has only missed 10 games in a season once in his career, has finished in the top three of MVP voting five of the last six seasons (he won in 2017-18) and virtually guarantees any team he's on will be in playoff contention.
On paper, this is a player you give up everything to get. Even his enormous contract shouldn't be a dealbreaker because Harden is worth it.
But Harden isn't the kind of star any team can just plug in. Your entire offense has to be rebuilt in his image, and so too, apparently, does the day-to-day existence of your organization.
The list of teams that can both offer what Houston is looking for and be prepared to completely alter how they play to accommodate him is small—if such a team exists at all. And even if he ends up somewhere he likes, like the Brooklyn Nets or Philadelphia 76ers, what's to suggest he won't just demand out again in a year and restart this entire saga?
As good as Harden is, signing up for all this is a risk not many teams will be willing to take.
Give Harden this: It's tough to blame him for looking at the state of the Rockets over the last three years, since Tilman Fertitta bought the team from Leslie Alexander in September 2017, and deciding Houston was no longer the place to be even if he had a significant role in making things the way they are.
Following Harden's MVP season in 2017-18, in which the Rockets had the best record in the NBA and took the Warriors to seven games in the Western Conference Finals, the franchise made a series of cost-cutting moves to duck the luxury tax, letting go of several key role players from the best team of the Harden era. A year later, they dealt Paul and several future draft picks to the Oklahoma City Thunder for Westbrook.
It was a trade Harden pushed hard for but one that has left the Rockets' on-court future almost as thoroughly leveraged as their owner's finances.
The COVID-19 pandemic hit Fertitta's restaurant and casino empire especially hard, and in April, he was forced to take out a $300 million loan at an astronomical 13 percent interest rate to keep his businesses afloat. A month later, during a televised meeting with President Donald Trump, he made jokes about needing a government bailout to pay the $40 million salaries of Harden and Westbrook.
The Rockets lost to the Los Angeles Lakers during the second round of the playoffs in this summer's bubble. The next day, head coach Mike D'Antoni, the man who fully unlocked Harden as an all-time scorer, bailed over a contract dispute.
Mere weeks later, general manager Daryl Morey, who traded for Harden in 2012 and was responsible for building several different contenders around him, followed D'Antoni out the door, later taking a job running basketball operations for the Sixers.
With Morey and D'Antoni gone and not much on or off the court to suggest the franchise is headed in the right direction, Harden wanting out is a completely reasonable position. Where he lost people was his decision to ignore the NBA's safety measures, putting himself and the team at risk seemingly just to prove a point about his desire to be traded.
If the league had suspended him, it would have been hard to argue he didn't deserve it.
Harden now returns to a Rockets team in a period of transition. Morey was replaced by a first-time general manager in Stone, and D'Antoni was replaced by a first-time head coach in Silas. Harden reportedly wanted Tyronn Lue to be the Rockets' next coach, not realizing there's no universe in which Los Angeles Clippers governor Steve Ballmer would lose a bidding war to Fertitta.
Silas, a universally respected NBA lifer who put in almost 20 years as an assistant to finally earn an opportunity to coach his own team, has had to answer for Harden's absence since the day he took the job. Hopefully, Harden gives him a chance for as long as he's still a Rocket.
There's not going to be an easy answer for any of this. With no obvious trade currently on the table, both Harden and the Rockets will have to delay their inevitable divorce. If John Wall, acquired in an offseason trade that sent Westbrook to the Washington Wizards, looks even half as explosive as he has in the preseason coming off a two-year Achilles rehab, the Rockets might even be pretty good.
That probably won't be enough to convince Harden to remain with a franchise in disarray, much of which can be traced directly back to him.
