NBA Trade Rumors: Latest Buzz on James Harden Surrounding 76ers, Nets

If James Harden is in any way uncomfortable, there's no sign of it on the basketball court.

The Houston Rockets superstar is only three games into the 2020-21 NBA regular season, but he's already proving that he's still a bucket. After leading the league in scoring last year with 34.3 points per game, he's on top again with 37.0 points per outing.

And that's in spite of the fact that he showed up to training camp late and demanded a trade.

Not to mention that everything has changed within the Rockets organization: new general manager, new head coach, new system and new teammates.

None of that, however, is keeping Harden from playing at an MVP level and that's why he's still a coveted asset on the trade market.

But as the season goes on, it may be harder and harder for him to be dealt to one of his preferred destinations.

In fact, the Philadelphia 76ers are further away from trading for Harden than they were two weeks ago, according to ESPN's Brian Windhorst on The Jump:

"The Sixers have the player ... that's probably the best deal that they can make right now, which is Ben Simmons It's just a matter of constructing it in a way that satisfies both teams. If they really drill down, they could probably get a deal done within a day or two, but neither one is interested in doing that right now.

"The real question to me is: Is there another team out there? Because we have a bunch of teams kind of packed together in the middle that tries to jump up and make an offer for Harden before Philadelphia comes to a final analysis in its mind. And right now, at 3-1, and [Joel] Embiid and Simmons playing like this, I would say they're farther away from a Harden trade than they were two weeks ago."

Last month, Bleacher Report's Yaron Weitzman revealed that Houston's asking price for Harden was three first-round picks in addition to Simmons.

Thus far, the Sixers haven't been willing to include the 2019-20 All-Defensive first-team selection in any trade proposals.

Philly is 5-1 overall and has the best record in the Eastern Conference. With the team jelling on both ends of the floor, right now might be the wrong time to shake things up.

For his part, Simmons is taking the trade rumors in stride, choosing to focus on winning. The 24-year-old told reporters:

"I come in every day, take it a day at a time, ready to work. Every time I got a Sixers uniform on, I'm representing the Sixers. My mentality never changes. I'm here to win a championship. That goal is never going to change. I know things are always going to be said in the media, and rumors and things like that, but my goal is to come in every day and get better and help the team that I'm on win a championship."

Embiid, who is averaging 25.0 points, 12.6 rebounds, 2.8 assists and 1.4 blocks per game, agrees. The 26-year-old said:

"We're focused on how we can get better as a team. We got a great opportunity to go out and compete for the whole thing and that's what we're focused on. All the outside noise, you can't control it. You got to control whatever you can. We want to win the whole thing and that's what we intend to and we're pushing ourselves to do so."

With a possible Sixers trade on the ropes, it looks like a deal with the Brooklyn Nets might be on its way out, too.

According to The Ringer's Bill Simmons, Brooklyn's interest in Harden has waned since Nets assistant coach Mike D'Antoni, his former head coach in Houston, suggested that the team already had enough on its current roster to compete for a championship.

"I heard that Brooklyn cooled off on Harden and one reason was D'Antoni. He was kinda like 'we're good, let's keep what we have here.' I think he [Harden] presents some problems,'" Simmons said on The Bill Simmons Podcast via Lee Tran of Fadeaway World.

The Nets might have to pivot on that thinking because of two things: their current 3-3 record and the loss of Spencer Dinwiddie for the season because of a partially torn ACL.

Without Dinwiddle, Brooklyn doesn't look as formidable as they did to start the season. Kyrie Irving told reporters:

"Losing Spencer was a big, big blow for us. Huge, huge blow. Even after the game, just realizing that a lot of the ball-handling duties, a lot of things that I was relying on to have Spence out there in the lineup, we don't necessarily have for a while. We obviously wish him well as a team and we want him to get healthy to be ready for whatever comes next in this journey. Just little things like that we're going to miss in Spence.

"Everyone likes to say this phrase 'Next Man Up Mentality,' but it's hard to do that when we started off kind of the last few months together. And we've played together a certain type of style, and then we have one of our pieces go down. It's the tale of the business. Guys get hurt all the time. We have to figure [out] some things that work for the group that we put out there."

Even though the Nets are a man down, they still may put the Harden trade in a holding pattern to see how they fare for the next month or so.

If things don't change before the March 25 trade deadline, they may try to make a deal after all—if Philly doesn't beat them to the punch.

Maurice Bobb covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow Maurice on Twitter, @ReeseReport.