Yeah, they can have their 3rd option, and let us have a true super star in the making. How can a team have too many super stars? The winner is clear. Harden is special. Hand him the key, makes a historical debut and career night in the first two games. That's quality. He has a blend of skills and aggressiveness. Dare I to say, DWade of 5 years ago.
Not really. OKC is in a win NOW mode, so the prospects aren't as useful to them at this stage as they show on paper. For the Rockets however, we might just have found our ever-elusive superstar in JHarden!
OKC doesn't seem to be skipping a beat with Martin filling in for Harden. At least, for now, when the pressure isn't up yet. And they have Lamb and picks ahead. Everybody won. OKC wouldn't have been able to keep Harden. We had a surplus of assets. The trade made us better while OKC managed to save up.
Let's be thankful that he was coming off the bench for the Thunder where his true potential was not realized or we wouldn't have had any shot at him.
It is purely highway robbery. Yes, OKC had to trade him for salary reason. But if the league really know how good he truly is, OKC would had get heck a lot more for him. We wouldn't had any chance of getting him at all. Oh, ya, we stole Harden.
That's only true if you compare total points (not including minor categories like FT% and TO) only. All the other categories, game over.
Best trade of the decade. Morey has been doing an excellent job to build this team even though it is not a finished product yet. I have the feeling that we will have another big trade before the end of this regular season.
IMO, people are overblowing the monetary aspect of the trade. There are some other factors that also come into consideration before you just say OKC didn't have the money. 1. OKC gave Perkins $40mil/5yr contract. That was obviously a "win now" contract, as everyone knew it would come bite them in the ass when Ibaka/Harden get their extensions. Ironically, people are now praising Presti for "looking at long term," when it was his win-now attitude that caused the problem in the first place. 2. OKC gave Ibaka the huge contract and Harden the boot. They had a choice. They could've kept Harden and traded Ibaka for a pretty hefty ransom too. Ibaka's trade value would've at least come close to Harden's, if not just as much. 3. OKC chose Westbrook as their superstar guard over Harden. In fact, they must've valued Westbrook much higher than Harden, because Westbrook certainly had much better trade value. Do you think we'd have gotten Westbrook with KMart, Lamb, and Toronto's 1st? No chance in Hell. In the end, OKC had very reasonable options to keep Harden. Presti chose to let Harden go instead of these other options. The whole poor OKC didn't have the money angle is just flat out wrong. They had the money. They simply chose not to give it to Harden. And as a Rockets fan I am so thankful for that.
I clicked your link and had to read what OKC fans had to say about their former player, and you are right. Most of them are trying to justify it all by saying he's reached his ceiling and other garbage like that. 37 pts and 45pts sounds to me like he's trying to bust through that ceiling though. They seem so lost right now in OKC and that's sad because they're still gonna be good but their fans are too uneducated to understand that.
They got KD. They got their star and I don't understand why they thought RWB was a better player but I'm glad they did. Westbrook traded here would have been Francis 2.0 and that never worked out for us except in sucking bad enough to get Yao with the first pick in '02. Harden is the best thing to happen to this team since T-Mac was healthy and Yao had no broken bones.
When you wake up in the middle of the night see your tv floating? Spoiler Spoiler nothing because that negro was a white man all along
