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[The Athletic] Why James Harden and the Rockets are on the verge of a divorce

Discussion in 'Houston Rockets: Game Action & Roster Moves' started by Reeko, Nov 17, 2020.

  1. Reeko

    Reeko Member

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    To understand why the rapidly deteriorating situation between the Houston Rockets and James Harden is confusing and simple at the same time, you must go back to its origins.

    A bit of revisionist history tells us that the fruitful, eight-year relationship between Harden and the Rockets was born out of circumstance.

    Back in 2012, the Oklahoma City Thunder — fresh off an NBA Finals appearance and armed with a bevy of young and bustling talent — was faced with a decision that would later go down in franchise history as one of the greatest ‘what ifs.’ Russell Westbrook had signed a five-year, $80 million max extension, although he was actually eligible for a supermax contract. His fellow superstar Kevin Durant was already on the books, having famously taken himself out of potential free agency to sign a five-year extension of his own in 2010 – which meant two of OKC’s quartet of talented young guns had their futures committed to the franchise’s.

    Only two situations were yet to be finalized; Serge Ibaka’s and Harden’s. In 2012, both players were soon set to hit restricted free agency.

    General Manager Sam Presti had a decision to make. He negotiated with Harden’s camp on a new deal, but was hamstrung by ownership’s insistence at the time that the Thunder not be a luxury tax payer. (Ironically, OKC would become just that in subsequent seasons, without Harden on its roster, as the Thunder continued building around Durant and Westbrook.) When Presti could only go so far and no further with Harden, it forced Harden’s hand to find a better situation elsewhere — which he did, with the help of Daryl Morey and the Rockets.

    Bringing in a wide-eyed, 22-year old talent to Texas wasn’t an immediate signal of championship-or-bust but the groundwork was being patiently laid. Morey coveted a star, and churned his team’s roster year after year, adding and subtracting, looking for hidden value through the Rockets’ G-League affiliate and player development, until he had enough credible pieces to offer Oklahoma City.

    Once Harden got to Houston, he got the ball. And his game was allowed to grow and develop, while Houston’s front office continued placing different pieces around him, in hopes of building towards something great. And, over eight seasons, the Rockets got close – very close – to breaking through in the west, particularly under Mike D’Antoni’s freewheeling, nightly 3-point barrages.

    But, Houston ultimately fell short, as did every contender in the west that went up against the healthy, fully-loaded Warriors juggernaut. That Golden State team wasn’t in place this past season, leaving another run as a possibility in pursuit of the two L.A.-based franchises. But the Rockets’ season was a mess behind the scenes, a year that might go down as one of the most puzzling in sports history. When you take into consideration Houston’s position amongst other contenders and never-defeated Father Time, it gets even weirder.

    What the hell happened during the 2019-20 season, resulting in the departures of the most successful general manager and head coach the team has had in years — and, now, the wishes of their franchise player and his friend and running mate, Westbrook, both wanting to be traded?

    Our Shams Charania reported Monday that Harden wants to ply his trade elsewhere, with Brooklyn and Philadelphia being his top two choices. ESPN first reported as well that Harden turned down a two-year extension offer from the Rockets that would have kept him in Houston until 2025 — and would have paid Harden an incredible $103 million total in 2023 and 2024, on top of the $170 million deal he has with Houston from now until ’23. If Harden had agreed to the most recent extension offer, he would have grossed a cool $331 million total from the Rockets from 2017 through 2025.

    There are obvious ties to both Brooklyn and Philadelphia. Harden loved the years he spent with Durant and the Thunder early on in his career, constantly being called the glue that held the team together, according to a source close to Harden. During the Rockets’ 2018 trip to the Bahamas prior to training camp, Harden would watch hours of old Thunder games in his room. The presence of D’Antoni on the Nets’ staff as Steve Nash’s top assistant, along with the abilities of Kyrie Irving to take some of the ballhandling and scoring load off of Harden, would be an added bonus.

    Philadelphia’s interest in Harden has grown in recent weeks, sources said. Morey’s ascension to the top decision-maker spot on the basketball side as president of basketball operations is an obvious link, given the history Harden and he share, but there’s also the lure of the Eastern Conference. Rapper Meek Mill has a longstanding relationship with Harden and has been trying to convince him to come to Philadelphia, according to a source. Billionaire Michael Rubin, a close friend of Meek’s and co-owner of the 76ers, is also very fond of Harden.

    But with Morey and new coach Doc Rivers just getting up to speed on the franchise, the 76ers are still contemplating the pros and cons of keeping their superstar duo of Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons together. One or the other, along with multiple other pieces, would have to be dealt to Houston in any potential deal for Harden. Still, we all know that Morey is not one to nibble at the margins; he tends to take big swings.

    The Rockets don’t want to trade Harden. He’s been the best thing to happen to the franchise in a long, long time. But that’s no longer the same as being adamant about not trading him at all.

    The team is well aware of how much Harden now wants to leave. It will take a substantial package and an impact player. But there is a combo out there that will get them to yes. While this has been the stance Houston has taken for years, sources tell The Athletic, past inquiries about the former MVP in seasons past have been discarded, with Houston simply not entertaining the notion of moving the 2018 league MVP.

    But getting anything approaching fair value for Harden will not be easy.

    “When you’re trading one of the top five players in the world with three years left on his contract, anything you get is underwhelming, and you know you are losing the deal,” a team executive whose team is not involved in the trade talks said Monday.
     
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  2. riko

    riko Member

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    6 first late first rounders , Dimwiddie and Levart for a top 5 player! Highway robbery for the nets
     
  3. Reeko

    Reeko Member

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    The Rockets are under no artificial timeline to move their eight-time All-Star, and don’t feel pressure to make a move before the start of the 2020-21 season in December. And teams around the league seem to be willing to hunker down and wait Houston out, expecting at some point in the near future, the Rockets will come to the table.

    “It will be a while,” said a league source not affiliated with the Rockets Monday. But the overwhelming expectation around the league now is that it will, inevitably, happen, whether it’s this month, in December or sometime in 2021.

    Harden’s vision as a playmaker is exceptional and has been for some time now. Perhaps he could already see the writing on the wall.

    As he sat and spoke following the Game 5 defeat to the Lakers in the second round of the playoffs in the Orlando Bubble in September, there was almost resignation in his voice answering questions about the series and the future. This wasn’t the ending of the 2019 season, when the Rockets lost – to Golden State, again, this time in six games in the conference semis — when Harden sounded annoyed but determined.

    Of course, there are things that he could have done differently in Houston’s past three playoff runs. Harden could have screened more, played more willingly off the ball, and just moved more. But others faltered, too. Paul was either injured or didn’t play well during important postseason stretches. Harden didn’t miss all of those 27 consecutive threes the Rockets shanked in Game 7 against the Warriors in 2018 by himself. And Westbrook didn’t play well this year against the Lakers.

    There has to be an uncomfortable feeling knowing that as brilliant as you can be during the regular season, the postseason will be an uphill battle with teams throwing everything they possibly can your way to slow you down, as well as understanding if you don’t play exceptionally well, all the Plan Bs over a long stretch of your career haven’t panned out.

    Each attempt had its benefits, of course, but also came with drawbacks.

    Dwight Howard, signed for four years and $87.5 million in 2013, gave the Rockets a dominant physical presence in the middle of the floor, and the tandem with Harden certainly had its fair share of fruitful spurts. The passive-aggressive nature of both Harden and Howard, however, became their undoing, resulting in a petty divorce.

    Houston went all-in on free agent Chris Bosh in 2014, hoping to create its own Big Three with Howard and Harden. The Rockets essentially gave away Omer Asik and Jeremy Lin, and let Chandler Parsons leave via free agency to Dallas, to create the cap space needed to add Bosh. But Bosh spurned the Rockets at the 11th hour to return to Miami.

    The 2017 arrival of Chris Paul, acquired from the Clippers in the midst of the Warriors’ dominance of the league, further signaled to Harden that the Rockets were 100 percent committed to him and didn’t plan on wasting his best years. Their high-level pairing ended on a sour note, but whether you chalk it up to ego differences, Warriors eliteness, or just bad timing. What can’t be denied is the intent. The Rockets thought they could win it all with Harden as their best player and they got pretty damn close, losing a heartbreaking seventh game at home in the Western Conference finals to the Warriors in 2018, with an injured Paul on the sidelines.

    The trade for Westbrook last summer was yet another sign that Houston was all-in on Harden, with the Rockets bringing in one of his best friends — and a player they still believed could function at a high level. But that didn’t work, either, and if Harden hadn’t blocked the last-second 3-point attempt of OKC’s Luguentz Dort in Game 7 of the Rockets’ first-round series with the Thunder, the postseason bubble may have burst a round earlier — and more embarrassingly.

    Every team with a bonafide superstar is always on the clock. It’s that way when you have LeBron James, or Giannis Antetokounmpo, or Damian Lillard, or Kobe Bryant, and especially in the NBA’s Empowerment Era, when players often jointly make decisions about their futures, leaving their current teams little leverage. If you’re not making their team better, the league’s elite will soon contemplate greener pastures. (Yes, even Tim Duncan.)

    At age 25, this season’s implosion likely wouldn’t be much of an issue for Harden. Perhaps even three years ago. But he’s now 31 – still within the range one can consider his or her prime, but well past the start date. From this point on, fairly or not, careers tend to be examined based on how many years you have left to play at the highest level. So: how many more seasons does Harden have at a first-team, All-NBA level?

    If the answer is three to four seasons and you don’t feel as if you can get it done in Houston, with the franchise in upheaval, why would you want to stay?

    But Harden is still under contract for three more seasons in Houston (technically, it’s two seasons plus a player option for 2022-23, but one assumes Harden won’t walk away from the $47.3 million he’s online to receive that season). That creates a situation quite different from what happened with Anthony Davis in New Orleans and Kawhi Leonard in San Antonio, with those two superstars forcing a trade out of town. The Rockets don’t have to simply bend at the knee here.

    The Rockets are in the midst of a culture shift, from the Morey and D’Antoni era to the one piloted by the team’s new GM, Rafael Stone, and its new coach, Stephen Silas — under the ownership of Tilman Fertitta, who league sources maintain is hellbent on reducing payroll and getting the Rockets out of the luxury tax business for the foreseeable future.

    With the season coming up so quickly, Houston has to pivot rapidly from last season’s pain but could make a last-ditch attempt to fix things with Harden. A good start would be Silas convincing Harden and Westbrook, assuming he’s still with the team, of a viable system on both ends of the floor, incorporating much more ball movement and off-ball actions, creating a more versatile approach than last year and in previous seasons.

    But Harden’s gripe with Houston might go deeper than on-court activities. Sources indicate he’s felt that some team decisions have been made without substantial input from him — whether they be signings, trades, or even hirings. (It’s hard to imagine Morey didn’t run the idea of acquiring the likes of Howard, Paul or Westbrook past his franchise player at some point over the years, but there you go.)

    Fertitta has long professed his love for Harden, but has he done enough to keep him satisfied? You could argue against that notion quite strongly. Morey had to dance year after year to skirt the luxury tax, with at least some of his moves that were sold as trying to revolutionize the game — such as jettisoning Clint Capela to Atlanta at the trade deadline last season, forcing the Rockets into playing “microball” the rest of the way, with the 6-6 P.J. Tucker playing center — really as much about getting under the tax line.

    As ever in the NBA, teams with impatient superstars are acting, quickly, to placate them. The Bucks made two huge trades Monday in an attempt to appease two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo before he hits unrestricted free agency next summer, bringing Jrue Holiday from New Orleans and Bogdan Bogdanovic from Sacramento. Milwaukee gave away a half-decade of draft picks in a clear commitment to Antetokounmpo to win now, and win big.

    Phoenix acquired Paul from Oklahoma City to ease Devin Booker’s mind. The NBA champion Lakers didn’t sit still, either, trading for Dennis Schröder. The Clippers will make a move at some point, though a league source indicates they’re not pursuing Harden at the moment.

    Houston claims publicly it believes its own window for contention remains open. Silas said “I’m a win-now coach” upon his hiring; Stone reiterated a desire to pursue a championship at all costs. And Fertitta knows he’ll need to field a viable team in some form to fill the seats at Toyota Center, whenever that’s a thing again.

    Stone made the first official trade of his career late Monday, sending Robert Covington to Portland for Trevor Ariza, the 16th pick in Wednesday’s draft and a 2021 first. There are some that have assumed this to be some indication of a fire sale, but is it? Covington’s skillset raises Houston’s ceiling in an extreme small-ball setting, with his wingspan, timing, and sneaky-good rim protection being valuable.

    But if Silas wants to revert to a more traditional setup next season, Covington, while still a great asset, doesn’t exactly push you over the edge. In this instance, Stone took a minor step back, adding the older Ariza but also replenishing some of Houston’s lost draft stock, which should prove useful in the immediate future. It does not hurt that Ariza and Harden had a very good relationship during Ariza’s previous four seasons (2014-17) in Houston.

    Harden, his family, and his foundation have done a great deal of work within Houston during his eight years there and have a vested interest in the city. Harden has a good relationship with Houston’s Mayor Sylvester Turner, other local professional teams, and has worked extensively with youth and the underprivileged. He’s a part of the ownership group that controls the Houston Dynamo and Houston Dash. Harden is also currently building his own restaurant/bar in Houston, according to a source familiar with developments. There is a lot of mutual love that exists between him and the city.

    But the clock is ticking — and quite loudly — in the House that The Beard Built.
     
  4. LosPollosHermanos

    LosPollosHermanos Houston only fan
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    Ahhh right because meek mill has a good relationship with him.

    this mental midget can gtfo. Hope morey and philly do well but unless it’s for good value harden goes where we deem fit
     
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  5. ksny15

    ksny15 Member

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    Divorce due to an insane baby momma (Tilman)
     
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  6. Reeko

    Reeko Member

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    for emphasis

    The Rockets are in the midst of a culture shift, from the Morey and D’Antoni era to the one piloted by the team’s new GM, Rafael Stone, and its new coach, Stephen Silas — under the ownership of Tilman Fertitta, who league sources maintain is hellbent on reducing payroll and getting the Rockets out of the luxury tax business for the foreseeable future.

    it’s also being reported by Kevin O’Conner that Tilman won’t trade Harden to Philly due to pettiness with Morey
     
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  7. J.R.

    J.R. Member

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    LOL

    But Harden’s gripe with Houston might go deeper than on-court activities. Sources indicate he’s felt that some team decisions have been made without substantial input from him — whether they be signings, trades, or even hirings.
     
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  8. topfive

    topfive CF OG

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    I finally ponied up for a subscription because I wanted to read @KellyUnchained's article and you f$#kers are too slow in posting them. :D
     
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  9. topfive

    topfive CF OG

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    Don't overlook this gem:

    Morey had to dance year after year to skirt the luxury tax, with at least some of his moves that were sold as trying to revolutionize the game — such as jettisoning Clint Capela to Atlanta at the trade deadline last season, forcing the Rockets into playing “microball” the rest of the way, with the 6-6 P.J. Tucker playing center — really as much about getting under the tax line.

    Even worse, Morey had to play the good employee and parrot the company line, rather than say, "Hey, this buffoon is leaving me no choice!"
     
    #9 topfive, Nov 17, 2020
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2020
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  10. abaker28

    abaker28 Member

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    Ahh rumours and theories.
    I read somewhere earlier that it may also be due to Tilmans political backing of Trump.
     
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  11. T for 3

    T for 3 Member

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    Awww poor Harden. Hundreds of millions of dollars, brought in his buddy and ruined the Rockets window, but he hasn’t been privy to decisions in the front office, so it’s time to go? GTFO
     
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  12. ChillyPete32

    ChillyPete32 Member

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    A small note but the part about clearing space for Bosh was off. The Asik trade was a great deal the Rox would have done anyways and the decision not to match Parsons' offer sheet and sign Ariza (which turned out great) was only after Bosh decided to stay in Miami. We probably would have matched Parsons' offer sheet had Bosh signed. (Side note is that not exercising the option for Parsons to let him become an RFA is one of the all time great screwups Morey had. Not sure if anyone confirmed it was a secret deal with Fegan for delivering Dwight.)

    We did get hosed attaching a first to trade Lin and clear room for Bosh though.
     
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  13. Deckard

    Deckard Blade Runner
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    A great read, @Reeko. Thanks! From the article I got the impression that the Rockets aren't in a rush to deal James. They shouldn't be, unless they're presented with a monumental deal. Sure, you don't like the idea of the superstar that's literally the "face of the team" being disgruntled, unhappy to be here, but as was pointed out, James has deep ties with Houston after 8 seasons. He's also under contract and I don't doubt that he'll play every game he's capable of playing and play well as long as he's here. That's just how Harden is.

    However, Fertitta has really screwed things up. We'll have to wait and see what else the man can destroy. How I wish Alexander had never sold him the team. Of all the billionaires he could have sold to, he had to sell us to this guy. What a disaster.
     
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  14. J Sizzle

    J Sizzle Member

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    If you a real fan of the Rockets that wants to see them win titles, you will not support this team financially going forward. You're a damn fool if you do.
     
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  15. FearTheBeardJH

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    Let him go, he deserves what he wants as he is the greatest rocket player ever. Rockets will never come close to winning with such ownership and management anyway,
     
  16. Loneyroy7

    Loneyroy7 Member

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    This is a win for you, man. Get EXCITED. You've wanted Harden out for a while, no?
     
  17. T for 3

    T for 3 Member

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    Listen, I am not happy that the rockets are in turmoil. But yes, I have wanted Harden gone for several years, and I am not dumb enough to think it was gong to be some easy transition. I still have a weird feeling in my gut when I think about Harden being gone, and what it could mean for the next several years, but I think it is time to move on.
     
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  18. Loneyroy7

    Loneyroy7 Member

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    Just curious, how would you feel watching Harden win multiple rings in Brooklyn?
     
  19. Air Langhi

    Air Langhi Contributing Member

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    Harden is not the best rocket ever.
     
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  20. T for 3

    T for 3 Member

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    I think it is highly unlikely that happens. I think about a team with Irving, Durant and Harden as the classic candidate for a disaster. There would be so much ego on that team, I don't think it would work. BUT, if it did, I would be ok. We all know Harden is talented enough to win a title as a 1B.

    I'll tell you what would really frustrate me though, is if he goes to Brooklyn, then all the sudden drastically changes his style of play to accommodate that team. He could have done that here, and CP3 would still be here! But, I don't think he will. It's not in him.
     
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