Harden will be a Sun or on the Thunder. If he's unextended, I think Phoenix offers him the max, which means we would have to as well. He's from Arizona, and would have a better group around him. Although- my money's riding on the Thunder trading or amnestying Perkins to keep Harden.
He is from Los Angeles, he just went to school in Tempe and loved the area. Mostly because ASU is overloaded with attractive females and being the super athlete he is, he didn't struggle too much.
Harden & Lin will be able to play with one another. In fact I think them playing together would be good because it keeps the defensive honest & prefers opposing teams from ganging up on one person. Ideally if Lin improves his catch & shoots, they could compliment each other in terms of Harden being the attacking guard & Lin playing the SG position. People are also overblowing the finals series Harden had. The rest of his team played poorly as well. The fact that people are waiting to see Harden play in another finals before they decide if he is good enough is absurd.
Which is why you make the push to trade for him ASAP if you're Morey, and you find out that they are not able to come to an agreement. Not just because Harden would choose Phoenix over Houston, but just to alleviate the risk of him falling in love with another team over Houston next Summer.
That's the thing though, I don't think the Thunder will trade him unless he's under performing or Harden is unhappy.
I respectfully disagree. I personally believe Presti will make whatever decision based on these variables- -whether or not they are able to get an extension before Oct 31st -whether or not they are willing to amnesty Perkins to resign Harden to the max next Summer -Whether or not they are willing to carry 3 max contracts on their roster going forward to retain cap flexibility with other role players. -Whether or not they view Harden as the key piece to them winning a title THIS year Vs. how they feel about the incoming pieces coming in from the trade helping them win a title both in the short term and long term. All 4 of these variables should be the basis of thinking when making a decision on whether or not to trade Harden. The stars definitely need to align right for Morey to get a crack at trading for Harden, especially before the season starts. That being said, its worth being aggressive about IF they cannot workout an extension. Harden being "happy" or not should have very little to do with the decision making for OKC mgmt.
"Alpha dog" traits are just BS from the MJ marketing machine. Allen Iverson was an alpha dog. Stephon Marbury was an alpha dog. Hell, Melo is an alpha dog so much that he didn't mind Lin leaving because he took all the attention away. I dunno why you're knocking on Harden's D, he was actually extremely solid on D and unlike WB he didn't gamble so much on trying to steal the ball, just tried to play good positional D. As of right now I think he's barely worth a max contract. Considering his age (22), I think there's a lot of room to grow and he'll definitely be worth a max offer by the time he's 25 or so. Unless Lamb ends up blowing up big time I'd like to see us make a run at this guy in FA.
NBA Info Daily @NBAInfoDaily C Kendrick Perkins says the Thunder are "getting close" to signing SG James Harden to an extension.
Argh, so torn on this....would love to have Harden, but want to see Lamb starting if Martin is gone..
Season needs to hurry up and begin because I'm tired of seeing reports about our rookies in trade talks
http://www.ranker.com/list/nba_s-most-valuable-franchises/allanhu88 List of nba teams by profitability. I expected OKC tO be higher.... Didn't realize we were 5th.
Harden is going to get paid... I would love Harden in Houston but doubt it'll happen. Then again we have a lot of young pieces which I'm sure will entice OKC to at least look at Houston as a possible trade partner via sign and trade...
