James Harden Was ALWAYS The Problem
James Harden Was ALWAYS The Problem
James Harden has always been the problem since he left Houston and the Clippers is just another example.
James Harden is on his fifth NBA team in his career. There’s no question that he will retire as one of the greatest basketball players ever and a top-five shooting guard as well. While it does feel like he gets a lot of criticism for coming up short in the playoffs time and time again, that will always happen when you are an all-time great. However, most of the criticism of him is warranted. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane and break down the timeline that brought us to this point:
2009-12- James Harden is drafted third overall to the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2009 draft. He's having a very successful career during his stint with the Thunder and is a key piece as the sixth man during their title run in 2012 where they eventually lost in the finals to the Miami Heat in five games. That offseason the Thunder traded Harden to the Houston Rockets in a blockbuster deal. This might be the only trade of Hardens that was not on him. The Thunder simply couldn’t pay him what he deserved since they had given their two best players, Kevin Durant, and Russell Westbrook massive contracts already. Since they couldn’t afford him, they traded him.
2012-21- This was Harden's longest tenure with one team. He spent nine seasons with the Rockets and will undoubtedly go down as one of the five best Rockets ever. During his tenure with Houston, he was a three-time scoring champ, one-time MVP, one-time assists leader, six-time All-NBA first team, and a nine-time NBA all-star. He also made the NBA 75th Anniversary team which means he's a top 75 player of all time. Now the reason he requested a trade was because, in his own words, he wanted to have a chance to win at the highest level. The Rockets were not good by the time he requested a trade and was later traded to the Brooklyn Nets in 2021.
2021-22- Harden only played for one and a half seasons with the Nets. His tenure here might go down as one of the biggest what-ifs in NBA history. He joined a top duo of Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant forming the best big three in the league at the time. The only problem that plagued this team was injuries. To put it into context, the Nets' big three of Harden, Irving, and Durant played a total of 16 games together of a possible 113 games. As you can imagine that didn’t sit well with Harden. He wanted to request a trade again but was afraid of the backlash he knew he’d receive for doing it again in such a short time. However, he did end up requesting it again and got traded to the Philadelphia 76ers on February 10, 2022, to reunite with his GM Daryl Morey who was also his GM with the Rockets.
2022-23- While this stint was also only about a year, he played better with the 76ers than he did with the Nets. He led the league in assists this past season and helped lead the 76ers alongside center Joel Embiid to the playoffs where they lost in seven games in the semi-finals to the Boston Celtics. This time around he requested a trade because of GM Daryl Morey. In August while at a media event in China, harden said, “Daryl Morey is a liar. And I will never be a part of an organization that he is a part of.” That’s all we know about that situation still. Nothing has come out about what went down during contract talks and everything else is just speculation. So, he refused to play for the team and sat out this season until they traded him to the Los Angeles Clippers a few weeks ago and now we’re here for the timeline.
Since trading for Harden, the Clippers have lost their first six games with him and sit at 3-7 and 12th in the West. I won't put all the blame on Harden because well it’s a new system and it always takes time to gel with a new team and find your role on it. At some point though, you have to look in the mirror and realize that maybe you are part of the problem. It isn’t a coincidence that the only time he made it to the finals was his third season in the NBA with the Thunder when he was coming off the bench. I’m not saying he has to come off the bench, but maybe he should be less ball-dominant and become more of a slasher. A perfect example of doing this is Miami Heat legend, Dwyane Wade. He went from being the alpha and ball-dominant player until LeBron James went to Miami in 2010. Then he became a robin and a slasher for the team which led to them winning two rings in four seasons.
Putting four players on one team who are so used to having the ball in their hands at all times is a recipe for disaster. Especially knowing how Harden feels about the criticism of him. Just a week ago he was asked a question about him being a system player and his response was, “I'm not a system player, I am a system.” So, Tyronn Lue, the Clippers head coach is going to have to deal with big egos. Though if anyone can make it work, I think Paul George, Russell Westbrook, and Kawhi Leonard have been making it work since before Harden got there. Good thing it's still the beginning of the season and they still have around 70 games to figure it out. The Clippers have put a lot of pressure on themselves to win this year because on paper they have the best roster in the NBA. The only problem they’ll have is finding the right lineup in crunch time and finding who the alphas are. To me, the alphas are George and Leonard, but we’ll see how it plays out come playoff time.