On Tuesday, the latest development in the ongoing James Harden-Houston Rockets saga was that the 2018 NBA MVP and the NBA’s leading scorer in each of the last three seasons finally reported to camp.
The Rockets began camp on Sunday without Harden, which of course caused quite a stir. On Monday, Rockets head coach Stephen Silas said “there is no timetable” to when Harden would return adding to the intrigue. Tuesday’s arrival seemingly sets aside the possibility of a holdout for Harden, who is still under team control by contract for two more seasons, but it is clear that Harden prefers to be elsewhere at this stage in his career and has no problems making things uncomfortable enough to possibly force a trade at some point before then.
With all the talk of the Philadelphia 76ers (where the man who brought Harden to Houston, Daryl Morey currently is employed as team president) and the Brooklyn Nets (where it has been widely reported Harden is targeting teaming up with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving) as possible trade destinations, we asked some of our NBA insiders…
Are there any other trade destinations for Harden that have a chance?
David Aldridge: The New Orleans Pelicans
Alphabetical again, I see — so I get the first round of ‘you’re an idiot’ shrapnel. OK. Life in the big city. I’ll start.
NEW ORLEANS (aka, The Pearl Gambit Redux)
I’m old now, but I’m not so old that I was actually covering the NBA in 1971, when the then-Baltimore Bullets did the seemingly unthinkable: trade their franchise player and iconic superstar, Earl “the Pearl” Monroe; aka Jesus — to the Knicks for Mike Riordan, Dave Stallworth and cash. The Pearl wasn’t quite as prolific a scorer as Harden is, but he was flashier with the rock and just as big a star then as Harden is now. And like Harden, Monroe, after a few seasons butting his head up against the wall with the Bullets, who’d been unable to break through in the East despite having really good teams (also sounds familiar) — though they did reach the ‘71 Finals, getting swept by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the Bucks — asked to be traded.
Initially, he balked at potentially going to New York, which already had its own iconic ballhandling guard with his own iconic nickname — Walt “Clyde” Frazier — who had already helped lead the Knicks to a championship two years prior.
“But eventually I said give me a couple of days,” Monroe told ESPN years ago, “and I went home to Philly and talked to my good friend, Sonny Hill, and my mom, and I emerged from those conversations saying I’m a basketball player, I can play with anyone in any style, and I’m going to come to New York.”
Teamed up with Frazier, Monroe made consecutive Finals with the Knicks in 1972 and 1973, winning the NBA championship in ‘73.
Some people will say this is nuts, that the Pelicans are building around Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram, that they just gave Ingram a max deal and they’ll be giving Zion one as soon as possible, and why would you bring in a guy like Harden who’ll dominate the ball and whose usage rate and salary are astronomical?
Here’s why, if you’re New Orleans, you think about it. (And please don’t tell me that they’re fully-formed with Ingram and Zion; they’ve been trying to get Bradley Beal for two years, so don’t tell me they’d have no interest in someone like Harden.)
You just lost Anthony Davis. Providence gave you an immediate high-flying, TV-fawning replacement in Williamson. But you will ALWAYS be a target for predators, and you’ll always be working hard to keep fans interested in a town dominated by the Saints. You built a good, solid playoff team around Davis relatively quickly, gave him a max extension, got DeMarcus Cousins so he wouldn’t play center, and he still bolted.
The best chance to keep a guy like Zion happy, it says here, is to give him the best chance to compete immediately in the West. That means you have to be good enough to beat the Lakers or Clippers, or Nuggets or Jazz. You didn’t even make the playoffs last year. Harden not only gets you to the playoffs, he gives you a real chance against the elite teams in the West. He’s under contract through 2023. That’s your window, with Ingram, to get Williamson to one or two Finals during this stretch and make him want to be a Pelican for Life.
Harden is polarizing, and he’s reportedly got his heart set on the Nets or 76ers. But he’s at the point of his career where, like the Pearl, he knows how hard it is to do that heavy lifting alone. He’s never played with an inside force like Zion. Add Ingram, and you could have something insanely hard to stop.
What would you send back? Houston will ask for Ingram as the centerpiece of any package for Harden. You’ll say no. The Rockets will keep asking for Ingram. You’ll keep saying no. And that’s where I’m leaving this. I didn’t say you should trade Ingram, and maybe Kira Lewis, and an expiring contract like J.J. Redikk, and a lot of those first-round picks coming your way from the Lakers and Bucks from the AD and Jrue Holiday deals for the Beard. Maybe they would take a Lonzo Ball-centric package instead. But you do have to think about it.
Joe Vardon: The LA Clippers
Alphabetical my ass. I was last in line walking to the cafeteria in grade school, across the stage at graduation, and should be when it comes to trade machinations. Why? They involve contracts and math.
When it comes to Houston’s asks for Harden — All-Star/All-NBA player, treasure trove of youth and picks, I just don’t know how much of that actually exists. The Clippers don’t have it, but they do have the (likely) expiring contracts of Kawhi Leonard ($34.3 million this season) and Paul George ($35.4 million). Both have player options for the following season, neither is expected to exercise it. And that’s a hell of a place to start.
Harden wanted Tyronn Lue to be his coach in Houston. Sources say Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta did not — he wanted Jeff Van Gundy — and the compromise was Stephen Silas. The point here is, Harden wanted to play for Lue, who is now the Clippers’ coach. He, like a seemingly vast majority of the NBA, spends at least part of his offseasons in Los Angeles, and would probably be open to extending his stay there. He also gives the Clippers something they honestly do not have, a dynamic, scoring ball handler.
As for what they’d have to give up to get Harden, obviously, the Clippers would be divorcing themselves from the historic, very expensive course they charted in the summer of 2019 after just one season. But the truth of the matter is the Leonard-George experiment, for whatever reason, didn’t quite work. Either during the mundane portions of 2019-20 or the Bubble. There were chemistry issues all over the map.
Harden isn’t exactly showing himself to be a “chemistry” guy right now, what with the weekend stunt he pulled on his new coach, but playing alongside either Leonard or George (but obviously not both) would be a start. He’d reunite with Patrick Beverley and he’d get to play with Lue. The Clippers might even be a little further ahead than they are now in trying to catch the Lakers. Maybe.
Look, the league isn’t really set up for this — for in-their-prime stars to be traded for each other. Usually, something must be wrong with one or both (look at the Russell Westbrook-John Wall deal; Westbrook has had a host of injuries and Wall hasn’t played in two years). It is not up to Harden where he gets traded (Fertitta could order a trade to Cleveland and there is nothing Harden could do to stop it), but the Clippers are a destination he’d appreciate, and his presence would give that team a dominant, scoring champion guard paired with one (but not two) of the game’s great wings. And you no longer have the issue of needing to clean up the Leonard-George chemistry. Also, when it comes to Harden, he gets a chance to play on a team where the second star is not a guard (Westbrook, Chris Paul). He hasn’t had that since he was third fiddle to Russ and Kevin Durant in Oklahoma City.
The Clippers could read at this and laugh at me. Maybe they’d want nothing to do with Harden’s questionable behavior off the court. But Harden, Leonard, Pat Bev, Lou Williams, Serge Ibaka (I am not naming anyone else here, because the Clippers would probably need to throw in an additional player) is a potentially dangerous nucleus.
And if you’re Houston, you aren’t saddled with any long-term baggage in the form of a bad contract. Assuming either of the stars the Rockets would potentially land in a deal like that would want to be a free agent next summer, you’re entering 2021 free agency with a chance to rebuild quickly.
The Clippers acknowledge they have chemistry issues. If a private, long look under the hood by Lue and his new coaching staff finds that what happened in that locker room last season is not fixable, then I’d guess they’d have to consider something like this.
Sam Amick: The LA Clippers
You know how you get to the front of line sometimes, Joe? You cut — much like you did by picking the Clippers for this thought exercise before I had a chance to start typing my own views on why they’re a very interesting option here. Great minds think alike … or something like that.
So rather than switch it up, let’s go even deeper down this hypothetical road. But first, as Joe alluded to, this needs a disclaimer: If the Rockets maintain their current asking price of an All-Star/All-NBA player and a combination of young prospects/first-round draft picks, it’s virtually impossible for the Clippers to pay that ransom because, well, they gave up damn near everything they had just to get Leonard and George in the first place.
But what if George — who has been scapegoated a bit in the aftermath of the Clippers’ bubble collapse — was genuinely interested in joining the Rockets? Houston could have itself a Wall-George-Cousins trio that would be quite formidable, even more so if the Clippers added former Rocket/three-time Sixth Man of the Year Lou Williams to the deal (expiring deal; $8 million this season). Meanwhile, the Clippers could choose to try a Leonard-Harden pairing as they get closer to Leonard’s possible free agency next summer (he and George both have player options for next season, while Harden has two seasons left on his deal before his player option in 2022-23). Add in the fact that Harden, like George, grew up in the area, and you barely even have to change the narrative for the marketing department.
But George’s buy-in would be key if the Rockets were going to take a serious look at it, and it’s worth noting that the Palmdale, Calif. native not only jumped at the chance to return to his home region in Southern California last summer but also said on Friday that he wanted to retire with the Clippers. What’s more, one of the players who was known to have clashed a bit with George — that being Montrezl Harrell — was not invited back to the Clippers in free agency and promptly signed with the Lakers. If there was friction between George and some of his teammates, as has been reported in several places, it seems to have been somewhat minimized by the roster moves and the Clippers, sources say, remain fully committed to George as part of their program.
Still, stranger things have happened. Especially in LA.
John Hollinger: The Minnesota Timberwolves
If you’re looking for off-the-wall comedy, read Vardon. But if it’s an off-the-wall destination you seek, then come here. While I also recently mentioned, in cahoots with the esteemed Mr. Aldridge, that Golden State has the chips to play in this hand if they want to, I actually have an even more off the wall name for you…
Minnesota.
Sending Harden there would reunite him with his former front office mates in Houston, Gersson Rosas and Sachin Gupta. The T’wolves are set up to play Harden’s preferred style with an ideal pick-and-pop partner (Karl Towns) and a lot of role players who don’t really need the ball and aren’t good enough to demand it anyway.
The Wolves also have the obvious salary match for a deal in D’Angelo Russell, who would allow the Rockets to replace Harden’s shot creation until whatever they’re doing next happens. Adding 2019 lottery pick Jarrett Culver to Russell is enough salary to complete a deal, although the Wolves would almost certainly throw in Ed Davis too so they could stay out of the luxury tax.
Is a Culver-Russell package enough? Of course not. Minnesota would have to haggle with the Rockets over whether top pick Anthony Edwards has to be part of the deal, or whether the Rockets can “settle” for unprotected firsts in 2024 and 2026. All that might be too rich a price for a smaller market that has a decent chance of losing Harden for nothing in 2022 (not to mention Towns in 2024). But if the T’wolves really want to go all-in on two years of a Towns-Harden partnership in their prime, they have a pretty clear avenue toward doing so.
My man. Thank you!
