The saga has been over for a while now.
James Harden, about to enter a full season with Joel Embiid and the Sixers following the 2022 trade deadline, left money on the table to allow club president Daryl Morey to go out and get the pieces he thought would put the Sixers over top into title contention, though all with the reported understanding that a max deal would follow the summer after.
Then the season happened, with Christmas-time rumors of a possible Harden-Rockets reunion in play suddenly appearing out of nowhere. Then the playoffs happened, when the Sixers finally had the rival Boston Celtics on the ropes and themselves on the brink of finally advancing past the second round, only to choke away Games 6 and 7 with Harden and Embiid both disappearing.
The idea on the Sixers' end of a max deal for Harden after faded away quickly, and the now 34-year-old guard wanted out, though took the guaranteed money of his player option on the condition that the Sixers fulfill his trade request, preferably to the Los Angeles Clippers.
And when that didn't happen fast enough for Harden's liking over the summer, he called Morey "a liar," in China of all places – a country that already hadn't been a fan of the Sixers' president for years.
The divorce got bitter, drawn out, and exhausting for everyone, but was finally over with in late October when Morey got a multi-player, multi-pick deal with L.A. done.
Everyone was finally free to move on, but in a recent interview with The Athletic's Sam Amick, the fallout of his exit from Philadelphia and dissolution of his years-long relationship with Morey still seems to linger a bit with Harden.
For one, Harden continues to insist that Morey, at some point, did tell him he would be getting a max deal, though a Sixers source Amick cited within that same story refuted that being the case.
"Well, the important time was before the playoffs started (last season)," Harden told Amick. "He had conversations with my representation."
But even so, after the playoffs became a different story.
"Me and Daryl had a really good relationship," Harden said earlier in the interview. "So (in the past), a week or two after we lose in the playoffs, it would be all about trying to figure out how to improve the team. (They’d talk about) ‘How do we get better?’ And that’s been going on for 10-plus years, you know what I mean? And then this year, there was no communication. And at that point, it’s like, ‘OK, I see what’s going on.’ I’m very intelligent. So then I just figure out ‘What’s my next move, and what do I want to do?’ So I understand that, at the end of the day, this is a business. And just like he has to do what’s best for his organization, I’ve got to do what’s best for me and my family. It’s as simple as that."
Yet not any less frustrating, or draining, for a Sixers fan base that had grown accustomed – through Andrew Bynum, Ben Simmons, Markelle Fultz, Mikal Bridges, Jimmy Butler, and so on – to expect the weirdest, and the worst.
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Elsewhere in Harden's conversation with Amick was the subject of those Rockets rumors and where they came from, to which Harden acknowledged that there were talks with Houston and a meeting between his representation, the team, and its new head coach Ime Udoka after he was hired in late April.
"Now the meeting was had," Harden told Amick of the Rockets. "And those conversations about style of play, how I’ve been playing and things like that (took place). But (the idea of) me going out there and averaging 30-something points a game — who wants to do that?"
So it seems important to note here, as our old friend Kyle Nuebeck pointed out on Twit – X...whatever – that Harden never had a negotiating window like that open as a free agent. He passed that up to opt in with the Sixers and make the trade request instead.
He was a Sixer the entire time, and after the Sixers had already gotten in trouble on tampering penalties from the league the summer before with the P.J. Tucker and Danuel House Jr. signings.
So 🤷♂️.
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