Cousins calls out Harden
HOUSTON — As the Rockets finalized the trade of James Harden to the Brooklyn Nets, completing the talks while the team he would soon be leaving practiced without him, teammates made it clear they have had enough.
Harden lit the match long before he declared on Tuesday that the Rockets were “just not good enough.” With that, the bridge was finally burned beyond repair.
Labeling Harden’s comments and “antics” disrespectful, veteran center Demarcus Cousins called out Harden for his position about remaining with the Rockets and his role in a “nasty breakup.”
“The disrespect started way before any interview,” Cousins said of Harden’s remarks after Tuesday’s loss to the Lakers. “Just the approach to training camp, showing up the way he did, his antics off the court, the disrespect started way before. This isn’t something that all of a sudden happened last night.
“It’s a way about having business. He can feel however he wants to feel about the organization, whatever his past situation is. The other 14 guys in the locker room have done nothing to him. For us to be on the receiving end of some of the disrespectful comments and the antics, it is completely unfair to us. We showed up to work. It’s completely unfair to the rest of the guys in the locker room.”
Harden missed the first week of training camp when he instead traveled to Atlanta and Las Vegas for several parties. That kept him out of the first two preseason games. He was sent into quarantine
and fined $50,000 after participating in a social event in Houston, forcing him to miss another stretch of practices and for the NBA to postpone the Rockets’ scheduled season opener.
“This has been going on since training camp, I guess you could say,” Rockets center Christian Wood said.
“It’s kind of been spots here and there. I’ve kind of been the middle man of things being the big man between John (Wall) and James. It’s kind of both sides. But we’re together. The team’s together.”
The night before, when Wall was asked about Harden’s comments after a loss to the Lakers, he said Harden had competed and practiced professionally. But he also seemed to indicate there had been issues.
“When you have certain guys in the mix that don’t want to buy in all as one, it’s going to be hard to do anything special, do anything good as a basketball team,”
Wall said. “I’ve been on those teams … it was all about ‘me, me, me, me.’ That hurts and it brings everybody down.”
Asked shortly before Harden would be traded to the Brooklyn Nets if he could play with Harden again, Cousins said, “I don’t know. Quite honestly, don’t care.”
By then, Harden’s relationship with the Rockets did not seem salvageable, with even the consistently optimistic Stephen Silas saying he did not know if it could be repaired.
“You want everybody to be on the same page,” Silas said. “You want everybody to be committed to each other and the team. How things have gone the last few days, actually for a while, I’m not sure.
“It’s just a crazy NBA situation. It’s really just one of those all-around messed up situations.”
Harden had said after Tuesday’s loss — a second consecutive blowout to the Lakers — that he thought the
Rockets did not have enough chemistry or talent and that he did not believe the situation could be remedied.
“Obviously, it’s disrespectful but everybody has words to their opinion,” Cousins said. “We feel a certain type of way about some of his actions. You deal with these types of things when guys are in positions of being franchise players or whatever the case may be. It’s sometimes a nasty breakup.
Cousins said he still believed in the Rockets’ potential.
“It’s all about us buying in,” he said. “The guys we have in the locker room I believe are more than capable.
“I’m not happy with the drama at all. I don’t think anybody wants to deal with the drama. ”
An hour later, the drama ended with a big finish. The damage had already been done.