A player so good yet so far from greatness
You wanted it to be different.
We wanted it to be different.
The Rockets so badly — and often so desperately — wanted it to be different.
But this is James Harden we’re dealing with.
So when it ended, it ended badly. And it ended his way, not your way or the Rockets’ way.
When the constant drama and public dysfunction were finally over, the Rockets didn’t want to play with Harden anymore, fans didn’t want the face of the franchise in Houston anymore, and the out-of-shape Beard had become a running joke in the NBA.
Harden was traded to Brooklyn on Wednesday, rejoining former Oklahoma City teammate Kevin Durant and forming another superteam with the even more mysterious and unpredictable Kyrie Irving. The Rockets?
Your Rockets?
It was Harden’s crazy world, and they were just living in it. So as always, they were left to pick up the messy pieces and find some new way forward.
Four future first-round draft picks, four pick swaps and eighth-year guard Victor Oladipo, who will join his fourth team, played in 55 total games the previous two seasons, and spent the last offseason stuck in the middle of constant trade rumors.
Harden won this one. He gets K.D. and the Nets, which is exactly what he demanded in November when he shocked the Rockets’ world after excoach Mike D’Antoni and ex-general manager Daryl Morey had already fled the oncoming storm.
Harden was always going to win this because he’s Harden.
Good enough to win three consecutive NBA scoring titles, an MVP and a Sixth Man of the Year award and to leave the Rockets as the second-best player in franchise history.
But nothing close to truly great. Michael Jordan great. LeBron James great. Kobe Bryant great. Hakeem Olajuwon great. Heck, even Durant great.
After Harden’s 621 regular-season games and 85 playoff contests in red, the Rockets couldn’t stand one of the greatest regularseason scorers in NBA history.
Topping off the frustration, fury and personal venom that burned whitehot by the time Brooklyn finally offered enough and a four-team blockbuster was too good to refuse: DeMarcus Cousins punched Harden in the face during a Zoom media interview. Basically.
“The disrespect started way before any interview,” Cousins said Wednesday after the Rockets decided the best way for Harden to practice with them was by staying home and preparing to get traded. “Just the approach to training camp, showing up the way he did, his antics off the court, the disrespect started way before. … 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.”
If you know your recent NBA history, you know Cousins’ publicly calling out Harden for being disrespectful truly says it all about how badly it ended for The Beard in Houston.
We don’t care about all the 50-point games anymore.
The super-smooth triple-doubles and insane nightly stats.
How incredible Harden could be with the ball in hand: stepback 3-pointers, hard drives, shifting layups, brilliant passes and tough rebounds.
The fact Harden was stolen from OKC, Rockets fans were so proud of the theft for years and, not that long ago, it was fun to argue whether No. 13 was the best player in the NBA.
Or the most underrated player. The real MVP. A growing leader. Better at defense than YouTube and Twitter told you. The least of the Rockets’ problems in the playoffs.
We don’t care about any of that now.
Old news. Forgotten debates. Burning paper still on fire, drifting away in the cold wind of January 2021.
The real truth — the truth you know so darn well and has been eating at you for months — is that Harden ruined everything he built here in the end.
He made Anthony Davis’ me-first departure from small-market New Orleans look professional and graceful.
He was Carmelo Anthony forcing his way out of Denver and Dwight Howard throwing Stan Van Gundy under the bus in Orlando, but in a gross 2020 way that was horrendously out of touch and solely about me, me, me.
I’ll admit right here that if Harden finally wins a title with Durant — more than eight years after OKC sent Harden to Houston, eventually leading to Durant’s joining Golden State’s dynasty bandwagon — the local look might change a little.
Some will tweet that the Rockets never should have let Harden go.
Some will scream on national TV that the Rockets should have gotten more for a future Hall of Famer who was obviously sandbagging it so the foolish Rockets would give up their frustrated superstar, no matter what they received in return.
Some will blame this person or that person.
But you’ll know the truth, and we’ll know the truth, and there’s a reason I’ve been writing what I’ve been writing in this newspaper the last 5½ years.
Harden was immature. He couldn’t be depended on when it truly mattered and, in the end, couldn’t be trusted.
The 31-year-old Harden also was never going to win a title here. And the Rockets were never going to win another world championship with Harden as their franchise face.
It was Kevin McHale’s fault, then Dwight Howard’s fault.
It was me or him and, Harden told the Rockets, Chris Paul had to go. After CP3 was the best overall Rocket on the court in the 2018 Western Conference finals and the only thing that prevented D’Antoni’s team from knocking out the Warriors — and winning a world title — was Paul’s hamstring giving out at the end of Game 5.
Then the Rockets had to trade for Russell Westbrook, Harden demanded. Then it went bad with Westbrook, just like it did with McHale, Howard, Paul … Cousins and new coach Stephen Silas.
“For a team, the good of the team, everybody has to be playing in the same direction,” said Silas, two hours before the huge problem in the middle of it all was suddenly traded. “It’s just a crazy NBA situation. It’s really just one of those all-around messed up situations.”
One of those all-around messed up situations.
That perfectly captures it.
I can remember how loud Toyota Center used to get. How loved Harden was by the faithful in 2015, ’17 and ’18. How the local fans, readers and talkradio callers passionately defended Harden while the national haters kept crashing in.
It’s cold silence now. Until the big trade was finally made, there was nothing but local frustration and mounting hate.
“Harden! Wake up!” shouted a fan Sunday after Harden committed his seventh turnover while a 27-point deficit was about to become the first of two blowout home defeats to the Los Angeles Lakers.
Harden told you he was quitting on the Rockets, and then he did exactly what he said he was going to do.
He could never finish in the playoffs. He shrank in the brightest lights, blamed others when accountability should have been shared, and kept burning through superstar teammates, even though he wasn’t good enough to be great.
The Rockets catered to Harden for years, hoping for one perfect postseason that would change everything.
Then he ruined it all and partied without a mask in their faces.
“It’s something I don’t think can be fixed,” Harden said Tuesday before backing away from a podium and stepping away from further questions.
In the end, he was Harden.
It ended badly.
You walked away feeling burnt and let down.
All the Rockets could do was move on.
They invested everything in an NBA superstar who was never great. In a franchise player whom fans and the Rockets didn’t believe in in the end.