It had been nearly a week since James Harden’s 2021-22 season came to an end. He still wasn’t returning any calls — friends, family, even his manager and longtime friend Troy Payne.
Payne has known Harden for years, so he figured Harden reacts to year-end losses by hole-up in his Houston home and withdraw from the world. But this… well, this was different.
“It was broken,” said a friend of Harden. “It was bad. It was really bad.”
This loss marked the fourth consecutive season that Harden’s team had failed to advance beyond the second round of the playoffs. This time it was with the Philadelphia 76ers, who, just three months after trading for Harden — a deal Harden had lobbied for, after pushing to be traded to the Brooklyn Nets from the Houston Rockets a year earlier — had fallen to six games for the Miami Heat, lowering Harden’s record in his last nine elimination games to 1-8. In the second half of that season-ending loss, Harden caught just two shots.
Another day has passed. Then another. Payne reached out to some mutual friends to see if they had heard from Harden. None had. Payne tried Harden’s personal chef.
“Yes, it’s here,” the chef said. “He’s just saying he needs more time to himself.”
Finally, around the 10th, Payne’s phone rang. Harden’s name flashed on the screen. He told Payne that he was hurting, physically but also emotionally, that the previous two years — multiple trades, multiple injuries, multiple playoff busts — had left him drained and deflated, that he was eager to put it all behind him.
“The whole two years was a low point. I’ve never dealt with anything like this,” Harden told me recently. “My body, mentally, physically… There was a lot going on. I mean, basketball is everything to me.”
He’s never said it out loud, but during the final offseason, friends could see that Harden acknowledged that the window to making sure his legacy was closing. He turned 33 in August. He was entering his 14th NBA season. He was no longer the star around which everything in his team orbits. He told people he was fine with it.
But also, he told himself during the offseason, “It was time to go back to being James Harden.”
What exactly he will be like in the year 2023, with him playing alongside another superstar like Joel Embiid, is one of the big questions of this NBA season. Will Harden be able to adapt to his new reality? As he recovers from another injury, his legacy and the Sixers’ championship hopes hang on it.
James Harden knows this season could be crucial to his legacy. (Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
Before continuing, Harden wanted to make one thing clear: Any quotes you read here were simply an answer to a question and not him trying to make excuses, even though he knows that’s how much of what he said will be interpreted.
“It’s one of the reasons I don’t really like doing interviews,” she said. “Because people will take the smallest thing I say and basically screw it up and then it becomes a problem.”
Most of that is a result of the paradoxical space Harden occupies in our sporting culture. He is universally recognized as an all-time outstanding single (10-time All-Star, six-time All-NBA first team, three-time scoring champion, one-time MVP). However, because his résumé lacks a few accomplishments (no titles, no Finals appearances since leaving Oklahoma City in 2012) and because he has a history of underperforming in big games, his legacy is hard to reconcile.
James Harden I No. 25 I Nick Wright’s 50 Greatest NBA Players of the Last 50 Years
James Harden I No. 25 I Nick Wright’s Top 50 NBA Players of the Last 50 Years
Harden is aware of all of this — “A lot of things lead to debate, and I don’t really debate,” he told me — which is probably why he hasn’t done an in-depth interview like this one since speaking to GQ in the past. This may interest you : Video game sales will fall for the first time in years as the industry prepares for recession. early 2020, and why he wasn’t exactly sure he wanted to be here, sitting in a conference room of a posh Toronto hotel on an early season off day in October, answering probing questions.
At the time, the Sixers were struggling. Harden, however, was forward-thinking. It’s not that he didn’t care; it’s that he was finally healthy, and finally feeling like himself on the field, and finally playing for a team that he felt appreciated the work it takes to compete for a championship. I asked if she could pinpoint a specific moment when, after the turmoil of the last few years, things seemed most dire.
“I don’t even want to think about it,” she said. “I don’t need people to feel sorry for me, and I don’t even want to bring it up anymore because I’m over it. And I do a really good job of not listening to what people say because at the end of the day, it’s their opinion .
“But it was definitely you hear people talk and it was just one of those motivational things where I don’t need motivation, but it definitely motivated me to go out there and get to work.”
Harden does this often. He will say how little attention he pays to public opinion and then follow that up by quoting public opinion and why it is wrong. I told him I’d noticed, and I thought it was because someone who worked as hard and achieved as much as he did couldn’t help but be annoyed when he heard people label his career a failure.
“Don’t you care how you will be remembered?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said, his voice growing sterner, “and I’ll be remembered in basketball!”
He leaned forward. “So obviously I care, but people will talk no matter what. But I’m interested in, like, winning and things that matter and matter. I’m not interested in things that don’t matter, which are it’s going to be a story for 24 or 48 hours and then it will go away.
“I’m one of the people who changed the game of basketball,” he continued. “Honestly, the only thing I’m missing is a championship.”
James Harden disappeared offensively in the 76ers’ elimination
James Harden disappeared offensively in 76ers’ elimination
Not long ago, things were different for Harden. Think back to his 2017-18 season. He was named NBA MVP. He led the league in scoring. This may interest you : Hard to Find Inclusive Video Games – Here’s What I Found. His string of mesmerizing backflips and relentless fouls redefined the physics and nature of the sport. He piloted the Rockets to a season-best 65 wins. He led the behemoth that was the Kevin Durant-Steph Curry Golden State Warriors to seven games in the Western Conference Finals, even with teammate Chris Paul missing Games 6 and 7 with a hamstring injury.
Harden led the league in scoring again the next two seasons, but his Rockets failed to make it back to the conference Finals. Harden prompted the Rockets to flip Paul for Russell Westbrook. That version of the Rockets went on to win a playoff series before once again burning out in the second round. Then coach Mike D’Antoni’s contract was not renewed. Shortly thereafter, Daryl Morey, the team’s president of basketball operations and Harden’s biggest supporter in the NBA, moved on.
Recognizing that the championship window in Houston had closed, Harden pushed for a trade. He set his sights on the Nets (despite some statements to the contrary by Harden, Brooklyn was indeed his favorite destination at the time, according to sources familiar with the trade deals), believing they offered him his best shot at a title. He arrived in Brooklyn in mid-January 2021 and played basketball at the MVP level. The Nets posted record offensive numbers and won 27 of their next 36 games.
Then came the hamstring strain. The injury sidelined Harden for 21 of the Nets’ last 24 games, more than he had missed in the previous six seasons combined. He returned for the playoffs but re-aggravated his injury in Game 1 of the second round against the Milwaukee Bucks.
“Normally after games, even losses, we talk in the car afterwards,” Payne said. “That night, nobody said anything. The only sound in the car was [Harden] yelling, ‘F—!'”
Harden returned to the Nets midway through that round. He played out the series against the eventual champions virtually on one leg, somehow even going 53 minutes in a game 7 overtime loss.
“He felt like he let his teammates down by being hurt,” Payne said. “In the past, he’d been annoyed by other people for taking games down, and his thing was always, ‘I don’t take games down, I don’t miss games.’ It was something he’d never had to deal with before.”
The injury meant that Harden had to spend his 2021 offseason – already shortened due to the pandemic schedule – rehabilitating instead of working out. Then things in Brooklyn went haywire.
First, there was the whole Kyrie Irving vaccination mess. Additionally, Harden and Durant, according to multiple Nets sources, clashed during the season: Durant didn’t think Harden was in top physical shape and told him so; Harden, meanwhile, struggled to adjust to an ecosystem where everything no longer suited him. According to a friend, Harden also became frustrated with the Nets’ training staff and its focus on maintenance, rest, and recovery; after all, in Houston he ran the stadium stairs and elevators—sometimes even after games—and never got hurt.
“Once he got to a certain point, James was just finished,” a Nets staffer said.
I asked Harden how he would describe his time in Brooklyn. Result. His first response was that it was hard because “I couldn’t get my health back.” Then he paused.
“I don’t mean, like, just talking to someone or anything. It was just that there was no structure and neither do superstars, they need structure. That’s what allows us to be the best players and leaders for our respective organizations,” he said.
This was five days before the Nets fired head coach Steve Nash. It had also been four months since Durant had asked to be traded.
“I just feel,” Harden continued, “internally, things weren’t like I expected when I was looking to be traded there. I think everyone knows that. And I knew people would speak up and say, ‘Stop it’ and all that stuff. , but then the next summer, the other superstar there [Durant] wanted out.So it’s like: Am I still the quitter?
Harden began looking for a deal with Philadelphia, where he could reunite with Morey and team up with another MVP candidate in Embiid. It was completed in February, just before the NBA’s trade deadline.
“He was really excited to be traded,” Payne said. “He felt like he was starting over. Going to Philly brought that joy back.”
Kevin Durant and James Harden are friends off the court, but they couldn’t make an on court partnership work in Brooklyn. (Mike Stobe/Getty Images)
Wayward hamstring sidelined him for his first four games with the team. Then it came back and it sounded electric. He and Embiid developed quick chemistry in the field. In his first four games in the uniform – all blowout victories – he averaged 27 points and 12 assists.
But as the season progressed, the hamstring became an issue once again. “Every game,” Harden said, “you guys that I could normally get away with or certain moves that I’d always hit, it just wasn’t happening.” Its efficiency at the limit collapsed. His shots were blocked more than ever. He wasn’t drawing the same amount of fouls. The unstoppable, descending force that pummeled opponents in Houston was gone.
His limitations were most evident in the playoffs, particularly in the second round against the Heat. The once-in-a-generation blast off the dribble appeared just jerky. Plus, he seemed unsure of how to stand up for himself. When asked to explain his passivity in the Game 6 loss, he told reporters: “We ran our attack and the ball didn’t come back to me.”
The performance – and the quote – fueled Harden’s narrative unreliable in big games.
“I was traded for a situation where you have a guy in Joel Embiid, who in my opinion should have been the MVP and everything was geared towards Joel, everything was Joel, Joel, Joel,” Harden told me. “What I understood, that’s how they’ve sounded all year, and so I was trying to fit in. It was never like, ‘Here, you’re James Harden, this is how we want you to run the show.’ That’s the kind of role I was playing.”
I’ve asked people connected to Harden to explain his no-show in Game 6.
Scott Pera, who coached Harden at Artesia High School and Arizona State of California, told a story about having to get Harden to shoot harder at both levels because Harden was more concerned with making sure his new teammates “they understood what kind of teammate he was”. Several former high-level Rockets employees said they didn’t know what happened against the Heat, but defended his overall playoff history.
“Many times he ran out of gas with us,” one told me. “It wasn’t him choking or anything.”
“There is no answer,” he said. “I don’t make excuses. I got into a situation where, you know, [I was] trying to figure things out, it wasn’t entirely healthy, it happened. I don’t have an excuse. And no matter what I say, someone has something negative to say or a rebuttal.”
I carried over what Pera had shared about his worries about taking too many shots at the expense of his teammates.
“Yeah, but I’m over it,” Harden replied. “For example, I led the league in scoring. But again, for me it was a different situation.
“You have to adjust instead of run the show, and frankly, I hadn’t been put in that ‘adjust’ situation since I was in Oklahoma City, like, 10 years ago. And also, I wasn’t healthy. So all of this together was very for me, which I really don’t expect people to feel sorry for me, and I’d rather just not talk about it and keep to myself and keep pushing, but you asked me to.
Later, I asked about his struggles in elimination games.
“I had some bad games in the closeout games. Not all of them were bad,” he said. “Frankly, a lot of times our team wasn’t good enough to compete for championships, if you’re being honest.
“There’s only so much I can do.”
Following the playoff loss and his call-up to Payne, Harden prioritized his health. That meant letting his hamstring heal, then doing intense strength and conditioning work, then finally jumping into recovery runs.
“Work was never the issue,” Harden said. “Like, you don’t get the top two in MVP voting for many years without working hard. It’s just having my body in a place where I could put that work.”
Every person I spoke to for this story described Harden as a hard worker, but last summer even his friends noticed a difference. He asked Payne to help him build a gym in his backyard, and so Payne laid down about 40 square feet of green grass, covered it with a tent, and filled the space with tubs of ice, sleds, tires, and weights.
In previous summers, Harden would sometimes answer FaceTime calls from a club or friend’s recording studio, perhaps with an alcoholic beverage in hand; now he was always at the gym with a sweat-soaked beard and a recovery drink nearby.
He hasn’t given up on the fun altogether. He celebrated with teammates in the Hamptons at the annual Fourth of July party hosted by Michael Rubin — a former limited partner of the Sixers and one of Harden’s closest friends — and celebrated his 33rd birthday on a yacht with, among others , former teammate Durant (“He and I are cool,” Harden said. “We did a couple of summer road trips together”), Future and Travis Scott. Harden punctuated that night by throwing his birthday cake into the ocean.
“At the time, it seemed like the best place to go,” Harden told me. “I don’t know why I was handed the cake. I definitely wasn’t in the right frame of mind.”
Nights like this were rare, though. Last summer, after attending the University of Houston gymnasium where Kelvin Sampson, a former Rockets assistant, now serves as head coach, Sampson told Harden, “This is the best shape I’ve ever seen you in.” “.
“For the past couple of years,” Harden said, “I wasn’t in a space where I could have done that.”
James Harden is reportedly accepting a $15 million discount with the 76ers and deserves credit
James Harden reportedly agrees to $15M discount with the 76ers and deserves credit
As the summer wore on, Harden worked to establish himself as a foreman and build chemistry. He had tried it a bit the season before — Sixers forward Georges Niang shared a story about Harden inviting him to join his group for dinner hours after Niang botched a late-game possession in a loss to the Denver Nuggets – but now he felt like he had more agency. On the same subject : 10 Best Classic Educational Entertainment Video Games, Ranked. He organized a week-long unofficial mini-team camp in Los Angeles. When a Sixers strength coach organized a Sunday morning group workout for team personnel, Harden was the only player to join.
But he’s devoted the greatest effort to refining the Embiid partnership on which the Sixers’ season hinges — and Harden’s ability to flip the narrative that colors his career — depends.
Harden and Russell Westbrook were teammates in Oklahoma City and Houston but never got that elusive title. (Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
It started with hangouts away from basketball.
Harden and Embiid partied together with Rubin on July 4 and during Major League Baseball All-Star Weekend. When Harden hosted an August event to celebrate the release of his new wine brand, Embiid, an introvert whose favorite nighttime activity is staying at home in his sweats, came out in support.
“They talk more than any combination of superstars I’ve ever had together,” Morey said. Several people close to both stars have also said that the two get along great.
But relationships off the pitch don’t always breed success on the pitch. Just look at Harden’s history, especially with friends like Westbrook and Durant. I pointed out to Harden that he seemed to have a record of fighting superstar teammates.
“Who said it didn’t work?” he asked me. “We simply didn’t have enough talent. There were better teams than us. But if we had won, everything would have been fine.”
Dwight Howard in fallout with James Harden and leaving Kobe for Houston Rockets
Dwight Howard on fallout with James Harden and leaving Kobe for Houston Rockets
The Sixers Brain Trust recognized that blending the games and styles of Harden and Embiid would be a process. They are quick to point out that last season the two, statistically, formed the most powerful pick-and-roll combination in the league, but also how few games they played together (41, including the playoffs).
It’s why Rivers met his two stars multiple times this past offseason, and he even invited Harden over for dinner at his home in Los Angeles a handful of times. (“The way teams grow is to talk and be together,” Rivers said.) That’s why, Morey said, the Sixers made the decision before the season to give Harden and Embiid more minutes together. That’s why, Harden said, he and Embiid are always discussing details like spacing and preferred spots to receive the ball.
“He’s trying to figure out how we can make each other better,” Harden told me. “Getting my shots, but also trying to make Joel’s job a lot easier so he doesn’t have to go up against two or three guys every possession, because I know what that feels like.”
Despite early season losses, there were glimmers of progress, of stars leaving their comfort zones. When I asked Harden if his decline in field goal attempts and increase in midrange jumpers was due to the fact that, at his age, it was now more difficult for him to reach the basket, he laughed at the suggestion that he miss a step.
“It’s the way our team is built,” he said. “Our big men aren’t lob threats that get behind the big defender and push him down the field, so there’s always a big man in front of me. So it makes more sense for me to shoot the mid-range shot or a float rather than trying to attract contact.”
But the developing chemistry was soon put to the test.
In early November against the Washington Wizards, Harden pulled a tendon in his right foot. The injury sidelined him for 14 games. In that stretch, it was hard not to notice how much more active and effective Embiid seemed. He’d had a slow start — which he and the team said was due to an offseason foot injury that sapped his conditioning — but now, with everything revolving around him, he was once again playing like an MVP and the Sixers defense was once again stifling their opponents.
Embiid showered Harden with compliments throughout that stretch, as the team went 8-6. “Since he’s been here, he’s accepted everything we’ve asked of him… He’s such a good playmaker, you have to put the ball in his hand… He’s so damn good…” But he also made his preferences clear.
He told reporters numerous times that the Sixers had stopped turning on the screens, Harden’s long-preferred defensive scheme. “I think at the beginning of the year, the mistake we made was trying to go from one to five often,” he told reporters. “I can do it, but, like, that’s not what I’m good at.”
When I asked Embiid about adjusting to the other end of the court, he said: “It’s kind of like, a lot on my shoulders, because we play ‘late’ a lot. So, it’s really up to me to make sure the offense continues.” to move”.
“Delay” has been a longtime Embiid staple, an alignment where he takes the ball at the top of the key – where Harden likes to orchestrate – and handles the offense with a widened floor. Earlier in the season, a rival scout told me the Sixers didn’t run that set as much as they did in years past. I asked Embiid if that was true.
“We weren’t, but we are now,” she told me. “We have to keep doing it.”
In late November, when Harden was still sidelined, I asked Morey about the partnership, told him how these quotes might leave some skeptics that his two stars could thrive together.
“I think that’s just a narrow way of looking at it,” Morey said. “When the stars come into the game and they know the other isn’t playing, their job is conceptually easier, because they know that unless they have a great game, we probably aren’t winning. Whereas if we are both, I I think they both have to sacrifice their game a little bit – and in this case I don’t even like that word. It’s more edit. But that’s true for every NBA champion. I actually think we’re structured and built a certain way it’s like most titled teams”.
So Morey, who bases nearly all team building decisions on his side’s championship chances, believes this Harden and Embiid partnership has the potential to capture that elusive ring?
“We are over the threshold,” he said.
Joel Embiid and Harden seem to understand each other. (Jeff Haynes/NBAE via Getty Images)
Harden didn’t want to take any chances after his recent foot injury. He had worked too much.
She started by enlisting the help of a foot and rehabilitation specialist named Esia Rivera. He also convinced Paul Fabritz, a popular coach in NBA circles, to move from the West Coast to Philadelphia for the month. The group treated Harden’s foot, but also used the time off to further strengthen his hamstring. As Harden watched Embiid dominate and players like Shake Milton, Tobias Harris and DeAnthony Melton flourish, and also how PJ Tucker struggled, he thought about how he could best assert himself upon his return.
He struggled in his first game back — a 4-for-19 clunker in a loss to the tank Rockets — but found his rhythm after that. The incurable backsteps and dazzling exhausts were still there. He was also spraying the ball to shooters from the post. And throw forward passes from the backcourt. And also pull up for mid-range jumpers.
“James did a great job getting easy shots from everyone else,” Embiid said after Harden collected 21 points and 15 assists in a 123-103 loss of the Sacramento Kings on Tuesday, the team’s third straight win .
In one of those wins, a 131-113 loss to the Charlotte Hornets, Harden dished out 16 assists, 10 of which went to Embiid. Harden hit him on the rolls. He hit it with pops. He hit him on the cuts. Embiid finished the game with the most taxing 53-point game you’ve ever seen. He and Harden have shared the pitch for 278 minutes this season; in that span, the Sixers outscored their opponents by 60 points.
After the win over the Kings, Harden answered reporters’ questions about what worked. He spoke about how he’s trying to “pick up the pace and get the ball up as fast as possible” and how he wants to “create chances” for Embiid, but also how his job is to help keep the team’s defensive specialists, like Tucker and Matisse Thybulle, engaged.
“As much as they help me defensively, my job is to help them offensively,” he said, “and put them in positions where they can easily get chances around the rim or catching and shooting opportunities.”
Later that night, she posted a photo of herself on Instagram. In the photo he’s standing in the doorway to the Sixers’ home locker room, limbs loose, face curled up in a beaming smile.
“By the time I stop enjoying myself,” she wrote, “I’ll be done.”
Yaron Weitzman is an NBA writer for FOX Sports. He is the author of “Tanking to the Top: The Philadelphia 76ers and the Most Audacious Process in the History of Professional Sports”. Follow him on Twitter @YaronWeitzman.
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