stashing assets for the 2023 nba offseason

The only two possible "lies" I see:

1) Morey promised a max extension this year and then didn't offer one.

2) Morey promised to trade Harden if Harden opted in, but didn't trade him.

I guess I'm now thinking it was 2), because my sense is Harden never would have opted in if 1) had already happened. He just would have become an UFA and signed with anyone he wanted, no?

he kinda need to opt in and theres only a few teams with enough cap space to sign him to the big contract he wanted and they prob didnt want to and he prob didnt want to play for them, but if he opts in and gets traded then the team that traded for him can resign him next year

of course theres prob not anyone who wants to trade for him and resign him either oh well

see i think opting in was an attempt to maintain his salary for the coming season by forcing a trade. yes by opting out he could have signed anywhere, but i doubt he would be interested in signing with any of the cap space teams and signing a cheap contract somewhere doesn't seem like something he would do.

so to me the lie is pretty obviously point 1, it's the easiest thing that morey could promise and then renege on unilaterally.

feel like morey couldve implied that they were gonna give him a big deal like hey james no promises you know i cant do that but just know that the sixers organization values loyalty highly, which basically amounts to the same think from hardens pov but maybe keeps morey out of trouble

rly curious if there is a no backsies clause in the cba

well there's a pretty obvious reason why harden's agent is backchanneling that he doesn't support this

Joel Embiid removed “Philadelphia” from his location 😬 pic.twitter.com/s7BDZeI6iq

— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) August 15, 2023

uh oh

he should demand a trade to the knicks by putting manhattan as his location

eyes emoji

Going to process down to Maxey Avenue, we'll be pickin' higher.

this rules NBA drama already in mid season form!

https://i.imgflip.com/7vuu2c.jpg

Harden is a millionaire a couple hundred times over. He doesn't have to act in the best interest of optimizing his net worth if he doesn't want to. He's out for justice (as he understands it).

yes! Chief Hélà weighs in!

"Is he Disgruntled Adrian??"

Kyrie Irving replies to Woj's post on James Harden calling Sixers GM Daryl Morey a 'liar' 👀 pic.twitter.com/cEFWLbE6VV

— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) August 14, 2023

in which we learn that kyrie doesn't understand what disgruntled means

Is he Disgruntled Adrian?? sounds like a line from an 80s comedy, nice sentence lol

next sentence sucks tho

Is he Disgruntled Adrian?? is a 1 minute 30 second interlude on a prog album

cut for time snl game show sketch in which a small business owner named adrian (host mark ruffalo) wrestles with the anonymous gripes of their employees

most nba players goal is to win a chip, or maybe win an award. hardens goals are on a higher plane

“James Harden’s goal is to make the Sixers so uncomfortable that they just decide that they cannot bring him back.”

- @wojespn pic.twitter.com/wvKPqlImpx

— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) August 14, 2023

does he want a buyout maybe?

Harden is putting out quotes about playing in China.

no saudi, no credibility

what cba city has the best strip clubs? might need dylannn to weigh in on this

Xxxpost on the China stuff at least what I saw on Twitter was from a fake account

James Harden's tour across China continues, and after calling Philadelphia 76ers president Daryl Morey a liar earlier this week, the former league MVP is now flirting with the idea of playing in China at some point. It's unclear if he meant actually signing with a team in China to play a season, or if he would be interested in the NBA hosting a game in the country like the league has done in the past. But it's clear that he has a fondness for the fans in the country.

"Every time I come here, the love is just like ... it's crazy, you know what I mean?" Harden said, per the Philadelphia Inquirer. "So I feel like they deserve to actually see me come play here. ... Love is always crazy here."

gotta give the guy credit, quite a card to play in his battle with morey to juice the china stuff

i think harden might have overtaken kyrie for (current player) top spot on the messy drama leaderboard. its really close anyway

steel sharpens steel

yup, kyrie saw harden was coming for the throne and had to go to twitter to stand up for harden lol

i will say, in harden’s defense (words i never utter) he did realize brooklyn had turned into a complete madhouse and he needed to get away from kyrie. can’t really fault him on that one. and if morey did lie to him than all this is pretty much justified too — he’s really just answering press conference questions honestly… he hasn’t even seemed emotional about any of it, weirdly.

yeah, i have spent a lot of idle thinking time trying to figure out what makes harden tick with this stuff and none of us will ever know for sure, but it seems like he mostly wants to find a balance of compensation, competitive basketball, and comfort level with the organization. he might weight those things a little more equally than other guys. he is also obviously quick to pull the ripcord when he stops liking his situation but there are a lot of people like that out there.

doesn’t he have an agent? isn’t a lot of this stuff the agent’s job?? like maybe harden can focus on his wicked stepback and his agent can focus on compensation, cultural fit etc

ESPN Sources with @RamonaShelburne: The NBA has launched an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding 76ers star James Harden’s public admonishment of franchise’s President Daryl Morey: https://t.co/8CyXFmu4gx

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) August 19, 2023

lololol second graf contains a sentence that begins like this:

"The league office is believed to be pursuing an understanding of whether Harden was portending..."

you can't investigate something that hasn't happened yet smh

i hate it when someone is portending

xp based on a few hints windhorst has dropped, one group of people who do not have sympathy at all for harden are professional sports agents

you can't investigate something that hasn't happened yet smh

― Tracer Hand, Saturday, August 19, 2023 9:32 AM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2017/06/25/18/minority-report.jpg

harden had no agent after rob pelinka took the lakers job until earlier this year when he hired representation. the current agent was an ex adidas exec whose main qualification for the job, from what i can tell, is being friends with james harden

it’s hard to say how badly harden screwed up bcuz we don’t really know what his priorities are — if his main objective was making $35m this year than he made the right choice opting in. but it seems like he & the new agent repping his first client made a strategic error bcuz no trade market developed and he’s really at morey’s mercy now. if he tries to sabotage his way out of philly it could kill his career. i also do wonder if morey had made the wink wink extension promise with a very prominent agent instead of harden directly whether he’d still feel able to renege on it

Harden's comments to KHOU after the China video seemed to imply that Harden is mad because of Morey hadn't traded him and cancelled talks with the Clippers, rather than a failure to follow through on the promise of an extension. That could be Harden being cagey, but Harden doesn't seem that subtle.

Also, Harden's desire to play somewhere other than Philly was cropping up in stories in the Spring even before the playoffs. It seems like Harden thought he could get a max deal from anyone and never really intended to come back to Philly, even if they offered him the max.

i’m not convinced he never intended to come back to philly. but i do think at this point it’s obvious that he thought he was going to have a max offer from houston and a big offer from philly and he’d have a choice between where he wanted to go. instead he ended up with neither. whoops

Harden's comments to KHOU after the China video seemed to imply that Harden is mad because of Morey hadn't traded him and cancelled talks with the Clippers, rather than a failure to follow through on the promise of an extension. That could be Harden being cagey, but Harden doesn't seem that subtle.

― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Saturday, August 19, 2023 12:35 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

he kind of has to say it's the trade talks because saying it was an implied extension is the thing that would get everyone in lots of trouble. hopefully whoever is advising him at least got him to understand that.

i also do wonder if morey had made the wink wink extension promise with a very prominent agent instead of harden directly whether he’d still feel able to renege on it

― J0rdan S., Saturday, August 19, 2023 12:28 PM (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

good point, seems like morey out maneuvered harden, right into a ditch, classic morey

harden trying to keep everyone out of deep shit. tho if this was actually the source of his anger it would be funny

https://x.com/shamscharania/status/1693656664082096449?s=46&t=delhXlmZBYazm252j4iaFA

timing does match up in that he did it soon after philly said they werent trading him

That's what I was saying last week - Harden's post-China comments make it sound like the China/liar comments were fallout from Morey failing to trade him and now he's stuck in Philly, not because Harden wanted an extension and to remain in Philly. As you said, Harden could be lying to keep everyone out of trouble, but he seems like an emotional guy.