Harden Trade Happens!

Daniel Waddleton

Nov 1st, 2023

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WAS THERE EVER a doubt?

The Greatest trade demander of all-time has once again proven he is and forever will be unrivaled. Defying all the odds, Harden has not only found a way to get traded again but is now 3/3 on his preferred destination.

The Greatest Ever.

According to ESPN, “The 76ers sent Harden, P.J. Tucker and Filip Petrusev to the Clippers for Marcus Morris, Robert Covington, Nic Batum, KJ Martin, a 2028 unprotected first-round pick, two second-round picks, a 2029 pick swap and an additional first-round pick from the Oklahoma City Thunder”.

“The Clippers are sending a 2027 first-round pick swap to Oklahoma City, clearing the way for the Thunder to move a protected 2026 first-round pick to the 76ers, sources said. The Clippers are sending a 2024 and a 2029 second-round pick to the Sixers in the deal too”, as published on ESPN.

Now let me be clear, Harden was one of my favorite players in the 2010’s. The basketball nerd in me used to marvel at the way he would play basketball. The heliocentric offense was new at that time, and I was always so fascinated the way the offense just revolved all around him as if he was the sun and his teammates were planets.

And as much as people want to say it never worked because they never won a championship in Houston, they were the only team to ever come close to beating the Kevin Durant Warriors, and to this day I still believe they win the 2017 championship if Chris Paul never got injured.

I never minded his foul drawing either, as I kind of thought it was almost fascinating in itself. It wasn’t like he was cheating or breaking the rules, he had basically just found a loophole in every single foul rule.

So for somebody who defended Harden throughout all the playoff flameouts, through all the foul baiting, and through the first two trade requests, it should be slightly alarming that even I couldn’t back him up on this one. Why he wouldn’t just play out his contract in Philadelphia with a chance to compete for a title and then hit free agency, I have no idea.

But as I said at the top, he’s the greatest ever at this thing. If he wants out, he’s not only getting out, but he's going to wherever he so desires. So now that it’s official, let’s take a quick look at this trade for both parties.

Philadelphia 76ers

I think Philly did the right thing. It didn’t appear Harden had any real interest in playing valuable minutes for this team again, and it looked like his attempts to return to the team were more so just to try to be a nuisance then to actually help. So they made this move as quickly as possible and will now move forward with Tyrese Maxey as the lead guard.

It also made sense to do this move now because the 76ers are 2-1 and Maxey looks like he’s poised for an all-star selection this season. The offense implemented by new head coach Nick Nurse has catered to Maxey and others on the roster’s strength, while moving away from the James Harden ball dominate pick and roll offense.

Since the season started the 76ers have run the 3rd least amount of pick and rolls in the league, which is obviously not an offense that fits with the way Harden would prefer to play.

I’m not going to cover Maxey too much in this piece because I wrote about him in the new offense in my “Around the Key Weekly” last week (go check it out!).

Some have wondered how Embiid would play without Harden this year, because Harden was very good last season at setting up Embiid in different spots he likes to score in the pick and roll. No need to fear though, as the new dribble handoff and motion system has been just as effective for Embiid. It's just benefitted him in a different way.

Now with all this movement and spacing on the floor, Embiid has become much more difficult to gameplan for. There’s a lot more unpredictability with the offense and it has even made Embiid’s passing that was once a weakness in his game, at least appear as more of a strength through 3 games. He’s averaging 7.3 assists a game now up from his 4.2 last season.

Where he struggled most in a passing role last season was out of double teams, where he was very prone to turnovers. Now with all the off-ball movement we didn’t see during Harden’s tenure in Philly, it has made it easier for Embiid to find open guys with everybody cutting and moving without the basketball.

As somebody who’s been a very big Embiid critic especially in the postseason, this new offense gives me hope that we could see a new version of Embiid come playoff time. He’s still scoring the ball, averaging 31 points a game, but the offense overall just doesn’t have that stagnate feel it had last year even if they still were an overall solid offensive group.

Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid appear to be one of the most lethal duos in basketball right now.

LOOKING AT THIS trade from a less immediate perspective, the 76ers were also able to move off of PJ Tucker in this deal. While he can still be an impactful player as a rebounder and defender, Tucker’s age and diminished shooting ability has made this a tough contract to be holding onto considering it goes into next year as well.

Tucker is owed 11 million this year, and then has a player option for next season at 11.5 (Safe to assume he’s picking that one up, lol). By getting off this contract Philly can maximize the amount of cap space they will have this upcoming summer, as you start to get the feel Philly may be playing a little bit of a long game here.

Philly is currently projected to have 74 million dollars in cap space this off-season, which is more than enough to not only sign a max player, but also sign other supporting pieces to fill out the roster.

Some potential free agents could be guys like Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Pascal Siakam, DeMar DeRozan, or OG Anunoby. There are also some smaller salary guys who could be nice fits in Philly like Kentavious Caldwell-Pope or Buddy Hield.

It’s fair to question if it’s a mistake to take a “gap” year from being a real contender in the East when you know the clock is ticking on Joel Embiid, but it appears 76ers GM Daryl Morey feels this is the best option moving forward.

The other move Morey could make from here is to make another trade, as they were able to acquire multiple picks and expiring contracts in this deal with Los Angeles that would allow them to be able to go after an unhappy star.

A name that immediately comes to mind is Chicago Bulls guard Zach Lavine, who despite some questions about his willingness to pass, could be a great fit in Philly if he bought into a role now being on a contender.

Lavine is a premier scorer in this league, as he’s currently averaging 24.5 points a game right now. He also posted a 39-point masterclass in the play-in tournament just last season vs Toronto.

While most of Lavine’s work has been done on ball in Chicago and the 76ers could certainly use that especially late in games, I also believe he can be really affective off the ball in Philly's system. He shot catch and shoot 3’s at a 42% clip last season, and he could be an extremely effective cutter and lob threat throughout the flow of the 76ers new offense.

Other players who come to mind could be more defensive minded with solid shooting wings, like OG Anunoby or Jerami Grant.

At the end of the day, it appears Darrell Morey and the 76ers are left with two options, and how these next couple months before February go for this team will probably have a lot to do with determining which route they take.

Los Angeles Clippers

Now for the more interesting team in this trade, the Clippers. With this team ready to move into their brand new and extremely anticipated arena named the “Intuit Dome”, owner Steve Balmer wants to leave no chance that his team won’t at least be interesting.

Well, he's definitely done that. For better or worse.

The Clippers now possess a roster that includes Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Norman Powell, Ivica Zubac, and Bones Hyland. If this was a fantasy basketball league this team would be awesome, but unfortunately for LA it’s not and they will need to make this work on a basketball court.

To give some background on this Clippers season so far they are 3-1 with the league's best point differential at +66.

They have been led by Paul George who is averaging a team high 27.3 points per game on 53/47/95 shooting splits. Russell Westbrook has also been a pleasant surprise for this team even with George and Leonard back in the lineup as he has made plays on both ends of the floor and has been a fun and exciting lead guard for them.

Kawhi has struggled a little bit out of the gate especially last night vs Orlando, but I don’t anticipate this continuing and I’m sure LA is more concerned about him staying healthy than his current production on the floor.

(I’m writing this late Tuesday night and don’t yet know if Paul George and Kawhi Leonard will be playing the back-to-back tomorrow, but I am very interested to see if they not only play but perform on a back-to-back).

Even Bones Hyland, the only guy in NBA history who couldn't fit in playing with Nikola Jokic, has fallen into a nice role on this team and has played valuable minutes off the bench for them.

Now insert James Harden, one of the most ball dominant players ever, but happens to be the elite playmaking point guard that the Clippers have been searching for since they acquired George and Leonard in 2019. They hope Harden will bring his 2021 Brooklyn Nets self, when he bought into a real point-guard role where he fit very nicely next to Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant as the teams facilitator.

I’ll bet the Clippers are also hoping to maybe tap back into a version of a young Oklahoma City James Harden. The once catch and shoot sniper who moved off-ball on offense and didn’t need the ball all the time to make a difference. You may not even remember he was a great catch and shoot player because it’s been so long since he’s consistently done that, but over the past 10 years Harden has been a nearly 40% catch and shoot 3-point shooter.

Now is that what the Clippers are going to get? Probably not (even though it would massively help the team and Harden’s next contract). His attempts at these shots over the past 5 years have only been just over 1 a game. Look on the bright side though Clipper fans, last year he got that number up to 1.8 so maybe we can break 2 this season!

I’m sure the Clippers would be ok with just settling for 2021 Nets Harden and hope that he isn’t worried about shots and doing his own thing as Leonard and George are clearly the go to guys on this roster.

The player this trade will most likely affect is Russell Westbrook who unfortunately for him looked like he was starting to settle into a nice role for this team. At the end of the day Harden is just a better player then Westbrook at this point and both guys being high usage rate players, it makes no sense having them on the court together.

So I assume the move will be to bring Westbrook off the bench to run that unit while Harden plays a majority of his minutes with Leonard and George. I'm hoping we still see Westbrook and George lineup groupings though because for whatever reason Paul George really does play at his best with Westbrook running things.

The closing lineup potential is interesting with this team as I anticipate it will be a version of Harden, Powell, George, Leonard, and Zubac. They also could go back with the small ball look they loved using in the past, playing newly acquired PJ Tucker at the 5 instead of Zubac.

Tucker obviously has experience playing the small ball 5 most recently in Houston when they used the “micro-ball” lineup that ironically featured then and current teammates Westbrook and Harden. He also has shown the ability to guard center both in his time is Milwaukee and Philly since leaving Houston.

I’m not sure how much they will utilize that lineup though, because ever since they brought in Mason Plumlee, they have seemed to move away from small ball playing most lineups with either Zubac or Plumlee on the floor. Was bringing in Tucker a way to go back to small ball, or just a guy they felt could help them rebound and defend from the forward position.

The Westbrook and Harden pairing lasted just 1 short season in Houston, do they find more success this season?

At the end of the day, this team seems to have more questions then answers as we await the teams first game with James Harden and PJ Tucker in the lineup. I’m not sure when those questions will even be answered as they start playing together because I imagine this will take some time to figure out.

Either way though, both teams involved in this trade will be very interesting teams to watch from here on out this season and we will see if either team has more moves up their sleeves as the season progresses.

Trade Grades

76ers: B

Clippers: B-