James Harden was more than what the Rockets could've ever dreamed.
Late one Saturday night, eight Octobers ago, the Rockets dealt Kevin Martin, Jeremy Lamb and two first round picks to the Oklahoma City Thunder for a package that was headlined by James Harden the NBA's reigning Sixth Man of the Year. The team quickly made him the bearded face of the franchise and he didn't disappoint.
At that time, the Rockets failed to qualify for postseason the three previous seasons and advanced past the first round of the Western Conference Playoffs just once since 1997. They were the epitome of an irrelevant franchise, but Harden changed that.
He scored 37 points in his Rockets debut three nights after the trade, and dropped 45 points two nights later. He played at an elite level for eight years, rarely missing games, no matter how much his wrist or ankles might be bothering him. He won the MVP in 2018, finished second in 2015, 2017, and 2019, while registering a third place finish last season, and with Harden leading the way, the Rockets flourished on the floor.
He helped end their playoff drought in 2013 and for six of the next seven seasons, the Rockets finished in the top for of the Western Conference standings. They advanced past the first round in five of the last six seasons, reaching the Western Conference Finals twice, but they could never get over the hump and after months of speculation and awkwardness, the Harden era is over, and the divorce was as ugly as it gets.
Harden expressed his desire to be traded in October, around the time Daryl Morey stepped down as general manager, and turned down a $103 million extension with the team in November. Then, instead of reporting to training camp on time with the rest of his teammates, he popped up on social media partying in Atlanta and Las Vegas. He was later fined the maximum amount by the NBA and forced to self-isolate after attending a party two days before opening night which had to be postponed.
Once the season did start Harden did his part by playing in all but one of the Rockets first nine games, but it never felt like he was committed to what the Rockets were trying to do on the floor and that came to a head after a second uncompetitive loss to the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday night.
"We're just not good enough," Harden bluntly declared. "We don't, obviously, chemistry, talent-wise, just everything, and it was clear these last few games."
After dancing around his trade demand for months, Harden dove straight in.
"I love this city. I literally have done everything that I can. This situation is crazy, it's something that I don't think can be fixed, so, yeah. Thanks."
With that, he stood up and walked off the podium. It would be his last act as a member of the Rockets.
"Obviously, it's disrespectful but everyone has words to their opinion," Rockets center DeMarcus Cousins said of Harden's declaration hours before Wednesday's blockbuster trade was first reported by ESPN. "We feel a certain way about some of his actions."
Animosity had been brewing in the Rockets locker room towards Harden and a source told SportsRadio 610 Cousins confronted him about his attitude following Tuesday's game which led to a shouting match between the two. It wasn't the first time Cousins took Harden to task this season and on Wednesday with Harden absent from practice Cousins ripped Harden's professionalism.
“The disrespect started way before any interview," Cousins said. "Just the approach to training camp, showing up the way he did, the antics off the court, the disrespect started way before, so this isn’t something that all of the sudden happened last night."
Graceful exits are tough to come by in the NBA, especially when a player is clearly unhappy in his situation, but the last two months of James Harden's tenure with the Rockets seemed especially ugly, culminating with what happened on Tuesday.
At the end of Yao Ming's jersey retirement ceremony four years ago Harden ran towards the seven-foot, six-inch Hall of Famer and jumped in his arms. His number 13 jersey will one day rest next to Yao's in the rafters of Toyota Center. He's by far the best player to wear a Rockets uniform in a quarter century and one of the best players of his era, but for the moment his legacy is tainted by an unseemly exit.
James Harden era was more than what the Rockets could've ever dreamed, but its end was a messy nightmare.