Former Boston Celtics star Antoine Walker lauded the team for not pulling the trigger on a James Harden trade. The Celtics were linked with the Beard at some point before the Houston Rockets shipped him to Brooklyn, where he joined Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.
Things are working just fine for Harden and his new team but Walker doesn’t believe it would have been the same case with the C’s. The player recently joined the “All Things Covered” podcast with Patrick Peterson and Bryant McFadden to discuss a variety of topics, including the time he spent 36 hours playing spades with Michael Jordan and also the Celtics’ decision to not trade for the 2018 NBA MVP.
“I’m not a James Harden guy, and it’s not personal but you can’t win with that style,” Walker said, via CBS Sports. “He’s in a very unique situation with [Kevin] Durant and Kyrie [Irving], but it remains to be seen … I don’t think you can win with his style. Any time it takes a guy six, seven, eight dribbles to get to where he has to go, that’s a problem. It works today because it’s more of a pick-and-roll league, so he gets away with a lot of things now, but I would not leverage my future for James Harden.”
He credited the C’s for that move but also criticized Danny Ainge for letting Gordon Hayward go. The former Utah Jazz star is now helping the Charlotte Hornets compete in the Eastern Conference, changing the face of that team alongside Terry Rozier and rookie sensation LaMelo Ball.
“Where Danny Ainge made a mistake is he let Gordon Hayward walk out the door without getting anything in return for him,” Walker said. “If you know you can’t pay him, you have to do a sign-and-trade and get a legitimate big. I think they should’ve went after Dwight Howard much harder, and you could’ve probably traded for Andre Drummond and added him to the group.”
The Celtics have recovered their best form in recent games but they were struggling to get the results before their 4-game winning streak. Even Ainge said they aren’t good enough to win a championship and at some point, it looked they were good enough to even make the playoffs.
Right now Harden is balling and improving his game a lot with the Nets. He has made sacrifices to let Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant shine and we’ll never know if he would’ve done the same with Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.
