The Houston Rockets finally parted ways with James Harden last week after they accepted a trade offer from the Brooklyn Nets to send the 2018 NBA MVP to the Barclays Center. Seeing how great Harden played alongside Kevin Durant over the weekend, the Nets and their fans have reasons to believe they are the winners of this trade.
Well, the Rockets can say the same seeing all they got in return for Harden. It was a 4-team trade that included the Indiana Pacers and Cleveland Cavaliers to facilitate the whole process. The Rockets finally ended the James Harden saga and they’re excited about their future after all the goods they received in the blockbuster move.
Houston’s GM Rafael Stone recently talked about this whole situation, explaining why he agreed to send Harden to Nets when almost every report suggested the Beard was headed to Philadelphia to join the 76ers.
Via Tim MacMahon of ESPN:
“I don’t think it’s appropriate to talk about the other [offers],” Stone said in a virtual media availability Sunday. “I would say what’s super exciting about this deal is it gives us flexibility. In the NBA, picks, especially high picks, are the best currency. Everybody likes them. Everybody values them. That was great organizationally. It gave us flexibility to do different types of deals as they come up this year, next year or whatever.
“Then we were able to get Victor Oladipo as part of it, along with [Kurucs and Exum], but Victor’s a guy that we’re really excited about. I think he’s excited to be here, and we think he’s very talented, so that was not insignificant from our perspective.”
The Rockets also received a $10.6 million trade exception in the deal. Stone said the Rockets “will aggressively be trying to use” that exception before the deadline in late March.
It was a great deal for the Rockets for all the things they received. Nobody thinks they can compete with their current roster, not even after Victor Oladipo landed in H-Town. The future, though, can bring a lot of good things for this team that tried over and over to win the championship with Harden and just couldn’t do it.
