In Season 2 of the ‘Starting 5’ Netflix docu-series, Kevin Durant spoke about how he felt when James Harden initially left the Thunder to join the Rockets. He called out players like LeBron James and Dwyane Wade for rooting on the downfall of Thunder’s big three back then with Durant, Harden and Russell Westbrook, and a disingenuous reaction that made it seem like they are supporting Harden.
When Durant’s former teammate Kendrick Perkins saw this reaction, he also pointed out that Durant knew Harden was leaving the Thunder even before the trade was confirmed. On a recent episode of the ‘Road Trippin’ podcast, Perkins revealed that Durant felt LeBron James and Dwyane Wade manipulated James Harden into thinking that he needs his own team and can be a franchise player.
“He f**king knew before this. He f**king knew before James and the tweets came out before James left,” claimed Perkins. “KD came back. They were all at the Olympics, right? They had just won gold, James was there, KD was there, Russ was there. And we went into training camp and KD was like, ‘Bro, we going to lose James.'”
“And I’m like, ‘What you mean?’ He’s like, ‘Bro, we going to lose James.’ And I was like, ‘Why?’ He was like, ‘Bron, D.Wade, all of them was telling him that he need his own team. So, I’m like, ‘No, man. JH!'”
“And then all of a sudden, the contract negotiation started. And so I went to holler James like ‘what’s up?’ He was like ‘no I want the max. I want to be a franchise guy.’”
“But again like I understand living in the past but like going back and revisiting the past but if you ask James right now would he have rather stayed in Oklahoma or had the career that he had when he left? I guarantee you he would have took that career and that path because I didn’t know he.. I knew he was going to be good. I didn’t know he was going to be great,” said Perkins in conclusion.
In the 2011-12 season, Harden averaged 16.8 points, 4.1 rebounds and 3.7 assists while shooting 39% from three-point range and won the Sixth Man of the Year. Following the 2012 NBA Finals when the Thunder lost to the Heat, James Harden was up for a contract extension with the Thunder.
But considering the abysmal performance he had in the NBA Finals that year, and players like Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook on the team, a demand for a max contract at the time seemed a bit over the top. Despite averaging over 30 minutes per game in that series, Harden only averaged 12.4 points, 4.8 rebounds and 3.6 assists while shooting 31% from beyond the arc and three games with single-digit scoring.
Subsequently, he was traded to the Rockets which eventually ended the Thunder’s championship ambitions for good. Durant still blames LeBron James and Dwyane Wade for manipulating that situation in their own favor during the subsequent London Olympics in 2012.
Harden has also admitted that he was “mad as hell” to have left the Thunder at that time since it was a couple million dollars at the time which changed the course of a potentially championship-contending team.
Do you think if Harden stayed on the Thunder his career would have taken that trajectory that it did on the Rockets eventually? Or do you think he should have picked staying on a championship-contending roster and being a role player alongside Durant and Westbrook? Let us know your opinions in the comment section.
