NBA Rumors: Potential Cavs trade, Damian Lillard update, Harden regrade

NBA Rumors: Regrading 76ers-Nets James Harden trade

James Harden has requested a trade from the Philadelphia 76ers and made his displeasure with team president Daryl Morey public. The Sixers are determined to bring Harden into training camp after shutting down trade talks, but it’s hard to imagine that going well. Harden can’t hold out for more then 30 days without severe consequences, but he’s allowed to make life hell on earth for the Sixers as long as he wants.

Joel Embiid has stirred up concern with recent alterations to his Twitter bio and P.J. Tucker is posting public support of Harden to his Instagram, so it’s safe to say the Sixers are sprinting headlong toward a deeply uncomfortable training camp. It’s not the ideal start to Nick Nurse’s tenure, that’s for sure.

There’s no reason to believe a Harden trade gets done in the immediate future given Daryl Morey’s track record. He let Ben Simmons hold out for months so he could make the right trade at the right time. That ‘right trade’ was the James Harden trade. Philadelphia sent Ben Simmons, Seth Curry, Andre Drummond, and draft picks to Brooklyn in exchange for Harden and Paul Millsap in February of 2022.

At the time, our Ian Levy handed the Nets a ‘B+’ and the Sixers an ‘A-‘ in the trade grade book. With the benefit of hindsight, let’s engage in a brief regrade.

Both teams have probably received less than expected from this trade. The Sixers wanted to break past the second round with Harden and Embiid. No dice. The Nets envisioned Simmons as a the connective tissue that would bind the Durant and Irving-era Nets together. Uh, no dice. Durant and Irving both requested trades and the Nets are now left on the outskirts of NBA contention with Simmons coming off the worst season of his career.

Simmons was plainly terrible for the Nets in his return season: 6.9 points, 6.3 rebounds, and 6.1 assists on 55.9 TS% in 26.3 minutes. He appeared in 42 games (33 starts) and missed most of the Nets’ stretch run with a lingering back injury. Drummond left after his first half-season with Brooklyn. Curry was largely ineffective in 2022-23 and bolted to join Kyrie Irving in Dallas over the summer.

Harden has been much better for the Sixers. He was one of the best guards in the NBA last season, averaging 21.0 points, 6.0 rebounds, and a league-leading 10.7 assists per game on 60.7 TS%. And yet, the Sixers made two postseason runs with Harden. Both ended with the Sixers’ customary second-round exit. Now he’s in the final year of his deal asking for a trade, never to return. That’s certainly not what Morey hoped for when he passed up Tyrese Haliburton or De’Aaron Fox from Sacramento to reunite with his dear friend from Houston.

With the Harden-Morey bromance dead in the water and the Sixers facing another offseason of controversy and discomfort, it’s getting to the point where Embiid’s future with the team is genuinely in doubt. The Sixers run the risk of wasting the rest of Embiid’s prime if he does stick around, because there’s no way Morey lands a star of Harden’s caliber via trade.

Philadelphia had to make this trade. It was the ‘right’ move. No risk, no reward. But it certainly hasn’t aged well and Morey probably had better offers on the table in hindsight. Meanwhile, the Nets will hope Simmons can salvage some of his past stardom to make this trade a little more palatable.

It feels like a lose-lose at the moment.

Sixers regrade: C-

Nets regrade: D