You're gonna love the latest from Ramona Shelburne (I know, I
know) on the Harden affair. She seems to have gotten at least one of Morey and Harden to talk directly, off-the-record. It definitely paints Harden as a whiner and sulker who takes things personally and is never satisfied with where he is, doesn't know what he wants (e.g. he wanted Doc Rivers who had the credibility to push him hard, until it turned out he didn't want that), and can't build the kind of chemistry he needs to be successful.
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/38335993/inside-feud-james-harden-philadelphia-76ers
The scene that sticks with me is the NBA Awards Ceremony in 2018, when Harden was named MVP and looked like he couldn't have given less of a shit about the whole thing. OK OK, I'll stand up here, hand me my damn award, I'm out. It was just the most bizarre reaction for someone for whom it was a crowning individual achievement of his career, in my eyes. He couldn't even crack a smile, even as the presenter waxed poetic about his skills.
At some level, I "get" the sports superstar who is a total egotist, who works as hard as he does for as long as he has so that he can be shining in the bright lights as everyone tells him he's wonderful - it's not what I'd want to become, personally, but it's an archetype we've seen enough that it makes sense to us. Frankly, "Kyrie Irving being an egotist
who's also crazy and thinks he knows everything about everything and drives teammates nuts" is a trope that goes beyond sports, and even if we love to hate him, we "know his kind", don't we? Or the Tom Brady class of player, who is so absurdly competitive that they will do literally anything to win, including driving their teammates too hard and making enemies because nobody cares as much as he does (though some, like KG, make far more friends than enemies). They're all different expressions of neuroticism, distinct but familiar flavors of it. But the way Harden's mind works simply doesn't make sense to me. I just can't grasp what drives him or what he's after. It's like "college students learning about intimate relationships" in terms of the self-sabotage, self-centeredness, capriciousness and amount of stupidity... except that he's over 30 and has been subsumed by the basketball world for nearly all his life. There are no surprises for him anymore, or shouldn't be, anyway. Unless, it seems, you opt into an option year of your contract, shocking your employers, and then demand a trade they didn't expect to have to make - then it's all someone else's fault.
All good that the Lakers are his best opportunity -- and they are: both a great signing for them and a great place for Wood to rebuild his value -- but do we really the silly rhetoric....
