CAMDEN, N.J. — When Daryl Morey first traded for James Harden as the general manager of the Houston Rockets, he didn’t end up having to trade him away. He stepped down from his role before the new regime eventually offloaded Harden. Trading for him again as the president of basketball operations of the Philadelphia 76ers ended in a messy breakup. Nearly 21 months into their reunion with the Sixers, he sent him away to his new destination of choice, the Los Angeles Clippers.
The day after the Sixers agreed on a trade that netted the Sixers four players and four draft picks in exchange for Harden, P.J. Tucker and Filip Petrusev, Morey addressed the fallout of the saga and where the team goes from here following its Wednesday practice. He thanked his now-former players, discussed what Marcus Morris, Nicolas Batum, Robert Covington and K.J. Martin can bring to the team and explained how the draft capital sets the franchise up well to address any holes in the future. He also spent time being asked about and discussing what happened between him and Harden.
Morey landing Harden via trade at the beginning of the 2011-12 season kickstarted a run of title contention for the Rockets. The style of basketball they deployed together has intertwined their basketball legacies. He declined to divulge where their relationship stands now and thinks that the end of his Sixers tenure will just be “a blip and something that we won't remember when we're at James' Hall of Fame induction someday.” Still, the events that transpired made an imprint that will take a long time to fully buff out.
When Morey traded for Harden in February of 2022 — sending a package that included a disgruntled Ben Simmons, draft picks and role players to the Brooklyn Nets — the Sixers and their fans felt reinvigorated. But the view offered by hindsight includes a few nice patches sitting in an overall grim, dreary landscape. Knowing the full scope of the drama that Harden unleashed when he felt snubbed by Morey and the fact that he wasn’t able to help Philly advance past the second round, does Morey regret his reunion with Harden?
“In this case, I think with the information we had at the time — which is I think how you can judge things — it was a very good trade,” the Sixers' lead executive said. “Obviously, we were in a tough situation then and when you're in that and you jump to something, you want to continue to give yourself a chance to win — just like this trade did. Obviously, this one still is to be written a little bit with like, some of the assets we got.”
Morey said that, in order to exit a situation as sticky as a star player demanding to be traded, a team has to make a bet. The Sixers' gamble on Harden failed in a very public, messy fashion. But at the time, it looked as if Philly had hit (or at least come close to) the jackpot.
“This bet I thought was very good,” Morey said of the trade-deadline blockbuster that brought Harden to the Sixers. “I continue to think it was the right bet…Being good at my job requires me to go back and think, ‘Were there any different paths to take?’ I don't see any knowing all the things that were available. So, I think it was the right bet. We'd do the same thing.”
At various times in Harden's Sixers tenure, everyone who kept up with the team would have agreed without a doubt. Harden led the league in assists with Philly and generated great chemistry with Joel Embiid. He dropped a pair of 40-point games in the playoffs that powered crucial wins. Tyrese Maxey said that Harden instilled in him a greater sense of confidence. The Beard uplifted fans from the concerns that Simmons' firm holdout would tank the team's future totally beyond repair.
But at what is now officially the end of Harden's time with the Sixers, feelings of disappointment and exhaustion run rampant. Harden's saga left Philly with some pieces to pick up. Rather than landing a new star in return, the Sixers received role players, draft picks and extra flexibility to find one. Even with Embiid and Maxey thriving under new coach Nick Nurse, Philly isn’t considered an inner-tier title favorite.
Morey insisted that Harden opted into his player option and demanded a trade before the front office was ready to discuss a contract with him. He wishes that it hadn’t turned out that way but understood that once Harden made that choice, he knew he had to “do what gives us the best chance to win here.” The trade he made with the Clippers, he hopes, offers another shot at making the Sixers a championship contender.
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