Brooklyn Nets star James Harden apologized for how his Houston Rockets tenure finished, telling to source he felt like the lead-up to a month ago’s blockbuster exchange might have gone smoother.
“I don’t like it at all because that’s not who I am,” Harden said when asked to reflect on the weeks leading up to the trade. “The drama, the extra whatever you want to call it, the negativity for me. I don’t really like negative energy. That’s draining. So I don’t like how it necessarily happened.
“I feel like it could have happened a lot smoother, a lot easier, but it is what it is.”
Solidify’s craving to leave Houston following eight years for a title competitor was a loosely held bit of information in the weeks paving the way to the season. He started the year with a $50,000 fine for abusing COVID-19 conventions after the association audited video of him mingling maskless at a club.
Things reached a critical stage after a Jan. 12 victory misfortune to the Los Angeles Lakers, when Harden announced that the Rockets were “simply insufficient” and that it was a circumstance that “can’t be fixed.”
Solidify was exchanged to the Nets the next day.
The former MVP told Nichols he wasn’t trying to be selfish and that the “front office knew where I stood and what I wanted.”
“Apologize for how it went down, but I guess I had to do what I had to do in order to get to where I wanted to go,” Harden said. “And credit to Houston, they didn’t necessarily have to trade me to Brooklyn. They could have traded me anywhere, but those are some stand-up guys over there. And it ended up the right way, but just didn’t like how that month or two played out.”
