Saturday marked one year and one day since the Nets traded James Harden to the 76ers, ending Brooklyn’s “Big Three” as fans knew it after less than a year. The Nets hosted Harden and Philadelphia, fresh off of trading away the other two superstar members of that triumvirate: Kevin Durant to the Suns and Kyrie Irving to the Mavericks.
After facing the new-look Nets—and helping his team to a dramatic three-point win—Harden once again took aim at his former team, and the way he was labeled for pushing to be traded by a team for a second straight year, after the Rockets dealt him to Brooklyn in 2021.
Harden told reporters that there were things that could have been done to keep him in Brooklyn, but he cited “dysfunction” as a reason he requested a trade.
“I don’t look like the crazy one,” he said, via ESPN’s Nick Friedell. “I don’t look like the quitter or whatever the media want to call me. I knew what was going on and I just decided to… hey, I’m not built for this. I don’t want to deal with that. I want to play basketball and have fun.”
Harden added that his Brooklyn tenure was “frustrating,” and that now, with all three stars elsewhere, he hopes “everybody’s in a good place and we can move on.”
This is not the first time he’s defended his decision to leave Brooklyn in similar terms. In December, after an offseason in which both Durant and Irving sought the moves that would eventually come in February, Harden cited a lack of “structure” within the organization
“I just feel like, internally, things weren’t what I expected when I was trying to get traded there,” he said, “I think everybody knows that. And I knew people were going to talk and say, ‘You quit’ and all that stuff, but then the following summer, the other superstar there [Durant] wanted to leave. So it’s like: Am I still the quitter?”
Harden scored 29 points, adding six assists and six rebounds in the 101–98 win in Brooklyn on Saturday. The Nets controlled much of the game, but ultimately had no answers for the 76ers stars, as Joel Embiid rolled to 37 points and 13 rebounds to lead all players in both categories. A late game-tying three by Spencer Dinwiddie was released fractions of a second after the buzzer and waived off after it was reviewed, handing Philadelphia the win.
