“Damn, it’s small in here,” James Harden observed to himself, with a touch of disappointment, as he entered a packed conference room on Thursday afternoon. Harden took a seat at the podium, visibly uncomfortable in the claustrophobic setting. Here he was in his hometown to give his much-anticipated first public remarks as a Los Angeles Clipper following a drama-filled, drawn-out request to be traded away from Philadelphia, to maybe less fanfare than he anticipated.
There weren’t exactly innumerable suitors for Harden, the Most Valuable Player of six seasons ago who demanded a trade from his third team in as many years and has thusly earned a reputation as perhaps the NBA’s least dependable superstar. He is an offensive savant, and almost universally acknowledged as one of the most gifted scoring talents the league has ever seen. But even putting aside his penchant for dissatisfaction in the workplace, the 34-year-old Harden has compiled a less-than-stellar track record in big playoff moments – the entirety of which made trading him a hard sell for 76ers GM Daryl Morey this offseason.
