Behind the Scenes of James Harden and Daryl Morey’s Ugly Standoff

The reasons James Harden and Philadelphia 76ers president Daryl Morey—the polarizing vanguard duo that revolutionized modern basketball—remain in the throes of an ugly standoff are the same reasons they once worked so well together.

Much like Morey, Harden has made a career of being patient in the pursuit of engineering the ideal outcome: running the same play over and over on the same possession, even as the shot clock dwindles down, piling up points by searching for the most efficient option, even as fans bemoan the metronomic repetition of his style. And if the option he likes doesn’t materialize, he has historically bulldozed his way to the rim and stuck an arm out to draw a foul—and even more ire.

Harden is not afraid to throw his weight around, on or off the court. In the past, he has broken pandemic rules, disrupted training camp, and shown up out of shape to force Houston and Brooklyn to meet his trade demands. He has repeatedly called Morey a liar this offseason, by way of microphone and bottle service sign, and emphatically stated he would never play for him again.

Philly’s point guard and its lead executive both approach their jobs with patience bordering on stubbornness, carefully studying their opponents’ weaknesses with an eye toward chart-splitting, ruthless inefficiency and an understanding of how to exploit their leverage. Both are idolized by their fans and begrudgingly respected by detractors, and neither puts public perception above the pursuit of what they want most.

Both have also been historically more likely to exhaust every option before even slightly compromising. As a result, Harden is the final trade domino in an NBA offseason in which stars tested the limits of their power. He spent the Friday before training camp working out in Houston. He skipped 76ers media day on Monday and the first day of training camp on Tuesday. He was fined for his absence on Monday, according to a Sixers official.

But then, on Wednesday, Harden appeared to end the 96-day stalemate by blinking first, showing up to training camp in Colorado and clearing medical protocols with the Sixers. On Wednesday, he was a productive participant in practice, “preaching hard work, discipline, and accountability,” according to new 76ers head coach Nick Nurse, whom Harden got a chance to catch up with.

As training camp approached, members of the Sixers harbored hope that if Harden’s hurt feelings subsided, he’d realize they were his best chance to be well compensated and compete for a championship. Could his arrival be a sign that he’s coming around?

Or maybe Harden showed up because he knows Morey and the Sixers, who fined Ben Simmons more than $19 million for his prolonged nonattendance two years ago, won’t hesitate to empty his pockets. On top of that, the collective bargaining agreement can prohibit players who withhold services for more than 30 days from entering free agency. At the very least, Harden proved Wednesday he’s in shape, healthy, and ready to be productive for an NBA team, if not the Sixers.

Harden built a Hall of Fame career by manipulating the rule book and demolishing opponents en route to the rim, but he doesn’t get to the free throw line the way he used to. Throughout his prime, Harden considered the space between the 3-point line and rim with the same disregard as Morey. But as he’s struggled to get to the rim at the rate he used to, Harden has begun to rely more on midrange jumpers. He’s always had a talent for analyzing the court and assessing the best course of action. At 34 years old, after a summer of trying to force his way, is he seeing the virtue of meeting in the middle?

This league is divided into superstars and those who must coalesce around them. Morey, whose crowning achievement has been plucking Harden from Oklahoma City and putting the ball in his hands in Houston, was happy to do Harden’s bidding when he was an MVP-level player. He valued Harden’s input and saw the Rockets’ willingness to give increasingly power-driven superstars a seat at the table as a way to exploit a market inefficiency.

And despite playing in Joel Embiid’s shadow in Philly, Harden has been consulted in some of the Sixers’ decision-making. Last summer, Morey brought in P.J. Tucker and Danuel House Jr., Harden’s old cohorts from Houston. Harden, in turn, declined his $47.3 million player option to create cap space for their arrivals and agreed to a two-year deal worth $33 million in the first year and $36 million in the second. It was a sign that Harden was willing to make sacrifices beyond taking fewer shots and that his partnership with Morey—who once signed him to the most lucrative contract extension of all time—remained strong.

Harden adapted his game to fit around Embiid, a high-usage, isolation-heavy scorer who takes up space in the middle of the floor, as opposed to the rim-running, rolling bigs Harden was accustomed to playing with in Houston. In the end, the strategy didn’t result in an NBA Finals run—although it did net Embiid his first league MVP award.

When the Sixers flamed out in the second round of the playoffs, coach Doc Rivers was fired. Though Rivers and Harden were often at odds, a source with knowledge of the Sixers’ thinking characterizes the idea that Harden had Rivers fired as unfair. When the Sixers began their coaching search this summer, they met with Harden and presented multiple candidates, including Nurse, whom the Sixers eventually hired. Harden, who has praised Nurse’s coaching in the past, was a proponent of hiring the former Raptors coach. After the hire, the two met for over four hours.

Harden’s representatives were eager to talk shop with the Sixers as free agency approached, but the Sixers were reluctant to touch base. Last October, the Sixers were stripped of two second-round picks after an NBA investigation found they had prematurely agreed to deals with Tucker and House. Morey, famed for analyzing risks and prioritizing assets over emotions, didn’t want that to happen again.

The Sixers communicated this to Harden’s agents before free agency tipped off. But as ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne reported, Harden wanted to hear from Morey himself. That never happened.

The Sixers were also hesitant to rush into a negotiation because they were worried that if the Rockets lost out on free agency target Fred VanVleet, then Harden could potentially back out of a verbal commitment with the Sixers and accept a deal with Houston instead. Harden had already reneged on a deal with the Sixers once, verbally agreeing to opt in to his player option when they acquired him from Brooklyn, only to change his mind after he arrived.

That left Harden, who had never been a free agent before, with his future unknown, waiting on other players’ decisions to determine his fate.

According to a source familiar with Harden’s thinking, the former Net believed he had developed a strong relationship with new Rockets coach Ime Udoka when they overlapped in Brooklyn during the 2020-21 season. But according to a recent report from Fox Sports, Udoka was not a fan of Harden’s. ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith added on Wednesday that Udoka’s interest in offering Harden a maximum contract waned when the former MVP spoke of gunning for another scoring title.

Coming off a wretched Game 7 performance against the Celtics—a lowlight in his checkered elimination-game history—it became increasingly clear that Harden wouldn’t be rewarded with the four-year maximum deal he was reportedly seeking.

That suddenly left Harden, a player who had previously pulled off two successful trade demands, without any attractive options. On one side, the franchise with which Harden had won an MVP was making him its second choice. On the other, he wasn’t hearing from Morey, the executive who transformed him from a sixth man into a superstar and doled out three extensions to him.

Harden, running out of allies, began to look elsewhere.

Harden’s last known conversation with Morey came right after Harden decided to opt in to his deal in late June, before the Sixers even had a chance to make him a formal offer. According to a source with knowledge of the conversation, Harden confirmed to Morey that he now wanted a trade to the Los Angeles Clippers.

Harden’s hometown team has been searching for a playmaking connector like him since Paul George and Kawhi Leonard arrived in 2019. Ivica Zubac, the Clippers’ defensive-minded low-usage man in the middle, is exactly the kind of rim-rolling screen setter Harden liked playing with in Houston.

Morey executed a similar deal with Clippers president Lawrence Frank in the summer of 2017, uniting Chris Paul and Harden in Houston after the stars expressed interest in playing together. Paul opted in to the final year of his deal with the Clippers, and the Rockets sent the Clippers seven players and a first-round pick in exchange.

But this time, the sides didn’t agree to a framework for a deal, and they have yet to find one in the three months since Harden’s latest trade demand. Morey, who has long prized star talent, won’t let go of Harden easily. He has repeatedly stated that the Sixers either want a star-level player in return or a collection of draft picks and young players the Sixers could package and turn into a star.

The rise of superstar trades in the past half decade was originally an adaptation to the rise of star departures in free agency. Teams could proactively recoup assets—like the Pelicans did with Anthony Davis or the Nets did with Kevin Durant—instead of losing stars for nothing in free agency. Damian Lillard tried to take things a step further, attempting and failing to strong-arm his way to a Miami team that did not have the assets Portland wanted in return. If Harden and his reps can pull off what Dame couldn’t, storming the Sixers castle and getting Harden to the Clippers for a minimal return, they could simultaneously forge a new frontier in player power. But Morey is standing strong on the other side, trying to keep the floodgates from opening.

In the 48 hours before Harden opted in on June 29, conversations between Harden’s representatives and the Sixers front office left Harden’s camp convinced that the Sixers would try to shortchange them.

There is skepticism from Harden’s side that a potential tampering fine was the reason for Philly’s slow negotiations; they believe that Morey, seeing how Houston is fading as a potential destination, couldn’t resist taking an opportunity to squeeze Harden into agreeing to a shorter, cheaper deal, like he did last season.

This type of tactic, coming from Morey, could feel only like a heel turn to Harden, who had never been a casualty of Morey’s calculated ruthlessness before. Morey sees basketball as a zero-sum business. He is known for trying to win every deal. In 2020, TrueHoop reported that in Houston, Morey purposely stalled negotiations with high-profile assistant coaches until August, when most positions around the league were filled, giving his employees less bargaining power. Chris Paul, predating Harden’s recent sentiments, has also called Morey a liar. The Sixers president has not considered himself particularly well liked, nor has he considered it an important aspect of his job.

Morey’s relationship with Harden thrived when he could anticipate what the star wanted and was willing to give it to him. But he didn’t anticipate the emotional fallout of potentially having to disappoint Harden, nor did he try to soften the blow. That could cost him his job and cost the Sixers a lot more than just their point guard.

Embiid, sporting a sheepish grin and a black pom-pom beanie, did not approach Monday’s media day like a man who was aware of the microscope increasingly zooming in on his every word.

Though, of course, he is fully aware. Always has been. Embiid weaponizes attention to unlock his favorite activity outside of dominating the paint: trolling. He explained his latest tweet, “This off-season was fun lmao,” to a room full of reporters with a tone of faux innocence.

“I thought it was fun,” he said, “just seeing the interaction around the league, guys getting traded left and right, teams getting better, making it tougher for every other team. I thought it was fun just looking at the back-and-forth between fans. You got Miami fans that are mad and Milwaukee fans that are happy, and you’ve got Boston fans that are happy.”

What about Philly fans, though? Or Philly players, who faced questions about Harden’s absence at the start of nearly every press conference? And what about Embiid himself? If the Harden saga drags on, will the questions begin to grate and frustrate Embiid, to the point that it impacts the team’s success? Will the way Morey negotiated with an aging Harden, whom Embiid counts as a friend and invited to his wedding, change Embiid’s view on the executive who helped him win his first MVP, the same way he once helped Harden?

Embiid’s patience is the ice pick hovering over Morey’s head as the league waits to find out whether the Harden drama will prompt the big man to ask for a trade.

So far, a source with knowledge of the situation has reiterated Embiid’s willingness to wait. He was, after all, a curious participant in the Process Era. He understands the virtue of taking the long view on team building, even when it is uncomfortable. And he was willing, two years ago, to wait out Simmons’s trade request until February.

But if Embiid is indeed watching closely, he knows that the principal difference between this standoff and the one with Simmons is that there isn’t another James Harden waiting in the wings for Morey to trade for. There have even been rumblings that Harden’s potential acquisition was a key reason Morey was hired in the first place. For that matter, there isn’t another Daryl Morey working for another franchise and dying to make a deal for Harden, either.

The Clippers continue to monitor the situation, as they have all summer. But they’re negotiating against only themselves, and they aren’t desperate enough to cede valuable assets for Harden’s services. A sloppy start to the season could change that, but they could also look elsewhere to fill their playmaking void. Malcolm Brogdon, whom the Clippers tried trading for this summer, was sent to Portland in the Jrue Holiday trade and should be available.

In that scenario, the Sixers might be Harden’s best—and only—option.

Even in the summer of 2024, when Harden is projected to be a free agent, they are the only championship contender projected to have major cap space.

Morey’s vision to turn Harden into a star helped define both of their careers. Ten years later, Harden and Morey saved each other again with a reunion in Philly. In moments of dependency and desperation, they have leaned on each other. No one looks good in the throes of an ugly divorce, but in a league where everyone is watching, it begs the question: Is either party likely to find a better partner?