Brooklyn Nets star James Harden apologized for ending his Houston Rockets tenure, telling Rachel Nichols of ESPN that he felt the run-up to the trade could have been smoother last month.
“I do not like it at all because it is not who I am,” Harden said when asked to reflect on the weeks leading the trade. “The drama, no matter how extra I want to call it, the negativity for me. I do not really like negative energy. It is tapping. So I do not like how it necessarily happened.
“I feel like it could have happened a lot smoother, a lot easier, but that’s what it is.”
Harden’s desire to leave Houston after eight years for a title contender was an open secret in the weeks leading up to the season. He started the year with a $ 50,000 fine for violating COVID-19 protocols after the league reviewed the video of him masquerading as a club.
Things came to a head after a Jan. 12 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, when Harden declared the Rockets “just not good enough” and that this is a situation that “can not be corrected.”
Harden was traded to the Nets the next day.
The former MVP told Nichols that he was not trying to be selfish and that the “front office knows where I stand and what I want.”
“Apologize for how it went down, but I think I had to do what I had to do to get where I wanted to go,” Harden said. “And honor to Houston, they did not necessarily exchange me for Brooklyn. They could have exchanged me everywhere, but there are some stand-up guys there. And it ended up the right way, but just did not hold. not how that month or two played out. ‘