Brooklyn Nets star James Harden apologized for how he ended his term at the Houston Rockets, telling ESPN’s Rachel Nichols that she felt like the lead for last month’s success could have been smoother.
“I don’t like it at all because I’m not like that,” said Harden when asked about the weeks leading up to the negotiation. “The drama, the extra as you want to call it, the negativity for me. I don’t really like negative energy. That’s exhausting. So I don’t like how it necessarily happened.
“I feel it could have happened much more smoothly, much easier, but it is 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 the COVID-19 protocols after the league analyzed his video socializing without a mask at a club.
Things came to a head after a massive January 12 defeat to the Los Angeles Lakers, when Harden proclaimed that the Rockets “just weren’t good enough” and that it was a situation “that can’t be fixed”.
Harden was negotiated with the Nets the next day.
The former MVP told Nichols that he was not trying to be selfish and that “the front office knew where I was and what I wanted”.
“I apologize for how it happened, but I think I had to do what I had to do to get where I wanted to go,” said Harden. “And credit to Houston, they didn’t necessarily need to move me to Brooklyn. They could have traded me anywhere, but these are some stand-up guys over there. And it ended up the right way, but it didn’t like how that month or two went. unfolded. “