James Harden, the star of the Brooklyn Nets, apologized for the way his term in the Houston Rockets ended, telling ESPN’s Rachel Nichols that it felt like the advance to last month’s blockbuster deals would it could have been easier.
“I don’t like it at all because I’m not who I am,” Harden said when asked to reflect on the weeks leading up to the deal. “Drama, extra whatever you want to call it, negativity for me. I don’t really like negative energy. That’s exhausting. So I don’t like how it necessarily happened.
“I feel like it could have happened a lot easier, 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 with him socializing without a mask at a club.
Things ended after an explosive January 12 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, when Harden proclaimed that the Rockets were not “good enough” and that it was a situation that “cannot be remedied.”
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 knew where I was and what I wanted.”
“I’m sorry for the way 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 loans for Houston, they didn’t necessarily have to trade me in Brooklyn. They could have traded me anywhere, but these are stand-up guys over there. how it played a month or two. “