Brooklyn Nets star James Harden apologized for ending his Houston Rockets era, telling ESPN’s Rachel Nichols that he felt that running to last month’s trades could have been easier. .
“I didn’t like it at all because I’m not,” 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 really don’t like negative energy. It’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 a video of him socializing at a club without a mask.
Things ended after a Jan. 12 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, when Harden proclaimed that the Rockets “simply weren’t good enough” and that there was an “irreparable” situation.
Harden was traded to the Nets the next day.
former The most valuable player He told Nichols that he was not trying to be selfish and that “the main office knew where I was and what I wanted.”
“I apologize for what happened, but I think I had to do what I had to do to get where I wanted to go,” Harden said. “And I give him credit for Houston, they didn’t necessarily have to trade me in Brooklyn. He could have traded me anywhere. And it ended the right way, but I just didn’t like how it happened a month or two.”