Name: 'Sit out!' - Stephen A.'s advice to disgruntled Rockets star James Harden | First Take
Uploaded: 2020-12-23T18:27:04.000Z
Duration: 4 min 21 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

This is why I kept saying the Sixers thinking or sorry, the Rockets thinking We're not getting good offers for hard, not equal value.

The longer they wait, the worse it's going to be.

Talked about this because they know he's a distressed asset and, by the way, an unhappy superstar.

Well, you haven't under contract for two years.

The fact of the matter is, the players have very little leverage against the owners and negotiations.

You know, there are negotiating and billionaires with a de facto monopoly in their sport, but the owners have very little leverage with players.

If the play, if a superstar player wants out, there's not a lot the owner could dio.

There's not a lot the team could Dio because he's got to earn his money their ways.

He can earn his money and still not really give you his all and become a disruptive force and make it untenable to keep him so they gotta move him.

They will move him, mark my words, they will move him and the longer they wait, the worse it will get.

And Stephen, a part of his strategy when you misbehaved to try to force yourself out, is his trade value goes down.

And it's not that the Rockets are going to think Well, now we can't get a good enough deal for him, so we're not going to deal him wrong.

What's gonna happen is they're just going to eventually take the best deal, which is gonna be much worse than it would have been had.

In other words, he knows the more his trade value goes down, the easier it is for other teams to get him because they don't have to give up his much.

When you talk about him in terms of his behavior, what have you understand something?

It's not about his trade value going down.

They already are not getting those quality offers that they wanted for him because they're asking for the farm because he is James Harden, and he's so prolific, I'm going to give you a strategy that I would think would be in the best interest of James Harden.

To sit out, sit out and sacrifice some pay if you have to get the hell out, because then that is not frowned upon as much as if you were being a distraction.

He might have to reach a point where, in a sense, he's almost doing this because again he was in that bubble.

He knows that ultimately a video is going to come out.

That's going to hinder his ability to show up and play, because they're going to say You don't need to be around other teams.

You could have been exposed, etcetera, etcetera.

The bottom line is, he didn't care enough.

So in the end he might be better off just saying, I want out.

There's no reason for me to be back here, see what trade you could work out, rather than being around the team and causing a disruption.

And if he's not willing to do that, Tillman, Fatigued and Rafael Stone, the new GM may need to say your man go home.

They might need to do that because he clearly does not want to be there.

So how soon is this trade going to happen, Stephen?

Listen, we all know that they're gonna move him because he doesn't wanna be there.

It's just a matter of when and when is determined by the quality of offer they get or their willingness to settle for considerably less usually come around around the trading deadline or what have you.

James Harden is clearly not in the mood toe wait.

Everything he is doing is because he wants the world to know I'm being forced to stay here.

He almost might have been better off like Kendrick Perkins said to me last week, taking the extra two year extension for the 50 million per 103 million, to be exact, because you would have been locked up for four years instead of two.

Anyone who gets you know that they're keeping you for the long haul, and they might have been more receptive to that.

And there is some more information coming from Tim MacMahon this morning as well.

Sources telling him that James Harden actually was diagnosed with Cove in 19 this past summer before the MBA's restart, which was the reason why he was late to the bubble in Orlando.

But as we all know, there have been instances where you can get co vid twice.

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'Sit out!' - Stephen A.'s advice to disgruntled Rockets star James Harden | First Take

ultimately

fatigue

eventually

tough