Did you see this column today?

Did you see the column that Tim MacMahon has up on ESPN dot com Today, it is jam packed with unnamed members and former members of the Houston Rockets organization, which paints an extraordinary picture of the culture that allow James Harden to basically run that franchise.

And there are a few of the compelling quotes that were pulled out here by my news desk.

And so I will just read them to you.

You've got to read the whole thing, because if you care about this stuff, it all, it's fascinating.

And I remember when LeBron was in Cleveland, everyone's perspective was, well, LeBron just made all the decisions LeBron had all total say in personnel and travel and whatever else it waas.

And I don't have any way of telling you independently whether that was true or not.

But that certainly was one off the topics that people would bring up.

And then when he went to Miami, Pat Riley wasn't having any of that in this column.

Here are a few of the quotes from again unnamed members and former members of the Rockets organization about James Harden.

Quote.

Whatever James wants goes quote.

He's never heard No before.

Quote from a former Rockets assistant coach.

We know who.

The boss of the organization Waas.

That's just part of what the deal was.

When you go to Houston, the players coaches, GM owner all No, I don't blame James.

I blame the organization.

It's not his fault.

He did what they allowed him to do.

End quote.

I have so many thoughts on this.

One of them is as follows.

They have now reached that really weird place because James Harden is accustomed to getting whatever he wants from the Rockets.

But what he wants now is to be traded away.

He wants to go to Brooklyn, play with his old body k d.

He wants to go to Philly, play for Doc Rivers alongside Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons, although someone's gonna have to get traded back to Houston if these deals are going to get made.

But let's put that to the side for a moment.

What he wants but has no leverage to create to force the issue is to be traded and to be traded where he wants to go.

But I will remind you this is not like Anthony Davis in his last year in New Orleans or going back to Dwight Howard in his last year in Orlando or Carmelo Anthony is last year in Denver.

Harden has multiple years left on his deal.

If he wants to be paid $40 million to play basketball this season, there's only one place he can do it unless they agree.

And that's Houston.

So what winds up happening?

I told you on the show last week the Rockets have already traded him.

They just don't know it yet.

Harden can and will make it impossible for them to keep him.

So, to me it is a foregone conclusion.

He will be traded now.

Will he be traded where he wants to go?

That's an entirely separate proposition.

If I'm the Rockets, I'm getting the best deal I can possibly get wherever that might be.

They certainly don't know Harden anything beyond that.

That's the way the situation goes now.

Places that he might send signals to, that he's not having any interest in playing or any interest in resigning.

They probably won't give up much for him, so that situation will weed itself out on its own to some degree, but the Rockets should, and I ultimately, I believe, will trade him wherever they can get the best compensation.

So that's the first part.

The second part is that it is another reminder to me that the really great organizations find a way to work with their all time great players.

But do not just bend to their every whim.

You know who did that great was the late, great Jerry Krause, the much maligned Jerry Krause.

Jerry Krause, who everyone stood in line to make look terrible during last summer's sensational documentary films.

Last Dance and I Told you Then it made me sad.

And what really made me sad was that Jerry Krause his family didn't get to celebrate with him when he went into the Hall of Fame because Jerry Krause deserved to live to see that day.

They put him in posthumously.

They made him wait much too long.

He absolutely belongs in that Hall of Fame alongside Michael and Scottie and Phil, because he had Justus much to do with them, winning all those championships and one of the reasons they all hated Jerry Krause.

Make no mistake about it was that he didn't do that.

There was never you never heard any quote.

We all know who the boss of the organization was.

That's just part of the deal when you go to Houston.

Michael Jordan wasn't the boss of that organization.

He was not.

You saw it you saw in the films and all of us who were around it.

No, it It was a relatively frequent source of friction that what Michael wanted, he didn't always get.

Of course, he was the best player in the league in the most famous person in the world.

I'm not saying that he didn't have any say in what happened, but he didn't just tell them to jump, and they asked how high?

That's not the way it waas and you know what?

Had it been, they wouldn't have won six championships.

They just wouldn't.

First of all, Michael Jordan wanted to draft every player who ever went to North Carolina wouldn't have worked out that way.

Jerry Krause made all the right decisions.

He pushed all the right buttons and they won six championships in the six years that Michael Jordan was there to help him.

So to me, That is just another indication on so many different levels of the truth of the legendary statement for which Jerry Krause has been unfairly vilified when he said, Players don't win championships, organizations do.

And he was right then and he still as right as he ever Waas.

Of course, the players win it, but the organizations have to put them in the right position.

First and foremost, they have to get the right players, and then the players play in the organizations organized, and that's what they haven't done in Houston.

And that may well be part of the reason that they have absolutely no hardware to show for it.

And now they're going to sleep in the bed that they have made because Harden will dictate whatever happens to him next.

And if that really is the way it was and this story is extraordinarily detailed, then they deserve whatever is about to happen.

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