There has been increased speculation in recent weeks that James Harden is looking to leave the Brooklyn Nets after this season.
What began as quiet whispers quickly turned into full-blown, somewhat-corroborated news on Tuesday. According to multiple reports, Harden is seriously exploring the idea of departing New York after this season for a variety of reasons. The Philadelphia 76ers appear to be his preferred landing spot at the moment.
On Tuesday, Nets coach Steve Nash spoke to the media ahead of Brooklyn’s game against the Los Angeles Lakers. When pressed on whether he was taking recent trade reports about Harden seriously, the Nets coach kept it real.
“Uh no,” said Nash.
“I just heard about [these] reports, and I haven’t spoken to him about any of these things so I’m not sure what to believe. James and I speak all the time, I think we have a great relationship so I’m not sure the validity of these comment to be honest with you. But we talk, the rotations, or whatever that comment, it seems very strange seeing as though we have different guys available pretty much every other night.
“So I don’t see James as saying a lot of this stuff and feel like our relationship has been really good and we’ve worked through a lot of things together this year.”
It will be interesting to see where things go from here. Obviously Brooklyn hoped that the trio of Harden, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant would be enough to win a championship. To date, it has yet to be established whether that’ll prove to be true or not. But either way, it seems like Harden is over the New York lifestyle.
Will Philly be his next stop? Time will tell.
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