James Harden really wants to be traded from Houston

NBA star James Harden has not been terribly covert about his desires to longer play for the Houston Rockets. He hasn't indicated exactly where it is that he would like to go and seeing as how he makes something crazy like close to $30 million a year I have a hard time sympathizing with his reasons, whatever they may be.

He didn't turn up to the first 2 days of training camp and while he has not expressed this in any official capacity, it appears as though he is trying to play hardball with the management at the Rockets in order to try to force them to trade him.

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In the past, Harden has made ridiculous demands of the Houston club stating that they need to either "build a championship-level team, or trade him." This is something that irritates me despite the fact that there is no denying the incredible talent that the man has on the court. Do you really think that they aren't trying to be as good as they can? Why do you think they pay you so much money if they don't want to win it all?

Harden wants to join his pals Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving in Brooklyn and has also expressed interest in moving to the 76ers who seem to be interested in spending as much money as possible. From my perspective either one of these moves would result in a dramatically better Nets or 76ers but this is just because Harden can basically turn any team into a team that is at least going to make the playoffs.

However, Beardy James is under contract with the Rockets until the conclusion of next year's season and it remains to be seen if having a bad attitude is going to be enough to get the trade he so clearly wants.

I suppose you could say that I understand his fears entering another season with the Rockets, since they recently traded Russell Westbrook for John Wall, and Westbrook was really the other big star on the team that could be counted on to make a meaningful contribution to the scoreboard.

So while I understand his motivations to want to move, I have a difficult time relating to multi-millionaires acting like children in order to get what they want. There is a part of me that wants Houston to deny the trade simply out of spite but then we run the risk of Harden not really even putting his heart into the game and this could be a very expensive gamble for the aging Rockets side.

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One way that this temper-tantrum is working against Harden is the fact that no manager or owner wants to take on a player with an attitude that is going to attempt to dictate how the team or franchise is run. Harden is one of the top 5 paid athletes in the NBA and makes more money than even LeBron James. There are very few teams out there that are going to be willing to pony up the cash for someone as expensive as him, especially if he is going to throw a fit when he doesn't get everything he wants. Also, players this expensive are supposed to commit long-term, and Harden has proven at Houston that he feels no such sense of loyalty even though his contract is only one more year. I think it would be far more prudent for Harden to suck it up even if the Rockets end up being terrible in the 2021-22 season and THEN push for a move.

At the moment, his antics are attracting the wrong kind of attention and could work to his financial and professional detriment. Think about Michael Jordan for example: He stuck with the Bulls even though they were pretty terrible when he got there, then they were average, then they were above average, then they eventually became one of the best teams the NBA has ever seen - perhaps THE best. It's this level of loyalty and commitment that owners are looking for, not just a guy that can score a bunch of points on his own.