Brooklyn Nets star James Harden apologized for the end of his tenure at Houston Rockets, telling ESPN’s Rachel Nichols that he felt the run-up to last month’s blockbuster trade could have gone smoother.
“I don’t like it at all because that’s not who I am,” Harden said when asked to reflect on the weeks leading up to the trade. “The drama, the extra whatever you want to call it, the negativity for me. I don’t really like negative energy. That’s exhausting. So I don’t like how it necessarily happened.
“I feel like it could have been a lot smoother, a lot easier, but it is what it is.”
Harden’s desire to leave Houston after eight years as 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 watched a video of him socializing maskless at a club.
Things came to a head after a January 12 thump loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, when Harden stated that the Rockets were “just not good enough” and that it was a situation that “cannot be resolved.”
Harden was traded to the Nets the next day.
The former MVP told Nichols he was not trying to be selfish and that ‘the front office knew where I was and what I wanted’.
“Apologies for how it went, but I think I had to do what I had to do to get where I wanted to go,” said Harden. And I mean Houston, they didn’t necessarily have to trade me to Brooklyn. They could have traded me anywhere, but that’s some stand up guys out there. And it ended the right way, but I just didn’t like it. how those two months went. “