Houston Rockets' James Harden argues a call during the first half of an NBA conference semifinal playoff basketball game against the Los Angeles Lakers in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. Sept. 12, 2020.Mark J. Terrill/The Associated Press
For several months now, James Harden – one of the best players in the NBA – has been in open conflict with his employer, the Houston Rockets.
The problem isn’t his working conditions (lavish), his treatment (sycophantic), or his pay (US$41-million this year). Harden just doesn’t want to work there any more.
He has been running through the options available to superstars under long-term contract with the itch to move, stuck on teams disinclined to give them what they want.
Harden began by complaining. Then he planted stories with proxies about his complaining, and denied them once they wound back to him. Then he planted very specific stories about where he would like to go (Brooklyn), and didn’t bother denying anything.
This past weekend, he escalated to non-compliance. The Rockets began their preseason training camp. Harden didn’t show up. No one in the organization had any idea where he was. Each day, Houston coach Stephen Silas has had to come out and admit as much. Each day’s admission grew more pathetic than the last.
“As far as timetable, there is no timetable as far as I know,” Silas said on Monday. “And it is a setback.”
On Tuesday, a sighting! Harden had shown up for his COVID-19 testing. He was somewhere in the greater Houston area. Despite running around town all night shouting, “JAMES?! CAN YOU HEAR ME, JAMES?!” Silas still hadn’t found him.
Meanwhile, those same proxies continued to leak like dollar-store food containers. Maybe it doesn’t have to be Brooklyn. Maybe Harden will agree to go to Philadelphia. Or maybe somewhere else. Anywhere but southeast Texas.
“It’s kind of some moving parts to it, I assume,” Silas said, addressing the topic of whether Harden might ever pop by work. I didn’t see it, but I imagine Silas mopping his forehead with his tie while he said it.
By Wednesday, the moving parts had grown to include how many days of negative tests Harden would have to provide before he would be cleared to play.
“I wish I had a better answer for you when it comes to all that, but I don’t,” Silas said.
Ye gods. This guy.
Harden’s excruciating attempt to pry himself out of Houston isn’t new. Players have been trying this act since they put the first multiyear contract down on stone tablets.
But the boldness of this particular one is. This isn’t your regular player-team tug-of-war. This is a pandemic conflict. Like so many other quarrels going on right now, this one has been spurred by the uncertainty of the current moment.
If sports had a Word of the Year, 2020′s might be “leverage.” Who has it, who doesn’t and who’s willing to use it.
Harden has leverage. He’s at his performance peak, he’s made his money and he is primed to make a lot more money in the future. If he doesn’t want to play, he may take a hit. But the Rockets will take a bigger one.
(The trick in these cases is not to seen out in public throwing punches. The trick is dropping to the ground and going all wriggly whenever someone tries to pick you up. All sports agents should study Gandhi and his policy of non-co-operation.)
Would Harden have tried this a couple of years ago? Would he have gone so far? Maybe. But back then, with everything ticking along, his own colleagues might have come out against him. Might have worried that he was in danger of upsetting the collective’s apple cart.
But not now. Not coming off a shortened NBA season full of discussions of bigger social issues, resulting in unusually tight union togetherness. The NBA players are in a Three Musketeers phase – all for one. This has freed Harden to go rogue. What’s ownership or league brass supposed to do? Come cracking down on him? Yeah, that’ll go over well. Who’s stupid enough to turn one guy’s selfishness into a labour revolt?
That’s what leverage looks like in the NBA.
Over in the NFL, leverage works the other way. Ownership has never seemed more in control. The owners put kneeling controversies and Colin Kaepernick in the rearview. But the real breakthrough is putting the pandemic behind them.
The league hasn’t solved anything epidemiologically. Instead, it has discovered that you can eliminate the issue by refusing to address it. Somebody’s got the bug? What a tragedy for them. Let’s get over our grief by playing ball.
Right before Tuesday’s Dallas-Baltimore game, it was announced that Ravens’ star Dez Bryant had tested positive. The broadcaster, Fox, still ran a long, intimate, prerecorded one-on-one with Bryant. That is a cognitive dissonance so great, it has its own harmonic frequency.
A week ago, I’d have said the NFL is post-COVID. Now I’d call it COVID agnostic. It accepts that there may be a COVID, but it is still waiting for proof.
Why does the NFL have so much leverage? Because, but for a handful of elite talents, football players are a cheap commodity in the United States. You don’t want to play? A hundred someone elses will, so take it down the road, pal.
We started this by assuming that uncertainty provokes caution. The pandemic may have caused that across-the-board reaction at the beginning. But while COVID’s not done with us, some industries are done with COVID. Apparently, jocks read Warren Buffett – be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.
I’m not sure who’s fearful in sports any more. Despite all the ink spilled about health and safety, does anyone seem genuinely worried to you? Anyone, anywhere, on any team, in any league? Not “let’s bulletproof ourselves legally here” worried, but personally afraid?
Too many of their superfit twenty- and thirtysomething colleagues have got this thing and hardly broken stride. Outbreaks on sports teams are now so common, they provoke no discussion. The Toronto Raptors batted one aside this week with a bored 15-minute Zoom call. And then on to the next.
Though the fear has dissipated in sports, the greed continues to expand. Everyone wants to take advantage of an unsettled landscape. Either through clawbacks, or cash-grabs, or expanded playoffs, or renegotiated deals. People are making plays they would not have considered attempting a year or two ago, when things were steady.
Some will succeed. Harden, for instance. He’ll get what he wants (though not exactly what he wants, and almost certainly not what he needs).
But others will wander too far in that direction. Maybe it’ll be a players’ union or a specific team owner or a malingering player. Someone, probably a few someones, will massively overplay the hand the pandemic has given them.
Then, as always, we’ll get to enjoy the spectacle that’s far more fun to watch than the action – the corrective reaction.