The NBA announced today that Philadelphia 76ers guard James Harden has been fined $100,000 by the NBA for public comments on August 14 and 17 indicating that he would not perform the services called for under his player contract unless traded to another team. The league’s investigation, which included an interview of Harden, confirmed that these comments referenced Harden’s belief that the 76ers would not accommodate his request to be traded.
Who would take him at this point? The common factor in years of James Harden drama is… James Harden.
He’s basically on Kyrie’s level now. Still a good player as he showed last season, but his trust level is through the floor. Can’t be trusted to perform under pressure, can’t be trusted to play on a contract he just opted into, makes trade demands not requests. And for they kind of money he’s expecting? Who wants that?
ETA: this is a dumb emotional take, but as a Sixers fan I’d rather have Kyrie at this point lol. I’m sure I would regret that though.
Everybody thinks they want Kyrie until they have Kyrie. Look inside yourself. You know it to be true.
$100K is a huge amount of money for me. For Harden, not so much. Compared to the PG-13 crap players are routinely fined tens of thousands of dollars for (which I don’t necessarily agree with), $100K seems surprisingly little for how unprecedented Harden’s comments were - although I’m not sure of what technical grounds the league has for fining him. If they wanted to hit him with a harsher penalty, they’d suspend him, but they can’t do that without Harden’s team (6ers, I presume) taking a massive collateral hit
Usually the amount of fines the league can collect is defined in the CBA.
Yeah this is also one of the bigger fines I’ve seen coming from the league to a player. Biggest I’ve seen is Stoudamire getting fined $250k after he got arrested for the third time for marijuana possession.
He must be so annoyed that it’s legal now lol
That makes sense. A quick internet search suggests that the $100K handed to Harden is indeed 100% of the max player fine per the CBA. Also, the current CBA, which expires this year I think, took effect July 1, 2017.
pretty sure we’re in the new CBA rules now. but i don’t think fines have changed.
There was a mutual option this year that both sides picked up. The current CBA, started in 2017, expires at the end of this NBA year
(Edit: I was incorrect here, see below)the new cba started July 1, that’s when the league calendar flipped to 23-24.
https://twitter.com/nbapr/status/1674149843915141127?s=61&t=4iOWcg_cjl7r7NFOLo26ew
Thanks! I don’t have twitter so can’t use your link, but I did another search and you are indeed correct. Thanks for the correction!
It would make more sense to scale with the player’s salary, but which owner is really going to negotiate super hard for something like that?
or at least scale with the salary cap.
Actually, I think the owners would be all for something like that - they’d probably be able to exercise more control over superstars. It’s players who I don’t think would want that. Some make lots of money, others aspire to. Currently, rookies get their tech fines paid off by the team or vet players, I’m pretty sure, or at least I’m pretty sure that’s how they do it on the Raptors
Yeah the owners would want it, but to negotiate power like that you gotta give something up. I just think it’s such a rare occurrence that you’d want to fine a guy more than $100k that it’s not a big priority.
He shouldn’t have taken the player option.
