Adam Silver's Redemption Opportunity With James Harden

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The Sixers’ clown show of an offseason took its latest turn last night, with ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reporting that the Sixers have ended trade talks involving James Harden, and are hoping to move forward with Harden on the roster. The Athletic’s Sam Amick later reported that Harden “no longer wants to play for Philadelphia and has no plans of taking part in training camp.”

So, to summarize: the General Manager who obviously should trade the player is refusing to do so, and as a result, that player – who voluntarily opted into his contract six weeks ago – is refusing to play for the team. As I wrote a couple weeks ago, it’s a total embarrassment for all parties involved, and is profoundly irritating to any and all fans of the team. 

But while I am happy to criticize Daryl Morey for his role in this situation, and I believe he should trade Harden for whatever he can get from the Clippers, it is obvious to any reasonable observer that Harden is the real bad actor in this situation. It is completely absurd to opt into a contract and then refuse to play for that team.

I mean, take a step back and think about how ridiculous this all is. It flies in the face of all of the norms and good-faith assumptions that keep the league up and running. If you explained this situation to an NBA fan from 1993, they would have a conniption. If Harden did this in any era prior to the past ten years, he would be getting lambasted in every NBA media forum and there would be a nonstop outcry of what an insult this is to the fans. 

So, as annoying as all of this is, there is a small part of me that appreciates Morey’s willingness to play hardball here. It’s objectively terrible for the league that the players are doing these types of things, and it’s good to see an organization standing up to it.

And, I don’t sense that I’m alone in that mindset; I think we are starting to hit a tipping point in terms of the public approval ratings on so-called player empowerment – or at least, certain behaviors that get thrown under the umbrella of that label. You’d be hard pressed to find one single person defending what Harden is doing here, and very few people would describe his actions as empowering.

And so, this situation is setting up for a golden opportunity for one Adam Silver. The league desperately needs to push back against this type of behavior, and if Silver can strike the right tone, he can get public discourse churning back in his favor. In previous chapters of the player empowerment era, Silver might have faced a fair bit of criticism for coming off as anti-player, but now, especially with this particular situation, I’d guess that every NBA fan is aching for some advocacy of basic norms and good-faith acting. 

Silver could do an interview or release a statement crushing Harden if he wanted to, even if it were indirect. He could say something like the following:

We fully expect all NBA players to honor their contracts and perform to the best of their abilities. Players, of course, have the right to request a trade, but if that trade is not granted, we expect that players will honor the contracts that they signed, and the league will not hesitate to levy punishments to the fullest extent that the bylaws permit. Next to the health and safety of our players, our highest priority is to deliver a product that fans can be proud of. If players refuse to show up and perform to the best of their abilities, we will do right by our fans and ensure that those players are punished.

Of course, Silver doesn’t have to actually do anything – but a statement like that would go a long way towards putting the players on notice that this type of behavior cannot continue. There are certainly plenty of stipulations in the CBA that would adequately punish Harden for failing to perform on his contract, but the bigger battle to be won here is the battle of public perception, and Silver has a chance to lay the sledgehammer if Harden does anything resembling what Amick has reported he will do.

In all corners of the NBA ecosystem right now, it feels like there is an enormous void of advocacy for the fans. The league office and media have turned staunchly pro-player over the past decade or so, and if anything, have taken on a role of preaching to the fans why not supporting all aspects of player empowerment is bad and immoral. In past generations, the league and the media made an effort to be champions for the fans’ experience, and players’ responsibility to do right by the fans, and somewhere along the line, it flipped – they started viewing themselves as champions for the players’ experience, and the fans’ responsibility to do right by the players. 

If he crushes Harden, Silver could start to push things back towards an equilibrium. No one wants to turn the clock back to the anti-player tone of the 90s and 2000s, but it feels now that we have entered into a space where the powers that be are refusing to call out and address blatant insanity. James Harden opting into a contract, requesting a trade to a specific team, and refusing to show up to work when that trade is not granted, is an absolutely horrific look for the NBA. Even if all Harden does is make himself a distraction and give half-ass effort on the floor, that’s not much better, either. 

Harden has served up a golden opportunity for Adam Silver to do something that he desperately needs to do – publicly condemn this type of bullshit. It would accomplish a desperately needed shift in public perception, and it’s a situation where he has complete and total impunity; not a single person would stick up for Harden here. To put a cherry on top: he can stick up for a fanbase that hates him more than any other fanbase in the league. If instead, he sits back and says nothing, it will be another chapter in the weakest and most ineffectual commissioner tenure in the history of professional sports.