The NBA season tips off on Tuesday night with a marquee doubleheader before the majority of the league gets going on Wednesday, when the Houston Rockets will begin their 2020-21 campaign. There will be plenty of scrutiny facing the Rockets, who still have James Harden on the roster despite his very well known trade request, and as such body language doctors will be out in full force trying to gauge just how bad the situation is for however long he remains in Houston.
Much like with the Jimmy Butler situation in Minnesota, it also means we are going to get reports of Harden’s discontent in practice, which produced a story on Tuesday morning from The Athletic’s Shams Charania highlighting a number of “verbal confrontations” Harden’s had with teammates, including one that saw him throw a ball at (but not hitting) rookie Jae’Sean Tate on Monday.
Sources say Harden and rookie Jae’Sean Tate had a heated exchange during Monday’s practice, culminating in Harden throwing the ball in Tate’s direction. The ball did not hit Tate. Interactions like these between teammates during practice can be part of a normal, competitive environment. Harden, however, is known by those in the organization as a laid-back and calm personality —especially as superstars go — and some around the franchise are viewing this as rising to an uncharacteristic level of frustration given his ongoing situation.
Is this a sign that he’s going to go full Butler and start berating teammates and trying to beat all the starters with third stringers while calling them all soft? Probably not because, as Shams notes, that’s not Harden’s style, but that he’s even this much on edge seems to indicate that the entire situation is wearing on him more than he’s letting on when he briskly goes through media sessions insisting he’s just focused on playing ball and whatever happens will happen.
I will also say that “throwing the ball in Tate’s direction” might not even have been much of a thing at all, and that the sources in the practice may have embellished a bit — we’ll never know for sure. There’s a fairly big difference between, say, full on loading up and chucking a basketball at someone and flipping it towards them in frustration, and this report doesn’t make that particularly clear (especially since he didn’t even hit Tate with it).
In any case, this is Houston’s new reality for however long Harden remains around. Every single moment of frustration will appear to be much more than just normal, on-court angst and will be representative for many of his overall discontent, which may be true or may be an over reaction. So goes life with a disgruntled star who has lobbied a trade request and we’ll find out when they play the Thunder on Wednesday exactly how much they can set aside differences to get the job done on the court.