Stephon Marbury Addresses James Harden, Brooklyn Nets Rumors

Will James Harden join the Brooklyn Nets?

“It will be about if he wants to be a branch or the bark of the tree,” Stephon Marbury told me by phone in China today.

“If he’s willing to be a branch it’s perfect. KD and Kyrie are on the same page.”

Imagine a world where the Brooklyn Nets paired Kyrie Irving, James Harden and Kevin Durant together.

Harden and Irving are close. “Brotherhood extends way beyond the court,” Irving wrote about Harden in an Instagram post on August 31, 2015.

The duo were USA basketball teammates in 2014. They won a gold medal.

Chatter on TV has suggested that Irving and Harden don’t get along.

“Fiction,” a source told me last month.

Harden and Durant were Oklahoma City Thunder teammates. Harden enjoyed being teammates with Durant in OKC.

In a 2014 with The Beard, I asked him what it’s like to team up with KD with in All Star Games after being traded to Houston Rockets:

“It’s always fun,” Harden told me.

“A lot of memories.”

This week, the Houston Rockets traded Russell Westbrook for John Wall. Wall will reunite with Kentucky teammate DeMarcus Cousins.

The Rockets have already turned the page on Westbrook; tearing down a mural of the duo at Houston’s Toyota Center.

Does that mean that Harden is on his way out too?

Westbrook’s issue with the Rockets, I’m told was team owner Tilman Fertitta.

Harden’s preferences with the Rockets are still unclear at this point but according to multiple reports, Harden didn’t show up to the first team workout of Rockets training camp— even though head coach Stephen Silas expected him there.

“That’s a question you’re going to have to ask him when he gets here,” Silas stated during media availability today.

Worth noting, however: Harden was not the only notable Rocket missing from the first training camp practice.

P.J. Tucker also missed the Rockets’ practice. It’s unclear whether Tucker missed practice due to COVID protocols or a different reason.

Would a Harden, Nets pairing make sense? IF it were to happen, it’s believed that Brooklyn might have to part ways with Caris LeVert.

LeVert is believed to be the Nets’ third star alongside Irving and Durant.

In his second season in Brooklyn, LeVert averaged 18.7 points, 4.2 rebounds, 4.4 assists and 1.2 steals per game.

In LeVert’s last five games, before the NBA shut down on March 11, 2020 due to COVID-19, Brooklyn went 4-1 with LeVert in the starting lineup and without Nets stars Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant.

Last season, LeVert posted a 50 point game and his first career triple-double.

While many would welcome a potential pairing of Irving, Durant and Harden, some don’t want to see it. “He’s an awesome player,” forer Net Kenny Anderson told me on the Heavy Live With Scoop B Show.

“But NOT a good fit for the Brooklyn Nets. So you know; they got Kyrie, they got Kevin Durant and let’s build around those two guys and let out young guys grow with [Spencer] Dinwiddie there, [Caris] LeVert; we got a good team and a young nucleus.”

0 Comments