I imagine James Harden on his phone, bewildered. He’s lounging on his couch, thumbing through YouTube, searching for Terance Mann highlight videos from the preseason. There aren’t any—just snippets of podcast interviews he’s done, old clips from last season, and strange local Hawaiian news cameos. Mann averaged 6.5 points in the Clippers’ four preseason games. This is the guy that’s holding everything up?
Taken in totality, it almost makes sense that Mann, a 27-year-old do-it-all role player entering his fifth season, has become the line in the sand in the Harden-to-L.A. trade negotiations. As it stands, the Philadelphia 76ers are reportedly asking for an unprotected first-round pick, a pick swap, and Mann (along with cap filler) in exchange for the 10-time All-Star and onetime league MVP. In a vacuum, it’s a no-brainer. But, as evidenced by the past three seasons, the entire league is aware of the potential consequences. Harden holds an existential mirror up to the Clippers organization and Mann stands as a symbol of the crossroads that they’re at. With neither Kawhi Leonard nor Paul George heading into the season with a contract extension secured, how many times can a team go all in before what lies on the other side of “win now” is a hopeless wasteland? The Clippers have made 17 trades since their league-shifting gambit to acquire Leonard and George in 2019. Beyond Mann, the team has had precious few developmental success stories; can it really afford to give up on one of them? Can it afford not to? And would Harden’s arrival really make that much of a difference?
The fact that the last question needs to be asked suggests a sobering answer. And while Harden clearly isn’t the player he was five years ago, Harden’s Q score (in the shitter) has, at this point, completely eclipsed his real plus-minus (5.05, 26th among all players in 2022-23). He’s less the reigning assists leader and more a proxy for the friend who refuses to acknowledge that they’re repeatedly falling into the same troubling patterns after a complicated breakup that happened years ago. But, objectively, Harden would be the best facilitator the Clippers have had since Chris Paul. Despite his tempestuousness, he has a rare mastery of the pick-and-roll that leads to easy chemistry with players as disparate as Clint Capela, Bruce Brown, and Joel Embiid. The Clippers have a hard-charging rim runner (Ivica Zubac) and lob threats (Mason Plumlee, Kenyon Martin Jr.), but they also have Kawhi and PG to add new layers to a Harden-led two-man game. Have we been here before? Yes. Scary hours elapsed in Brooklyn without so much as a whimper. Harden helped set up an MVP season for Embiid before asking out. Past precedent isn’t inspiring, but there is no denying what Harden could bring to a Clippers offense that has underperformed the past two seasons.
Harden’s style, especially during the later years in Houston, felt rooted in a certain cynicism: He is strictly playing the numbers, and probability has often dictated that having Harden make the bulk of decisions on the court netted more points than did spreading out the responsibility. Historically, it has led to regular-season stability, but there has always been a tacit acknowledgment that said stability would corrode in the postseason—a part of the fatalistic narrative that follows him like a wraith. But that’s a bargain the Clippers should feel compelled to make, given how much of a slog the regular season has been the last two seasons. In spite of everything, including being 34 years old, Harden can still shepherd a top-10 offense in his sleep. Given all the stops and starts that have become hallmarks of the Leonard-George era, having access to Harden’s just-add-water offensive system would be a vital resource that they haven’t had.
In a sense, Harden and his hometown Clippers are in rare alignment, presenting each other’s last chance at what they’re purportedly looking for. Four years ago, Steve Ballmer made the ultimate gamble on star power. Why not make another to finish the story? (Trace all the connections that bind Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden together and you’ll end up drawing a pentagram.) For Harden, this is certainly the last time a team will be considering mortgaging its future to acquire his services—even he has to be aware of all the bridges he’s burned in the past three years. More than that, though, the Clippers represent one final safety ladder that Harden can use to descend gracefully from this peak. The promise was the same in Brooklyn as it was in Philadelphia, and as it would be in Los Angeles. Each new destination carved a place in the margins for Harden, who had become a star by creating marginal advantages for himself. And at each destination, it was eventually rejected. For one reason or another, he wasn’t ready. You can’t simulate someone’s future for them and not expect a crisis of agency.
For all the concerns about fit, situating Harden in the Clippers offense seems straightforward. Harden’s arrival would naturally push Westbrook out of the starting lineup, but Russ was warming up to being used in different ways during the second half of last season, especially as a screener. There’s no reason why he couldn’t make plays downhill the way Bruce Brown did with Harden in Brooklyn. The most logical way to incorporate and empower Harden within the system is to allow him to run a microcosmic Hardenball offense when Leonard is on the bench, and leverage Harden’s excellent 3-point shooting ability when he’s sharing the court with Kawhi. One can only hope Harden is slowly moving past his ball hog era and coming full circle, similar to his early years as a potent complementary threat. He’d certainly excel at it: Harden has hit 39.5 percent (547-for-1,384) of his catch-and-shoot 3s over the past decade. His post-prime transition hasn’t been the smoothest, but few are. Still, there are signs of acquiescence. Since leaving Houston, the percentage of 3-pointers that Harden has made that were assisted is still abnormally low, but it has slowly risen year by year.
(In 2018-19, a staggering 84 percent of Harden’s 3s were unassisted, which I would confidently say will never be surpassed … if it weren’t for Luka Doncic, who is fully ensconced in his own ball hog era.)
The logic behind an NBA team’s acquisition of Harden’s talents has always been sound, but it’s been hard to account for his changing whims in a statistical model. The basketball-viewing public has been quick to rush him into the next phase of his career, so much so that it’s warped our sense of who he still is. Harden is taking the scenic route at his own pace. It’s always been that way. There is a fundamental oxymoron woven into the fabric of Harden’s entire career that explains his successes, his failures, his apex, and his present decline. It was 2016 when Dr. Marcus Elliott of P3 Applied Sports Science brought it to my attention, in a completely unrelated conversation. His assessment uncannily framed Harden’s on-court style as a biomechanical anomaly.
“Harden is barely average in almost every metric we look at related to athleticism, except for deceleration metrics,” Elliott told me then. “And in those he’s one of the best athletes we’ve ever measured in any sport — in soccer, football, or basketball.” In other words: Harden slows down faster than everyone else around him. It’s in those old, languid, foul-baiting slaloms into the lane, holding the ball away from his chest like he was Batman in the ’60s. It’s in the iconic stepbacks and side steps and all the other momentum-deadening, cat burglar–esque footwork he’s brought into the NBA’s zeitgeist. It’s in the begrudging uptick in midrange attempts and declining free throw attempt rate entering his 15th season.
Slowing down was his greatest gift. These days, it’s the biggest question about his viability as a star moving forward. And then you factor in everything else that the Clippers must reckon with: the fact that Harden is forcing his way to a third new team in four seasons, but this time as an expiring contract; the understanding, deep down, that he may never truly buy into a system in which he is not the sun among stars; the sacrificing of the team’s future in the form of first-round capital for an unknowable present … again. And then, at the end of the rainbow, potentially being left with three aging stars all looking for max guaranteed money—should the Clippers remain radio silent on extension talks.
It’s fair to wonder whether it’s all worth it—whether Harden is worth it. Whether trading a first-rounder for a rental is worth it. (Or worse, trading the future for the final expensive years of Harden’s career.) Maybe not for most teams. But the Clippers have one last guaranteed shot at vindicating this era of Kawhi Leonard and Paul George. Things could get messy quickly, but this could be how they make it count.
