Despite plenty of fans calling for the contrary, the Cleveland Cavaliers are widely expected to re-sign James Harden to a new deal this offseason. Part of the thinking behind this is financial. If the Cavs were to move on from Harden somehow (he carries a player option, remember), "it's not like they would have the $40 million that they could then go spend," ESPN's Brian Windhorst pointed out this week.
With the way the NBA's cap rules operate, including cap holds and other complexities, Harden is somewhat of an irreplaceable asset to the Cavs at the moment, especially given their ever-ballooning cap situation, which is going to make for an extremely limiting offseason.
"[This isn't] the NFL salary cap where it's a hard cap and the money [you send out] just returns," ESPN's Tim Bontemps added to Windorst's comments during a Hoop Collective pod.
The financial reasons to keep Harden moving forward are clear and result from how the NBA cap system works. Harden's agency team has been masterful in recent years in placing James in a position where he's irreplaceable like this. Kudos to them, and Harden, being one of the top-50 players of all time, absolutely deserves all of the money he's made in the league.
James Harden has received a lot of basketball criticism that should be aimed at Donovan Mitchell
Beyond the financial aspect of the Harden-Cavs discussion, perhaps not enough attention has been paid to the basketball side of things, at least not in a positive light for Harden.
Harden's playoff failures are a recurring theme in basketball media discourse, to the point that it's grown a bit tiresome. And you could say, Well, he should stop coming up short, and we'll stop talking about it!, but that would be somewhat of a simplification of Harden's career, at least recently.
That's because Harden wasn't brought to Cleveland to lead them to the NBA Finals. Just as he wasn't brought to the Los Angeles Clippers or the Brooklyn Nets to be the alpha leader. In all of these cases, Harden was expected to be a second or even third option who provides plus value in that role, and to a large extent, he's done that.
James Harden isn't a leading man anymore ... why are we bashing him like one?
Along all three of the stops mentioned above, it's ultimately been the responsibility of the teams' alphas to make their team a champion ... Donovan Mitchell, Kawhi Leonard, and Kevin Durant (although injuries to Kyrie Irving, Harden, and Durant in Brooklyn were the main issue). Why do we routinely blame a team's superstar for that team falling short in the postseason, but then, for some reason, shift the blame to Harden whenever he's playing a supporting role on his squad?
Mitchell deserves a lot more of the flak that Harden's been receiving lately. It was Mitchell who wasn't good enough as a primary option for the Cavs against the Knicks, and it is Mitchell who hasn't proven he can lead a team to the NBA Finals as its best player. Harden is highly flawed, especially at this phase of his career, but why does Mitchell get such a free pass by comparison?
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