Loser: James Harden
Two Rockets players, Terance Mann, and more Nuggets for your winners and losers article! Sean, do you hate the Eastern Conference!?
Giannis is entering an inflection point in his career where he can decide to either stay with the team that drafted him and built with them or looks to take his talents elsewhere if he believes they give him a better chance at winning if he wants that.
Harden is in a different situation with Houston after he inked a designated veteran extension (or supermax) with the Rockets which will see him paid upwards of $41 million for the next three seasons.
He doesn’t have an option next summer; he’s locked into this team and has to hope that General Manager Daryl Morey can continue putting a contending team around the scoring champion.
That’s looking a little bit less likely after they lost to the Lakers the way that they did, Russell Westbrook’s struggles (although it may be for health reasons – see two pages earlier), and Mike D’Antoni leaving his role as head coach according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
I’m sure Morey has something planned, it’d be out of character for him not to be prepared but there is of course still the China tweet issue that happened before the season kicked off and question marks after China, the NBA’s second-biggest market asked the Rockets GM to be fired.
You could throw out a bag of peanuts and a few deck chairs and I think Harden would still comfortably get to 30 points a night. But can that work in the playoffs?