James Harden and the Nets is a romance that is seriously starting to take a turn for the worse. And it’s not Shaquille O’Neal who will put out the fire… The former pivot has indeed been cash on the subject recently, with a rather worrying exit for Brooklyn fans.
About a year ago, it’s a James Harden grump who forced his transfer from Houston. Direction Brooklyn for him, to form an anthology Big Three with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. Except that the first season ended in a failure in the second round of the playoffs, and that he currently finds himself alone to lead the boat of the Blacks and Whites, due to the injury of the first and absences from home games of the second.
It is therefore no surprise that for the past few days, the rumors around his frustration have continued to swell. We are already peddling a term departure to the Sixers, where his former GM Daryl Morey, whom he rubbed shoulders with at the Rockets, awaits. On the side of observers, there is no room for doubt: the 2018 MVP no longer feels at home in Brooklyn. On TNT, Shaquille O’Neal also dropped a fairly devastating truth bomb on the issue:
Shaq: ‘It’s obvious James Harden isn’t happy in Brooklyn’
It’s obvious that he’s not happy right now, and that’s no wonder. When the team was put together, they had clearly established title ambitions. Now you have a guy doing his own thing and no one is on the same page anymore.
Difficult to say that the atmosphere is good at the Nets, especially since The Beard also complained about coach Steve Nash. Under these conditions, it is immediately more complicated to see them as credible candidates for the Larry O’Brien trophy, despite the strike force at their disposal. The Big Diesel, however, insists that they show themselves united, because it is the only way according to him to go all the way:
If you want to become champions, you must all be on the same page. You don’t have to like each other, we argued a lot when I was with the Lakers. But you have to be able to make sacrifices for the team if you want to win.
This last remark from the Shaq sounds like a slap in the face addressed to the entire Nets, the Hall of Famer letting it be understood that there is no longer any unity within the group. It remains to be seen whether the quadruple champion’s words will prove to be true…
