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James Harden Rumors
Question for all the rookies: what players do you model your game after, and what players do you think you are similar to in terms of play styles on both ends? Dylan Harper: All the big guards that resemble the same size as me. I'd say Shai, Cade Cunningham, James Harden, Luka Dončić. We are all around the same height. Just how they control the game, the pace. How they can score and a little bit of everything. On advice I have for a lefty is to work on your right hand too, because a lot of teams are going to force you to go right, even though you're a lefty.
The Clippers recently re-signed James Harden and added Brook Lopez and John Collins to go with Kawhi Leonard. The team won 50 games this past season despite having Leonard play in just 37 of them and lost in the first round of the playoffs to the Nuggets in seven games. “We just thought the Clippers presented an opportunity for Brad to really be the best version of himself, to get back to being exactly who he is, which is a multiple time All-Star and All-NBA player,” Bartelstein said. Beal made three All-Star teams and an All-NBA team in his 11 years in Washington.
The Clippers were one of the teams that had already shown interest in Beal and were on his short list. When the Powell deal happened, talks accelerated, sources said. Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and head coach Ty Lue, who as a native of Mexico, Missouri, has a long relationship with St. Louis native Beal, spoke to Beal about what the Clippers could offer. But the key voice came from James Harden, who lobbied the Clippers' front office to chase Beal and then reached out to him directly to make the sale, sources said.
Joel Embiiid: James Harden is not talking to me
It's a principled stance, but it's also a desire to have something his talent and status will not allow him: innocence. When Embiid plays his latest sports video game obsession, "MLB The Show," he trades and trades until his team is invulnerable, only then does he play, securing in make believe what he cannot in life -- a guarantee against his doubts, his silence, his bad luck, his frailty, his complicity. "No one knows this, but even James [Harden] is not talking to me," Embiid tells me. "That's the part I don't like about being 'that guy,' because it puts you in the middle of those situations. Because if you ask James, he probably believes I had something to do with him not being here. And I'm just like, 'I won the scoring title. You won the assists title. We had a pick-and-roll that was unstoppable.'" "It hurts when you feel like you haven't done anything wrong," he continues. "When you think you have a relationship like that with somebody ... you lose a lot."
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Shams Charania: They looked into a few other options at the guard and wing positions but settled on Powell. From both the Jazz and Clippers perspectives, I'm told neither team was going to re-sign Powell or John Collins long-term. So both teams were able to go get players they feel will help. The Clippers wanted a lob threat, specifically for James Harden. Kawhi Leonard is playing more at the three and the four now. That gives them more versatility with John Collins.
Ohm Youngmisuk: Lawrence Frank thanks Norm Powell. He says Clippers have targeted John Collins for a long time and believe James Harden can really take advantage of Collins' athleticism as a rim threat. Collins also allows Kawhi to move back to small forward. A lot of versatility in front court.
Clippers were reluctant to sign Norman Powell to a contract extension before his trade to Miami
Michael Scotto: Sources: The Los Angeles Clippers were reluctant to give Norman Powell a long-term extension as he enters the final year of his deal ($20.48 million) with Kawhi Leonard and James Harden signed through the 2026-27 season. The Clippers are prioritizing significant cap space in 2027
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Kevin Durant says Thunder weren't 'ready' after team's 2012 Finals run: They weren't ready for us to be yearly contenders
Durant sat down with NBA luminaries LeBron James and Steve Nash for an interview on the "Mind the Game" podcast, which released Part 1 of the two-part chat on Tuesday morning. Durant said he believes the Thunder's front office wasn't "ready," after the team's run to the 2012 Finals, which came before the now-unfortunate trade of James Harden (benefiting the Rockets). Durant didn't look back on the Thunder's Finals loss and the Harden trade with frustration. Instead, he still regrets a missed opportunity that set back a team that was on the rise. "We sped up the timeline. All of us. Each individual player, Serge [Ibaka], you didn't know, he came out of nowhere. He came out here being the best shot blocker in the league," Durant said. "I'm averaging 30 at 21 years old. Russell [Westbrook] was 22 years old as an All-Star, James [Harden] Sixth Man at 22, so we exceeded the timeline, so they wasn't ready for that. That's just my theory. I don't know exactly what Sam [Presti] was thinking or the owner, but my theory is that I don't think they were ready exactly for us to be contenders every year."
"Since we reached the finals, you're supposed to upgrade and fine-tune and make changes around," Durant said. "You can't just pull one of the key figures off the team and expect us to continue what we was doing. So I think they were kind of shocked at how fast, how good we got so fast and sometimes you get confused. On top of that, Sam Presti was probably what, 30-something years old? He was young. Everybody was young, trying to figure stuff out, trying to understand what this landscape was."
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