 When you think about NBA bro-man, since you usually think of like how Larry DeMar deRose and you think about Clay Thompson and Steph Curry, not many people think about a player and a front office guy. But for the last decade, James Harden and Daryl Morey was like this. And this week, all of that changed, man. All of that changed. And it's kinda sad that we got to this point. I know I'm late to the party talking about this. I was on my honeymoon with all of this broke. I'm finally home like I just landed and got home 30 minutes ago. The brother is back on the grind. So I'm late, but I'll make it worth it. I mean, maybe. I don't, I don't. James Harden is over in China and he said this a couple of days ago. Daryl Morey is a liar and I will never be a part of an organization that he's a part of. Let me say that again. This is crazy. The brother said, hey, just in case you didn't hear me clearly the first time, let me say that again. Daryl Morey is a liar and I will never be a part of an organization that he's a part of. And when this broke, I swear I thought it was not real. But of course that is from Shams. That is a real video, not an AI-generated video. James Harden actually said that even though his agent, I guess, advised him against it, he had to do what he had to do. And again, when I go back and talk about that bromance between Daryl Morey and James Harden, you have to remember exactly what I'm talking about. It's factual that James Harden is a better scorer than Michael Jordan. This is from Daryl Morey himself. There's been a lot of comments similar to this. There's been a lot of finagling from James Harden's part to get to a team that Daryl Morey was in charge of. And just like that, it is broken. All of the trust is broken between the two. And now James Harden is kind of in limbo trying to figure out where the heck am I going to be playing? Because James opted into his contract with the idea that he was going to be traded. But Daryl Morey said, hey, I'm not making no trade that won't make us better. So I want to start Call of the Player back plus draft capital. And again, Daryl, there's no leverage so that trade package is not going to happen. So what is going to happen? I think in all of this is easy to pick sides. So you're basically team 76 in front office or you team James Harden? And for y'all that are completely out of the blue, why did this bro man's end? Why is he saying this? Well, he was promising things allegedly. Let's say allegedly. He was allegedly promising things from Daryl Morey's last in 76's front office and they have not fulfilled those promises. If you remember last off season, one of the big things of the off season was James Harden took a pretty decent pay cut with the idea that, hey, under the table action, you take that pay cut right now and we promise you next season we're gonna pay you but we need to do what we can do to win the championship. So you take your pay cut and that's gonna allow us to bring in Daniel House Jr. and that's gonna allow us to bring in PJ Tucker and James like, cool, well you say you're gonna give me that money next season? All right, I still got my shoe endorsement, I got my liquor, I got all of this stuff. I can afford to lose about $15 million right now. You promise to me that next season it's gonna be there, right? Right? Okay, cool. And of course James puts together a really good season. I mean, he averaged, was it 20 and 10? I know he led the league in assistant, yeah, 21 and about 11. He had a good season, obviously in the playoffs he had the 240 point games and in every game around that, not so great but just saying that James Harden had a successful individual season especially when he comes to the regular season. Yet, the thing that he was promised, allegedly, is not on the table. This is how a lot of people assume that it went down. He was promised this money, whatever the number was, was it a match, was it close to it, whatever. Darryl Slas at 76 in front of us said, oh, I'm sorry, I know we promised you that last season, we can't really do that. But what we can do is have you opt into your contract and you know what, if you disgruntle, we can trade your way. James is like, oh man, I guess that's fine. It's not a lot of money out there in the market right now. There's not a lot of teams with money to give me a near max. So I guess I'll opt into this contract but you're promising me you're gonna trade me to like the Clippers or you're gonna trade me to another one of the teams that I'm really interested in. And they're like, cool, not a problem. We gonna make sure we do that for you. Couple weeks go by, couple months go by. And now the 76ers are saying they're cool would having James hard to report the training cap and James said, no, no, no, I refuse. I refuse to do that. And that's where things get really, really tricky. Obviously the 76ers just went through something like this a few years ago with Ben Simmons where Ben Simmons did not run to report but he did report for that one practice. Phone was in his pocket allegedly. I'm gonna keep saying allegedly because I guess he said it wasn't, but like what else with that? Oh man. It ain't go well. And then he was traded shortly after that, a little while after that. But the new CBA has something in it that if James does a report or he doesn't play, I think that he gets like a 30 day grace period or something along those lines. His contract doesn't just expire. Like he opted to his contract and it's mine. Okay, worst case scenario, we play out this season next year. I'm a free agent, not only am I a free agent. Next year's crazy class is not that good. It's like Pascal Siakam's Clay Thompson. Then it's like me. Those are the all star caliber players at least as of right now that are unrestricted. So you know what? I might not be able to get that back this season. I get it next season. I'll just sit out with it. I might go play in China because I guess that's a rumor that he's interested in playing in China. No, under the new CBA, if he does not report and the 76ers wants him to report, he's not out of his contract when that year is done. That contract goes over. So he will not be a 2024 free agent if he does report. And that's when things get messy. James Harden's last couple of years, it's hard to internalize when you think about it. From my understanding, he was not represented by anybody other than himself, at least until the last couple of months. And here are some of the numbers that he turned down over the last couple of seasons when he did not have an agent. The Rockets offered him a two year, $103 million extension. He said, no, I'm good on that. I'd rather go play with some other team. Then he ended up with that other team, the Brooklyn Nets. And they offered him a three years, $161 million in contract. And he said, no, I'm not really into that. I would rather you trade me away because this Kyrie KD thing in Brooklyn ain't really it. Then he gets there and he's eligible for a four year, $227 million contract. But again, he was convinced to take a pay cut. So think about all that money that was left on the table if you're the Harden family. And now you tell me to opt in again and I can't get no money. I can understand his frustration. I also talk about this more in depth on my podcast. It's the Kenny Beecham podcast. You can look it up on Spotify, on Afro, whatever, whatever, because these YouTube videos is only for 10 to 15 minutes. You're gonna hear an hour talk. Not just this other basketball related stuff. You know what if I do. So now the question is, what happens next? Darryl Morey is a guy that has over the years as a general manager, basketball operations, hey, whatever, whatever. He strived with just crazy scenarios. He did not give in to the Ben Simmons thing. And he held out on Ben Simmons until he got an all-star caliber player back in James Harden. Now I don't think that still is out there for James to, for him to try to replicate that. Oh, we traded Ben Simmons who hadn't played for James Harden. I don't think you can trade James Harden for something, you know, another all-star. So if that's not the case, the Norman Powell slash Terrence Mann, who they don't even want to throw Terrence Mann in. So this Clippers package might be even worse because where do you hold leverage if you're Philly? Like, yeah, James Harden's really, really good, but that doesn't matter. He wants out. You're kind of, you're not forced to, but you're close to forced to trade him. Why would I, as an opposing general manager, give you some of my best pieces when, in reality, James is saying he don't want to play for you anyway? There's no leverage if you're the 76ers in these trade talks. You might want Terrence Mann. We don't want to get you them. And you don't have any other suitors, so what are you gonna do? But the bigger picture of all of this is well beyond Daryl Mori, is well beyond James Harden. It's about the reigning MVP of the league, Joellen B. The man took the processing slash Philadelphia out of his bio. I don't be looking too much into that. I think the timing is very interesting, but I don't think too much into that. But I can understand his frustrations, like think about the timetable of Joellen B as he's hit startup, right? You build a, I think the best team you've built around Joellen B was the Jimmy Butler, JJ Reddick, Ben Simmons years, our year. I think it was just one. And of course, Hawaii Leonard hit one of the craziest shots in the history of this sport. And that just ends. Jimmy Butler goes in another direction, yada, yada, yada. Tobias Harris over me. You remember that? Even then, okay, you lose Jimmy Butler, but you still have a really competent roster with Ben Simmons and stuff. Like, yeah, we wanted to see a little bit more pick and roll between Joelle and Ben Simmons over those years, but it never really happened. Then that thing happens where Ben Simmons is passing out of a layup or what Trey Young guarded him. And then the whole fiasco and him happen and now you have James. Like there has been a lot of super star, not super star, a lot of all star level turnaround with the 76ers over these years. And Joellen B might be like, man, I'm fed up. Like I know personally, I have not been the best version of myself gonna play off time, but man, I haven't really had that much consistency around me. And now you're saying we might be trading James hard in a way for, I don't wanna say scraps, but not a player of his caliber? That doesn't really interest me too much. I'm 30 years old with injury history. I don't know how many great years I got in these legs anymore. So could we be going down the path of Joellen B being the next superstar player to say, hey, I've had enough. Now he's alluded to this kind of in a way. Like I said this before, 76er fans, they wanna trade me. Again, this was what, a year ago? Oh, this was the last season. 76er fans don't really think this way, but he just wanted to say it, I guess. And then Jake Fisher said, hey, you believe that? He said, I do believe that they wanna trade me. When in reality, yes, he could have be trolling, but whatever. I don't know exactly, obviously, the conversations that were said between James and Daryl, but if it is that he was promised a certain thing and he wasn't given that promise, I understand the frustration behind all of it, honestly. One person that's just sitting back like, dang, I really messed up, might be Nickner. Nickner's took this coaching job with the idea that he was gonna have a really good team around Joellen B, and that just might not be the case. He'd be like, man, I left those dudes in Toronto, not saying that Toronto's team is much better or any better, but like, man, there was a lot of good coaching jobs on the market this year, and Nickner was one of the highly-touted dudes, and he ended up in Philly, and now he don't even know if he gonna have James next season, and he don't even know if he gonna have Joellen B in the two seasons. Like, this is a rough spot if you hear him. But there's a conversation to be had about player empowerment versus the business side of basketball, and this is a prime example of both, because Daryl might be saying, hey, I don't wanna give James that money because we think we can spend money other places and make our team better. Now, player empowerment is like, hey, you don't wanna give me that, so I'm just gonna say deuces, and not only do I wanna say deuces, I have a short list of teams I want you to train me to. That's the second time James has done this, you know? This is when he requested his trade to Brooklyn. I remember he did the post-game interview, he said, I gave them a list of teams, and it was only one team, and it was the Brooklyn Nets. And then he got traded from the Brooklyn Nets to the 76ers, and he said, I gave them a list of teams, and the only team on my list was the 76ers. So, I don't know what's going on with James, but you know, because of all of this is going on, the Damia and Lilith talks have kind of died down. This is more prevalent because there are real-world implications across the association that are deeper than just James when it comes to holding out a training camp and stuff. So, we'll see who's playing chicken. We'll see who's bluffing, and we'll see what James is up playing next season.