James Harden returned to Barclays Center for the first time since he pushed for a trade from the Brooklyn Nets to the Philadelphia 76ers last year.
When asked whether he could have imagined a scenario in which both Durant and Irving would have been gone by the time he played his first game against the Nets.
“Yeah,” Harden said.
Harden was asked to explain further.
“I didn’t just ask to leave for no reason,” Harden said. “I was in a really good place in Houston. Obviously, we didn’t have a chance to win a championship, but I was comfortable. So for me to up and leave my family, all the things I created there, to come to Brooklyn for a year and a half to try to just get up and leave, it was for a reason, you know what I mean? But I’m happy for the organization and what they’ve got back. They got some really good pieces.”
Harden said there were things he felt the Nets could have done to keep him but did not elaborate specifically.
“Yeah, there was,” he said. “Like, a lot of things. But it was just a lot of dysfunction. Clearly. But it was a lot of internal things that I’m not going to ever just say, put in the media or anything. And that was one of the reasons why I chose to make my decision.
“But now, fast-forward to date, I don’t look like the crazy one. I don’t look like the guy or the quitter or whatever the media want to call me. I knew what was going on and I just decided to … hey, I’m not built for this. I don’t want to deal with that. I want to play basketball and have fun and enjoy doing it. And fast-forward to today, they’ve got a whole new roster.”
Harden said he pushed for the move because he knew things were already moving in a bad direction for the Nets.
“It was wrong,” Harden said. “It definitely … it was wrong. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right.”