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James Harden’s last post-game press conference with the Houston Rockets, where he sharply criticized the team, followed a rocky locker room meeting in which his teammates John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins the have called for his “level of engagement” after months of off-pitch business rumors and antics, reports say.
Several sources told The Athletic in a report released Monday that first-year head coach Stephen Silas led the discussion after the Rockets suffered a second loss to the Los Angeles Lakers and Harden was at the center of it all.
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“The band had had enough of the antics, tired of the headlines and constant questions about Harden’s state of mind and where it was all going,” the report read. “And each day that Harden was in Houston, his presence grew heavier and heavier for a team who just wanted a sense of clarity and understanding.”
Sources said several players expressed their displeasure with Harden’s attitude and recent efforts towards the team and when Silas asked the players for their “unfiltered opinions”, it was then that Wall and Cousins asked for a direct response from Harden on his “level of engagement,” the report said. .
After the encounter, players let the drama unfold during their zoom conferences.
“We’re not even close, honestly, to the defending champions and all the other elite teams,” Harden said at the time. “We’re just not good enough. Chemistry, talent, just everything.”
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He continued. “I love this city. I literally did everything I could. The situation is crazy. This is something that I don’t think can be fixed. Thank you.
Harden’s “chemistry” remark takes on real meaning following reports from the team meeting, which Wall also alluded to at his press conference.
“When guys 1-15 are all on the same page and get involved, they know their role, they know what they want to do, they know what they want to get out of it. who is to win, you’ll be fine. But when you have some guys in the mix who don’t want to buy into one, it’s going to be hard to do anything good as a basketball team, ”a- he declared.
“We can’t dwell on it because it’s only been nine games. Come on, man, you wanna jump off the cliff after nine games? There’s still a lot of basketball to play.”
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Cousins brought up the situation the next day – before the announcement of the Brooklyn Nets trade – and called Harden’s approach “disrespectful.”
“We feel a certain type of way about some of his actions,” he said. “Just approaching training camp, showing like he did, the antics off the pitch, the disrespect started long before [Tuesday night]. “
Harden said after his departure that the comments were left out of disrespect and that he simply believed that “the team as a whole was not good enough to compete for a title”, on which he has focused at this point in his career.
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