The Deeply Human Appeal of the NBA Offseason

James Harden’s Search for a Home

Why does the NBA have the best offseason of all the four major pro leagues? The biggest reason is that basketball is the sport where one player can make the biggest difference. LeBron James going from one city to another is enough to turn a lottery team into a title contender, and vice versa, so obviously fans are going to be more excited about those moves.

But there’s more to it than that. It’s not just the playoff implications that get people interested in the NBA rumor mill—there’s a level of human drama to the NBA offseason that appeals to fans who are only mildly invested in the actual sport. I know this because I was one of them—before I ever paid much attention to the NBA season, I was very invested in where players would end up when the season was over. Its appeal transcends sports. It provides a glimpse into how people think about themselves, their work, and their relationships with other people.

Take the current James Harden situation: Harden wants out of Houston, having turned down their $50 million per year contract extension, favoring a trade to Brooklyn, or Philadelphia, or maybe now Miami. But even though Harden is a former MVP still playing at the height of his powers, it’s not totally clear that he would necessarily improve any of those teams. Unlike other sports, where decisions about trades and free agent signings basically boil down to who has a need for what position, and who has the most money to spend, NBA moves raise deeper questions about life itself.

Questions like:

1) Can people change who they are? James Harden is probably the most skilled offensive player in basketball right now. Even his detractors would admit that he is singularly talented at scoring. But because of this, the ball tends to stay in his hands, leaving his teammates to adopt specific, secondary roles on offense. So it was weird to hear that he wanted to go to Brooklyn and play with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving—two elite scorers who ALSO need the ball in their hands (as everyone on Twitter joked, there’s only one ball). Perhaps Harden is willing to take a more complementary role, like the one he had when he last played with Durant in Oklahoma City back in 2012 (which is, coincidentally or not, the only time Harden has made the NBA Finals), but this is almost impossible to imagine. For one, it would be pointless to trade for Harden and then use him as a secondary option, like buying an iPhone to use as your alarm. But it’s also not clear Harden is even capable of taking such a role at this point in his career. Which leads to our next question…

2) Are people capable of judging themselves accurately? Harden has spent each of the last two seasons alienating superstar teammates. First Chris Paul and then Russell Westbrook both came into the season excited to pair with Harden, but ended the season demanding a trade because they resented Harden’s style of play. Paul, who had just helped the Rockets get to Game 7 of the Western Conference finals, signed an extension to stay in Houston and see if the Paul/Harden duo could get the Rockets a championship. By the end of the year, the relationship was “unsalvageable.” So just a year into a four-year extension, Houston traded Paul for Westbrook, who was eager to reunite with his old teammate Harden. By the end of that year, he too demanded a trade.

Fans can see this and conclude that there must be something about Harden’s style of play that makes talented offensive players not want to be his teammate for long… but that must be a hard thing for Harden himself to acknowledge. Is he able to be critical of himself, or does the confidence that has led him to where he is prevent him from seeing his own failures?

There have also been other players this offseason, like Durant or Jimmy Butler, who have seemed open to playing with Harden. Do these players simply think they’re too good to suffer the same fate as Paul and Westbrook? Is this just hubris, or is it based on something about the way they play? Is Harden willing to change his game after the humbling results of the last two seasons? All of these are subsets of perhaps the bigger question...

3) How important is the ability to collaborate? Is it more important than talent? There is always an element of resentment, in the NBA, when superstars team up. When LeBron James joined Dwyane Wade in Miami, or Durant joined Stephen Curry on the Warriors, fans get annoyed. It seems like taking a shortcut to greatness. On the flip side, there is something appealing about the uncompromising way Harden plays, always dominating his team’s offense. But it’s hard to argue with the results: Four of the last five NBA champions have had multiple “superstars.” Meanwhile, guys like Harden and Westbrook made the NBA Finals together, when they played with Durant, but never on their own.

It’s also worth pointing out that Durant and Irving are both still recovering from injuries, while Harden has played a ton of minutes over his career. Perhaps they simply need each other to share the load this season. If so, is it important that they click stylistically, or should teams just try to acquire a surplus of talent, no matter the synergy?

These are the questions that make the NBA offseason so intriguing. They are fundamental questions about personal values and philosophy, and we only get to really think about them during the NBA offseason. Our answers to these questions reveal deep and important psychological and ideological differences among people. They should be relevant to our own lives, and how we think about the work that we do—if only we had the autonomy that NBA players do. In reality, most people do not have the luxury of considering things beyond salary and basic working conditions (hours, location, safety, etc.) when taking a job. But the NBA provides a window into how to think about work in an idealized world, where we can actually think abstractly about what we want to accomplish and who we want to accomplish it with.