James Harden gives us $14 million reasons to give him the benefit of the doubt

The most powerful human emotion is not love or anger or jealousy but shame. That might sound like a bold declaration, but think about the acts committed in its name and you should begin to see its unique ability to both inspire and destroy. Carl Jung’s description of it as a “soul-eating emotion” strikes very close to the source of its singularity: love, anger, jealousy — these are all things we feel primarily toward others. Shame in its purest form is inspired exclusively by ourselves.

When James Harden strode blankly off the court at the end of the Sixers’ Game 6 loss to the Miami Heat in May, he looked like a man who was deep in the throes of shame. He has never said this explicitly, and he may never admit that his frustration had penetrated to such depths, but everything he said and did in the aftermath betrayed a man in the midst of an internal crisis.

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For the first time in his career, he would enter an offseason without the comfort of knowing that he’d done everything he could. For the first time in his career, he walked off a playoff court knowing that he had not left it all out there. Not only that, but he knew that the reason he had not left it all out there was that he’d brought nothing there to leave. There is only one path forward for a man who has arrived at such a realization. He can fight, or he can flee.

While it is far too early to say for certain which path Harden has taken, the early reports are promising. He began his offseason conditioning program earlier than he had in previous seasons, when he often showed up to training camp looking like he had never begun one at all.

He has been working out with Sixers assistant Sam Cassell and spending time with Sixers center Joel Embiid. No doubt, all of these things are easy enough for even a part-time public relations consultant to manufacture, and have proven in the past to be far from predictive. But the most telling bit of information is something too concrete to ignore, that being the two-year, $68.6 million contract extension that the Sixers announced on Wednesday, and that gives them the salary cap room they need to address most of the holes on their roster.

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Let’s be clear about the point here: $69 million over two years does not put Harden in the running for any Citizen of the Year awards. From a purely ethical framework, it is a fair deal and nothing more. One cannot even call it below market rate, given the typical market for a player who is coming off a season in which his body often appeared incapable of executing the things that he once could do with ease. Accepting a $33 million salary to play basketball in 2022-23 ranks well shy of the middle on the self-sacrifice continuing.

Nevertheless, while $33 million is a considerable amount of money, it is also considerably less than $47 million, which is the amount of money Harden could have earned himself simply by saying, “Yes, I will allow you to pay me that.” These things are rarely that simple, and this one isn’t either, but it is close.

Harden’s old contract gave him the option to play the 2022-23 season for $14 million more than he will play it for under his new deal. Even for a player with $272 million in career earnings, $14 million is not a small amount. Imagine if somebody offered you a check for the equivalent of 5% of all of the income you’ve ever made. Wherever you are on the economic scale, that’s a difficult offer to turn down.

This was not a pure giveback by Harden. In return for that $14 million this year, the Sixers guaranteed him a $36 million salary for next year. That’s not nothing, either. Had Harden opted in at $47 million this year, he would have hit next summer’s free agent market needing to sign a contract that paid him at least $22 million for the 2023-24 season in order to equal the $69 million he is now guaranteed for these next two years.

Another year of decline or a significant injury and Harden will be plenty thankful to have that player option next year. Still, the odds would have been in his favor, especially when you consider the going rate for the player Harden was even last season (the Heat paid 35-year-old Kyle Lowry $27 million last year).

Again, though, let’s not lose sight of the point. However much credit you think Harden’s new contract earns him, the fact remains that it is very much a sign of his self-awareness. That’s important, because self-awareness has always been the quality that was going to determine whether Harden could succeed with the Sixers.

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If he had arrived in Philadelphia determined to be the player he was in Houston, the outcome would not have been any better than it ended up last season. Harden needed to understand who he was, and who the Sixers were, and what he needed to do to make all of them the winningest versions of themselves. And, from Day 1, that is what he has done.

Therein lies the irony of the criticism Harden faced last postseason. The Sixers ended up needing him to be more of the guy he was in Houston. They needed him to be more of a scorer, more of a shooter, more of a driver with a nose for the rim. As the postseason wore on, Harden was increasingly questioned about his reluctance to be those things. If you watched and listened closely, his reaction to those questions offered the only answer you needed. He wasn’t doing those things because he knew that he couldn’t.

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Only time will tell if Harden regains that ability, in all or in part. Injuries to the core become increasingly difficult to completely rehabilitate as an athlete ages. The hamstring might always be something that lingers. Harden might always have those moments we saw throughout the playoffs, where his athletic instincts tell his body to do something and his body simply does not respond. The important thing is that he is aware.

The Sixers need Harden’s body to be in better shape in order to win. They need a better team around him in order to win. They need Embiid to be the best player on the team in order to win. These are not easy things for veteran superstars to understand.

The fact that Harden seems to understand them is all that we can ask for at this stage of the game. Shame can be a soul-eating emotion, but it can also provide one hell of spark. After all, the only cure for it lies within.