Skip to content
Sixers
Link copied to clipboard

You can stop asking if James Harden is playing tonight | Cartoon

At the moment, there is a lot of love for Harden and his “perfect” Philly beard.

Rob Tornoe / staff
    by Rob Tornoe
    Published 

The wait is finally over. James Harden will take the court for the Sixers Friday night when Philadelphia takes on the Minnesota Timberwolves at the Target Center in Minneapolis. The game will air on NBC Sports Philadelphia, with tipoff scheduled for 8 p.m.

There is a lot of love for Harden and his “perfect” Philly beard at the moment. Not only do the Sixers have a proven playmaker and future Hall of Famer to pair with MVP candidate Joel Embiid, Harden’s arrival represents the end of the Ben Simmons’ saga, the malcontent All-Star who forced the Sixers to trade him by sitting out the season.

Here’s how my colleague Keith Pompey described the pairing of Harden and Embiid, who have 24 games to get used to playing together before the NBA playoffs:

On paper, Embiid and Harden are one of the league’s elite duos. Harden was MVP in 2018 and is a three-time scoring champion. The point guard is also a 10-time All-Star and a member of the NBA 75th anniversary team. Meanwhile, Embiid is a transcendent center who is a five-time All-Star starter.

» READ MORE: 13 things to know about new Sixer James Harden

Harden’s first game at the Wells Fargo Center will be Wednesday, March 2 against the New York Knicks, but it’s March 10 Sixers fans have circled on their calendars. That’s when Simmons and the Nets will travel down to Philadelphia to take on the Sixers. Nets head coach Steve Nash told reporters Thursday that Kevin Durant will soon return from injury, but said Simmons would take longer to return to the court.

Nash said Simmons would need to participate in multiple “high-intensity workouts” before he returns to the court, and told reporters that “conditioning” was preventing him from jumping in the lineup.

“It’s been a long layoff, right? So he hasn’t played NBA basketball for a long time, so just trying to work through that,” Nash told reporters, according to the New York Post, which noted that the Nets’ next full practice is March 5 — just before a three-game road trip that will bring Simmons and his new team to Philadelphia.

The Beard vs. The Bitter. Tickets are now on sale, but fair warning — they’re running $100 more per ticket than the average game.

Recent Philadelphia sports cartoons