Can the Sixers convince James Harden to stay? It is (still) Daryl Morey’s best option.

No one with the Sixers sounds willing to give up on the hope that Harden will be back. It's on the Clippers to change that.

Sixers guard James Harden dribbles past Patrick Beverley, then of the Bulls, who now would like to be Harden's teammate.Read moreYong Kim / Staff Photographer

by David Murphy | Columnist

Published July 12, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET

That sound you hear is Daryl Morey doing the best thing he can do.

The tick of the second hand, the whisper of the wind, people writing songs that voices never share.

Call it a modified Mark Twain.

Buy time. They aren’t making more of it.

The message to James Harden and the Clippers is simple:

We’ll wait.

The Sixers don’t have much leverage when it comes to extracting a fair price for Harden. What little leverage they have is the fact they don’t have much to lose.

The Clippers have one option: Make an offer that makes the Sixers an appreciably better team than they would otherwise be. Otherwise, what’s the point?

You want to take Terance Mann off the table? We’ll wait. You want to wrap that first-round pick in enough protections to make it meaningless? We’ll wait. You want all of the gain and none of the pain? That’s fine.

We’ll wait.

Same goes for Harden. We’ll try to do right by you, but we have to do right by ourselves. We are contractually obligated to pay you $35 million. You are contractually obligated to play basketball. You’d rather wait and see if the Clippers really value you enough to part with real value?

Well, so would we.

Otherwise, we’ll wait.

As things stand right now, the Sixers’ best scenario is to hope that Harden has a change of heart.

Is that really a possibility? Only Harden can answer that. But there are some signs that the bridge isn’t completely burned.

The most curious one came the day the Sixers agreed to terms with veteran point guard Patrick Beverley, a longtime friend and former teammate of Harden’s. While breaking the news on his podcast, Beverley said that Doc Rivers played a role in convincing him to sign in Philly. Not only that, but the former Sixers coach cited Harden as one of his reasons.

“James, he respects you,” Beverley recalled Rivers saying. “You will be great with him.”

Keep in mind, this was several days after news of Harden’s trade request had broken.

On Monday, Beverley openly pleaded with Harden to return to the Sixers.

“One of my decisions coming here was because James Harden was here,” Beverley told reporters at his official unveiling as a Sixer. “So, I hope he stays. Hope that everybody can kind of work something out and put that behind us and kind of move forward. I think it’s important.”

Whatever Harden’s motivations, it clearly isn’t personal. Last week, photographers captured him partying with Joel Embiid, Tobias Harris, and former Sixers co-owner Michael Rubin at a party in Las Vegas. Consider Embiid’s comments to Showtime’s Rachel Nichols:

“I want him to come back, obviously, so we can go out and accomplish what we want, which is to win a championship,” Embiid said, “so, hopefully, his mindset can be changed. But other than that, I’m just happy to be his friend. We’re close and we’ve grown since he got here and that’s what I’m excited about. I’m excited to keep that friendship for the rest of our lives.”

Maybe it’s nothing more than wishful thinking. The diplomacy of desperation. But maybe it’s more than that. It’s worth noting that the messaging from Harden’s camp has been extremely careful throughout this entire ordeal. There are reports that Harden was requesting his trade despite being “very positive” and “intrigued” about the Sixers’ direction under Nick Nurse. There was a report that framed his trade demand as a “preference.”

There has been none of the anonymous grenade-lobbing of the Ben Simmons fiasco. No reports of issues with his teammates, or even of management. The assumption is that Harden is operating more or less on principle. He wanted a long-term contract, he thought he left money on the table when he declined a $47 million player option last season to re-sign for $35 million plus a second player option. The Sixers were reluctant to give him the long-term contract he sought. They called his bluff on signing with the Rockets and left him with one way to save face.

That sounds like an opening. The Sixers have already given Harden some outs. The new coach. The newly signed Beverley. Situations like this tend to go in one direction and one direction only. At the same time, this one has already strayed from the usual path.

You can certainly argue that the best-case scenario remains a deal that allows both sides to move on in a way that is mutually beneficial. But that will require a team to agree to a deal that leaves the Sixers in a better place. There is some irony there. Harden is where he is because he hasn’t felt valued enough. But the Sixers might be the team that values him the most.