The Dagger: I was mad at James Harden. Well, not anymore.

I liked James Harden. 

I don’t love his game – three’s, drives, fouls and half-hearted defense, –  but I liked him.  The cool cat with funky facial hair who got buckets and didn’t have the attention-seeking, primadonna attitude which inherently comes with most superstar athletes. 

That was until I saw how he publicly derided his former team, the Houston Rockets, and didn’t show up to training camp at the beginning of the 2020 season in efforts to force his way out of Houston. 

I was sickened and, nevertheless, wrong about who I thought The Beard was once he took off his proverbial gloves. 

He is a diva.  And this Aaron Rodgers of the basketball world struck again when he waited until the LAST days of this year’s mid-season free agency scramble to reveal he no longer wanted to be with the Brooklyn Nets.   

So, you know I was pissed. The league capitulated to Harden again for the second time in two seasons and allowed him to go to the Philadelphia 76ers, which – he claims – was his desired destination from jump.  

After some time to fume, look out of windows and drink hot chai tea lattes –  Harden’s exits became more and more sensible. 

Let me be clear. I’ve always understood the why’s but despised the how’s. 

The Rockets were going nowhere at the start of the 2020 season and Brooklyn is a flat-out mess with part-time Kyrie Irving and injury-prone Kevin Durant. 

But did he have to mock his young Rockets team in front of the media? No sir. 

What about publicly commit to Brooklyn but privately scheme to get out? Absolutely not. 

If ya gon’ be a diva – don’t hide. Let your flame shine bright.

Yes, he’d get backlash but reprisals are much worse when primadonnas feign they’re not primadonnas. 

Say what you want about Floyd “Money” Mayweather, but he has never hidden his tiara behind his back. 

But now that I understand who he is, I can no longer be angry. Moreover, my irritation subsides when I think about the beautiful basketball he and Joel Embiid will create. 

The Sixers won the trade in which Ben Simmons, Seth Curry, Andre Drummond and two first-round picks went to the Nets in exchange for James Harden and Paul Millsap. 

Harden and Embiid simply fit better together. It’s the classic elite guard-big combo that’s worked for years and won titles. 

Add in the defensive bull Matisse Thybulle, efficient Tobias Harris and spark plugs Tyrese Maxey and Furkan Kormaz — you’ve got a winner. 

The Sixers are beautiful to watch. Harden looks happier and relieved to finally and definitively be on the path to his long-awaited championship, journeying with a big man in Embiid who is just as hungry as he. 

That’s why he left Houston for Brooklyn and now Brooklyn for Philadelphia: to find the best situation to win it all. 

He has that now. And instead of seething, it’s best I applaud Harden for putting himself in the best position to get a ring and rewrite his legacy’s narrative.