Some teams were going to talk themselves into it; the situation was just too ripe. There was a blockbuster coming.
In the summer of 2018, Masai Ujiri kept thinking about the difference between a good team and a great team.
The Toronto Raptors president had built good teams; he even won the NBA Executive of the Year award in his third season as general manager of the Denver Nuggets. He built a bunch of 50-win teams. He built teams that won division titles. He built teams that went to the conference finals.
But Ujiri asked himself: Had he truly ever built a great team in Toronto -- one that legitimately could win it all?
As he spent days mulling over what could have been the riskiest move of his career, he finally came to grips with the answer and then executed the trade for Kawhi Leonard.
At the moment, the NBA has a bloated middle class. There is a large group of teams, maybe as many as a dozen, that are on the edge of contention. They have a star or two. They have a path maybe to reach the second round of the playoffs or maybe even the conference finals, if things fall just right. They are good; they are not great.
This is where James Harden comes in, and why his future could shape how this NBA season plays out.
The Houston Rockets -- who have seen the ransom of assets that players such as Anthony Davis and Jrue Holiday got on the trade market with only one season remaining on their contracts -- have set and maintained a high asking price for Harden, who has two seasons and more than $90 million remaining on his deal.
The Rockets can see the lay of the land too, and new general manager Rafael Stone knows that a superstar with two seasons under contract is a premium asset. Routinely over the past few years, teams trading stars have been able to pull out the combination of young players, lightly protected or fully unprotected picks and pick swaps in deals for star-level players.
In the Eastern Conference, for example, there are seven teams that could probably whiteboard themselves into the conference finals: the Milwaukee Bucks, Brooklyn Nets, Boston Celtics, Toronto Raptors, Philadelphia 76ers, Miami Heat and the hot-start Indiana Pacers. The reality is, at least three of them mathematically aren't even going to make the second round. Then there is the collection of teams that will be fighting to make the play-in tournament; there are more contenders than spots.
This means jobs could be at stake come the summer. And there's Harden sitting there now, playing well, even though he is not in good shape and is displaying, to put it kindly, limited motivation. And with so many teams feeling they're in contention, it promises to be a seller's market at the trade deadline, perhaps juicing interest even more.
It is not a coincidence that a number of teams such as the Celtics, 76ers, Heat, Nets and Raptors -- teams that are in the "good not great" zone -- have at least made a courtesy call to the Rockets, sources said. Even the Bucks, sources said, at least had an internal conversation about it and ran it past Giannis Antetokounmpo before deciding not to get involved. They had to; with the current landscape, Harden's eventual destination is on the mind of everyone in this tightly packed race.
Of course, the West has similar stories. The Los Angeles Lakers and LA Clippers might see themselves at the top of the contender list, but there are teams around them that have been dancing on the Harden periphery. The Portland Trail Blazers reportedly are monitoring, and so are the Nuggets, who have interest in getting involved in a deal even if they don't end up with Harden, sources said. There could be more if the situation plays out a little.
It is not unusual for there to be a lot of teams interested when a star pops up on the market. It's not unusual for it to take a while for offers to develop; the league changes in some way every day. But this set of circumstances make this situation particularly intriguing to watch.
Harden doesn't have the championship résumé of Leonard, but Harden is the type of player who can change a team's fortunes in the short term. Get him, and a good team just might turn into a great team. And he is available -- the only such difference-making player who fits that bill. As this season unfolds and the pressure to distance from the pack naturally increases, the desire for a player like Harden is going to grow in some places. There are front offices that are having the same debates that Ujiri had before the 2018-19 season: Is now the time to make the riskiest move hoping for a payoff?
A blockbuster could be coming.