The James Harden trade saga has reached its conclusion, with the superstar guard joining Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving on the Brooklyn Nets. After weeks of negotiations, the Houston Rockets agreed to a deal to move their franchise player, according to a report by ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski and Ramona Shelburne. The Cleveland Cavaliers and Indiana Pacers also joined the trade, with Victor Oladipo heading to Houston.
How did all four teams do in this deal? Just how good are the Nets with this trio of high-powered scorers? Kevin Pelton hands out his trade grades.
The deal
Nets get: James Harden, second-round pick
Rockets get: Victor Oladipo, Dante Exum, Rodions Kurucs, four first-round picks and four pick swaps
Cavaliers get: Jarrett Allen and Taurean Prince
Pacers get: Caris LeVert, second-round pick
Brooklyn Nets: D
It's impossible not to look at this trade in the context of Kyrie Irving's absence from the Nets for personal reasons for the past week. Harden's fit in Brooklyn seemed questionable when the Nets already had both Irving and a healthy Kevin Durant as shot-creators. If Brooklyn isn't sure when or if Irving might return, the need for another ball handler and creator becomes far more pressing -- especially in the wake of Spencer Dinwiddie's partial ACL tear.
The Nets did have LeVert, of course, and he had averaged 26.5 points per game in the four games Irving missed -- including a 43-point effort in a loss to the Memphis Grizzlies. However, LeVert has always been more of a volume scorer than an efficient option. Since his rookie season, when he had a below-average usage rate, LeVert has never posted a true shooting percentage better than .525 during an era when the league average has been no worse than .556.
When it comes to creating offense at extreme volumes efficiently, there's never been anyone in NBA history quite like Harden. Of the 36 seasons in NBA history in which a player has finished at least 35% of his team's plays with a shot, trip to the free throw line or a turnover, the three most efficient by true shooting percentage all belong to Harden -- and they're all from the past three seasons.
Certainly, Harden hasn't been performing at that same level so far in 2020-21 after reporting to camp late and forcing the postponement of the Rockets' season opener, when he was required to remain away from the team following a maskless appearance at a group outing in violation of the NBA's COVID-19 health and safety protocols.
In Harden's delayed season debut, he dropped 44 points and handed out 17 assists in a narrow road loss against the Portland Trail Blazers, and it seemed like nothing could stop him from producing on the court. But he hasn't been the same player since missing Houston's Jan. 2 game with an ankle sprain, averaging 17.4 PPG while making just 26% of his 3-point attempts over the past five games. It's his longest streak without reaching 20 points since being traded to Houston in October 2012, per ESPN Stats & Information research. More troublingly, Harden has just 19 total free throw attempts in that span, also his lowest five-game span with the Rockets.
By making this trade, Brooklyn is clearly betting that Harden's slump is some combination of short-term effect of the ankle injury and his desire to force a trade. Given Harden's previous metronomic consistency in the regular season, I think that's the right call.
The Nets also seem to be betting that adding Harden makes them the favorites to win the Eastern Conference, with or without Irving, and I'm more skeptical there. The case for that is Brooklyn can now put out 48 minutes of lineups with one of the greatest NBA scorers of all time on the court. (This presumes Steve Nash chooses to stagger the minutes of Durant and Harden after almost exclusively playing Durant and Irving together, but that seems more likely given that LeVert is no longer around to carry a reserve-centric lineup.)
Although Harden played with plenty of future Hall of Famers and even another MVP with the Rockets, he has never in his prime had a teammate as capable as Durant, who has thus far picked up where he left off as one of the NBA's very best players. That changes the equation in the playoffs, where Harden has typically faltered in the wake of a heavy load. The Nets both can keep Harden a bit fresher and have a strong alternative if he wears down in the postseason.
The biggest question with Brooklyn remains whether the team can be good enough defensively to win the East. The Nets boast the NBA's 11th-best defensive rating thus far, but that's built largely on poor opponent shot-making. Second Spectrum's quantified shot quality (qSQ) metric, which estimates the average value of shots based on their location, type and distance of nearby defenders, indicates Brooklyn's opponents are getting about perfectly average shots. The Nets' opponents have posted the league's fifth-lowest effective field goal percentage, in large part because their 36% accuracy on 2-point attempts outside the paint is third worst, per NBA Advanced Stats.
Brooklyn also loses a capable interior defender in Allen, who has contested shots at the rim far more frequently than holdover center DeAndre Jordan during the season-plus they've played together, albeit at the cost of weaker defensive rebounding. Jordan has played more than 20 minutes just once this season, including a DNP-CD on Tuesday night, and he is now the only healthy traditional center on an undersized Nets roster that will be relying heavily on small-ball lineups with Jeff Green in the middle. Brooklyn does open up three roster spots with this trade, at least one of which will surely go to another big man.
I get the Nets' urgency to win now. As good as Durant has looked coming off his Achilles injury, he is still 32, and the East might not always look as open as it does at the moment. But given the lingering questions about Brooklyn's ability to defend well enough to win the conference, this price looks too steep.
The comparison to the package of draft picks the Nets gave up for Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce is obvious, and while I hardly think this is fated to follow the same path -- Harden is closer to his prime than Garnett and Pierce were, no LeBron James-led Miami Heat team is lurking elsewhere in the conference and flags fly forever -- Brooklyn knows the downside to being out picks for years at a time.
Going this far out in terms of draft picks makes it impossible to predict how good the Nets might be by that point. Harden, 31, can choose between a $47.4 million player option and unrestricted free agency in 2022, after all, and it's difficult to tell which outcome would be worse for Brooklyn: Harden walking so soon after the trade or re-signing a contract that would pay him 35% of the team's cap during his mid-30s.
Ultimately, that risk means this is not a trade I would have felt comfortable making.
Houston Rockets: A-
In some alternate dimension of the multiverse, this season's Rockets play on with a committed Harden as their centerpiece and I'm fascinated to know how things work out. They've gotten better than expected play so far from newcomers DeMarcus Cousins and John Wall, while Christian Wood has brought a different dimension to the offense with his ability to be both a pick-and-roll partner for Harden and a shot-creator in his own right.
Without buy-in from Harden, however, there was little chance of things working out in Houston. Back-to-back blowout home losses against the Los Angeles Lakers, followed by his incendiary postgame comments on Tuesday, spelled the end of the Harden era for the Rockets. And while I'm sure that was embarrassing then and disappointing today, it's hard to say waiting worked out poorly for Houston, which was able to leverage the Nets into offering a mother lode of picks.
The trade that sent Paul George from the Oklahoma City Thunder to the LA Clippers (with free agent Kawhi Leonard) has become the standard for all other NBA pick-based trades. In that one, the Thunder got four unprotected first-round picks, one protected first-rounder and two unprotected swaps. This haul -- four unprotected picks and an incredible four unprotected swaps -- is similar value.
Over the next few years, it's doubtful the picks or swaps the Rockets get from Brooklyn will make up for the ones they're out thanks to the Russell Westbrook trade. Still, they will give Houston a steady source of young talent with the potential for huge returns down the road. Given what they've seen the past month, the Rockets might feel good betting against how well Harden will age in his mid-30s.
For now, Houston can evaluate how well Oladipo fits in. Early returns from this season are mixed. Oladipo has been much more efficient than we saw during his comeback from a quadriceps tendon rupture in 2019-20, though his finishing still remains an issue. Oladipo has made 54% of his shots inside 3 feet, per Basketball-Reference.com, down from a career-high 69% when he was voted to the All-NBA third team in 2017-18 prior to the injury. The Rockets shouldn't count on Oladipo getting back to that level. I'd probably rather have just kept LeVert.
There's a downgrade from even the lesser version of Harden to Oladipo that Houston will have to hope to offset with better chemistry. If the Rockets don't look likely to make the playoffs by the deadline, they'll have decisions to make on both Oladipo -- an unrestricted free agent at season's end -- and veteran forward P.J. Tucker, who would be an attractive target for contenders.
In a remarkable turn of events, Houston could go from being in the luxury tax to start this season to having cap space this summer if Oladipo walks. They turned Harden's $44.3 million salary into just one player under contract for 2021-22: Kurucs, whose $1.9 million salary is a team option. The Rockets aren't going to be serious players in free agency as long as Wall's contract (which runs through a player option in 2022-23) is on the books. But if Houston ends up heading down some sort of rebuild path, the team will have the ability to take on bad salaries to add still more draft picks.
This certainly wasn't Plan A for the Rockets, who hoped Harden could lead them back to the conference finals this season. As compared to how bleak the future looked after last season's playoff elimination, however, Houston now has a reasonable path forward.
Indiana Pacers: B+
After bringing back almost their entire 2019-20 roster this season -- they returned all 13 players who saw more than 250 minutes of action -- the Pacers have now made a dramatic change 11 games into their schedule.
There probably wasn't a good long-term outcome for Indiana with Oladipo heading toward free agency. If he played like an All-Star, Oladipo would have become far and away the best realistic target on the unrestricted market this summer, making it hard for the Pacers to keep him. And if Oladipo continued to play at a lesser level, Indiana would have had to choose between re-signing him at any cost or having little flexibility to replace him.
Enter LeVert, who gives the Pacers cost certainty in the first season of a three-year extension that averages $17.5 million -- reasonable for a starting shooting guard, which LeVert will presumably be in Indiana after playing a sixth-man role for the Nets. LeVert and Malcolm Brogdon should fit well sharing ballhandling duties in the backcourt. I'd expect LeVert to become a prominent pick-and-roll option for the Pacers, taking advantage of Brogdon's ability to space the court and utilizing LeVert's development this season as a playmaker. (LeVert is averaging a career-high 6.0 assists per game.)
Health will determine just how valuable LeVert is in Indiana. He has played more than 57 games in a season just once in his four-year NBA career, 2017-18, and never more than 71. LeVert's continued progress as a 3-point shooter also will be important to bolstering his efficiency and being a dangerous spot-up threat when the ball is in Brogdon's hands.
As a side benefit, the $4.8 million the Pacers save in terms of 2020-21 salary by swapping Oladipo for LeVert takes them (along with the Rockets) out of the luxury tax and gives them some flexibility to add salary at the trade deadline. Indiana was always a small move away from getting out of the tax, but now it doesn't need to feel as much pressure to get there or sweat out incentives in the contracts of Domantas Sabonis, Myles Turner and T.J. Warren.
Cleveland Cavaliers: C
Don't discount the fourth team involved in this trade. With Wood at center, the Rockets evidently didn't have much interest in Allen, allowing them to flip him to the Cavaliers for what will likely be a pick late in the first round in 2022 and salary relief.
Until or unless another deal can be made, adding Allen figures to be awkward for Cleveland coach J.B. Bickerstaff, who was already playing centers Andre Drummond and JaVale McGee together at times because his roster is so imbalanced toward big men. Both of those veterans are free agents this summer, clearing the path for Allen to become the team's center of the future.
Compared to Drummond, Allen looks like a better fit with the Cavaliers' rapidly developing backcourt of Darius Garland and Collin Sexton. Allen is a pick-and-roll lob threat who has been content exclusively playing that role. Dating back to 2018-19, only Rudy Gobert has been involved in more pick-and-rolls as a screener than Allen, per Second Spectrum tracking, and those plays have been more efficient than pick-and-rolls with Drummond as a screener.
Defensively, Allen's rim protection also fits well with the undersized Cleveland backcourt, which needs a strong defense behind it. Although the Cavaliers' opponents have shot a league-low 55% inside the restricted area this season, that's out of line with the rest of Drummond's career as a rim protector. Allen should prove more capable in that role and will benefit from Kevin Love's strong rebounding alongside him.
The question is one of cost, including giving up a first-round pick as well as adding salary. Allen will be a restricted free agent this summer, and Cleveland might unintentionally invite offers from other teams designed to drive up his price because of the assumption the Cavaliers will pay to retain him. At this season's $3.9 million salary, Allen is a bargain. At market rate, that's no longer the case.
Adding Allen's cap hold and Prince's $13 million salary for 2021-22 means Cleveland will now likely be better off staying over the cap rather than using cap space. Exactly how Prince fits on a Cavaliers team that already boasts multiple combo forwards in Cedi Osman and rookie Isaac Okoro remains to be seen.
Despite a strong start, Cleveland should still add another lottery pick to the mix this summer. But re-signing Allen will start to lock in the Cavaliers to this core of players without much financial flexibility. How well Garland, Okoro and Sexton develop will determine whether that's a wise course of action.