Jesus was crucified, too
James Harden's greatest supporter returns with her thoughts on the superstar's latest trade.
In his thirties, he traveled from city to city, performing miracles, preaching, spending time with sex workers, grooming an iconic beard.1 For speaking his truth, he gained many followers, but he also made enemies who envied his otherworldly charisma. He was even crucified. I think we all know who I’m talking about — certainly faithful readers of the King James Bible know: James Edward Harden, Jr.
Perhaps you initially mistook this as a description of Jesus Christ. I can hardly blame you. The parallels are certainly there. Their stories are virtually indiscernible from each other — Jesus, too, had to leave his “team” (the disciples) for reasons beyond his control. Yet one of these men is hailed as the Messiah while the other is smeared as a fatsuit-clad diva.
Last week, the Los Angeles Clippers traded Harden to the Cleveland Cavaliers for Darius Garland, shattering the illusion of a slow trade deadline, and making “Nothing Ever Happens” theorists look like complete fools. The trade was finalized just hours after the rumors had begun festering. And, even as very reasonable explanations emerged from both the Clippers organization and Harden himself, a narrative rapidly materialized — the same one as always: that Harden, faithless and unreliable, had quit on and failed yet another team, moving on to his sixth team in 17 years and his fifth in five years.
But riddle me this: If a woman has a high body count (or, in other words, changes teams quite often), she is celebrated as “sexy,” “confident,” and “free.” Meanwhile, the reaction to Harden’s latest trade shows us that when a man has a high body count, he is a “diva,” “ran through,” and “his legacy as a superstar is tarnished” — a grossly misandrist double standard. Six different teams have all wanted Harden, rendering him one of the most desirable men in not just the league but on planet Earth — I’d wager quite a bit on FanDuel that most of Harden’s detractors can’t find even one person who wants them. After all, most women are looking for the exact same thing Donovan Mitchell reportedly was: a man who is “6-foot-5, durable and comfortable as a pass-first point guard.” Can X users like @BrickCenter_ or @HaterReport say that they meet this standard?
Never mind the very understandable reasons that Harden, in the final years of his NBA career and hoping for a real chance to compete in the postseason, and the Clippers, clearly on the brink of a sweeping overhaul, have specified for the trade. Never mind that Harden clearly wanted to remain in Los Angeles, his hometown, or that Harden carried the entire franchise on his back for 2.5 years. Nuance is reserved for a privileged few within NBA fandom, and sweepingly withheld from wrongly maligned league villains like Harden. Social media users and even prominent sports media talking heads time and again refuse to acknowledge the complex, extremely obvious reasons Harden had no real choice but to leave his past teams — reasons that I could spell out in great detail in my sleep. I’ve actually done this quite a few times.
Was he supposed to squander the prime years of his career with a 2020-2021 Houston Rockets roster offering less help than a ring of traffic cones? Was he supposed to stay on a Nets team with a part-time teammate in Kyrie Irving? Was he supposed to stay on a Sixers team after his relationship with the team’s general manager was unfixably shattered? As for his departure from the Clippers, this hardly seems to have been a case of Harden forcing their hand: While, obviously, losing James Harden is the worst thing that could ever happen to someone, in some ways, the trade appears to have been beneficial for everyone involved — Harden, the Cavs, and the Clippers.
I am something of a James Harden fan myself, though I’m fairly quiet and subtle about it. I’m often falsely accused of doing a “bit.”
Alas, I have never been more serious in my life when I pose this question: What’s wrong with simply not wanting to work somewhere anymore?
Even if all the “worst” narratives about Harden — that he forced this trade for no reason, simply didn’t want to be a Clipper anymore, or “greedily” demanded more money — were true, would that really be so wrong? Surely, there are NBA players or other men in general more deserving of this widespread shame and derision.
Nevertheless, the narratives took off — “If he’s left this many teams, he must be the problem.” The jokes abound — namely, memes insinuating that trading for Harden hadn’t “worked out” for the Brooklyn Nets, the Philadelphia 76ers, and now, the Clippers. But this relies on an infuriating definition of what it means for something to “work out” — a definition borne of the societal sickness that is “ring culture,” regarding success exclusively as a championship.
Harden’s Herculean efforts in Houston are the reason the franchise remained set up for success after his departure, and has stayed relevant to this day. The Brooklyn situation was a bit of a fiasco, that I’ll grant you, but look what happened during thanks to his short tenure in Philly: an MVP for Joel Embiid that would have been impossible without Harden’s facilitating, and a superstar in Tyrese Maxey, who attributes his massive leap since 2023 to Harden’s mentorship. As for the miracles Harden performed for the Clippers, last year, he took a team that wasn’t even supposed to make the playoffs to the 5th seed, elevating all his teammates and, himself, playing at a level that we hadn’t seen since his Houston years.
My fight for James Harden’s honor — a lifetime struggle, a holy war — is inseparable from a much larger fight: a crusade against ring culture, against sports fandom’s infantile obsession with championships as the sole metric of success, as the foundation of a superstar athlete’s “legacy.” Ring culture reminds of a toddler’s inability to grasp object permanence, it is a perversion of the sport of basketball itself. There isn’t a single NBA player of teammate, past or present, of Harden’s who wouldn’t characterize him as one of the greatest athletes to ever touch a basketball. But the perennial obsession with championships frames Harden’s tenure on each of his past teams as a failure, and his departures as “quitting.”
Having been raised in the church myself, I think I speak for everyone when I say: Never in human history has a legendary, bearded man been so crucified.
The other day I encountered a tweet that states, “Being a James Harden stan gotta be such a miserable experience, genuinely don’t know [how] someone would look themselves in the mirror.”
This is, personally, how I do so:
When I was a little girl, for better or for worse, I fell in love with James Harden watching him come off of OKC’s bench. The years have not been kind. I have suffered greatly. There have been days — especially in May 2018 and August 2023 — when I wondered if life would ever get better. It didn’t. But that’s OK. Why?
Because when you’re a true believer, as you mature in your faith, you gain enlightenment: It is an honor to suffer for the things that matter to you. As the Bible tells us in this verse specifically about being a James Harden fan: “For it has been granted to you that for the sake of [Harden] you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake.” (Philippians 1:29)
Lede inspired by my extremely genius friend Matt.
 | A guest post by
|
My father sent me this piece. I wonder if this is his first exposure to "ran through."
Separately, Kylie, this is the best thing I read or listened to about the James Harden trade and I have read and listened to every single story that exists. Thank you.
“For it is better to suffer for doing good than for doing evil”