James Harden gets what he wants and this NBA season is already juicy as hell

If sports are the original reality show, the NBA's 78th season is shaping up to be some of the best storylines we've had in a long time. Here's one of them.

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James Harden, the eight-time NBA All-Star, seven-time All-NBA selection, and former regular-season MVP, has once again gotten what he wanted. After a long, difficult, messy, ugly, sad, and generally Bad Vibes off-season, the Philadelphia 76ers have traded the bearded and aging superstar to the Los Angeles Clippers. Philly is now the third city Harden has forced his way out of since the year of our lord 2021.

I don’t even really know where to start in terms of the depths of the drama and the personality of the characters involved in this situation. I’ll get into it in a moment.

But I am so gleeful about this because it’s another beautiful example of why, for as long as I’ve been working in sports, I’ve said that sports are the original reality show. In fact, they are probably the only somewhat pure unscripted content we have left.

When I say “pure” I don’t mean, like, “wholesome and morally sound” (lol). I simply mean that we really don’t know what’s going to happen until the games are over. Unless, of course, you believe the the NBA is, as Ayesha Curry once said, “definitely rigged for money.”

Listen, I love the dramatics on the court. The athleticism on display makes me, a mere mortal who strains her back whenever she does pilates, wonder how I am a member of the same species as professional basketball players.

This is the face I imagine James Harden made when the trade went through

But, as a lover of reality television and as a generally nosy person, I really love the gossip off the court. The amount of intrigue swirling around This League™ is always at a Real Housewives simmer, and when things heat up, it can reach Vanderpump-season-10 levels of intrigue. Harden was flirting with the stove all summer.

And Season 78 of the NBA is shaping up to be some of the best reality television I’ve seen in a while*.

*Which, thank god, because non-sports reality shows have been disappointing recently. Season 5 of Love Is Blind was the biggest waste of my time in years, The Golden Bachelor just feels like elder abuse, Selling The OC was fun but too predictable, and that new HBO show where people choose a date based on their naked bodies was so gross that I had to turn it off (yes, I tried to watch it, and it’s not even worth Googing the show’s actual name, which I cannot remember).

If you’re into basketball drama, please check out Oddball, the daily NBA show I co-host with Amin Elhassan on the DraftKings Network and YouTube!

The Harden situation is beyond juicy, because we’ve got some storylines from YEARS ago that are coming back into play.

Here are the general key plot points:

• James Harden and Daryl Morey, the GM of the Sixers, had been (until recently) joined at the hip since 2012. At the time, Morey was the GM of the Houston Rockets, and Harden was playing for the Oklahoma City Thunder. Morey traded for Harden and brought him to Houston.

• Harden became the superstar that Morey envisioned, but, by 2019, the Rockets still hadn’t made it to the Finals.