NBA
PREVIEW
to do with Westbrook than what the Rockets gave up. (A
bigger risk, it turns out: tweeting in support of a democratic
movement in Hong Kong, turning the preseason into a stage
for geopolitical intrigue.) There was Paul, who had been
instrumental to Houston’s contention the past two years,
a pair of protected first-round picks and two potential pick
swaps. These were not inclusions made lightly.
“Sometimes we feel like we’re the Lorax,” Morey says
of life as a general manager. “We speak for the future.” In
12 years on the job in Houston, Morey has only traded away
multiple first-round picks on two occasions. One was to ac-quire Harden, the move that made the Rockets as we know
them. The other was to land Westbrook.
“Ultimately, there were a certain amount of teams that
were able to take on my contract that I was able to, I would
say, pick from,” Westbrook says. (Miami was another option,before the trade that would send Harden to the Rockets and
change their lives forever. Team USA was characteristically
stacked, with only the problem of how to best cram talent
upon talent into a given lineup. Given that kind of luxury,
Mike Krzyzewski, then the coach of Team USA, rejected the
very premise of a pecking order. “I don’t want you guys to
conform to this,” Krzyzewski told the team then. “I want
Kevin Durant the killer. I want LeBron James to go all-out.
I want Defensive Player of the Year Tyson Chandler. I want
Russell Westbrook to come in like a nightmare. I want you
guys to be yourselves.”
D’Antoni, an assistant with Team USA in 2012, comes
from a similar philosophical place. “Who am I to tell Russ
to change or tell James to change?” D’Antoni asks. “They’re
MVPs. Best players in the league. So we try to make them
as efficient as we can, try to nudge them in the areas we
think we can improve in and we think they can do betterThe players crack up, as does coach Mike D’Antoni. “O.K.!”
D’Antoni relents. “Then nobody else gets one!”
So begins the give and take of a radical experiment.
Matchmaking mere superstars is passé. The Rockets, like
the Warriors before them, landed an MVP to accompany
their MVP. It’s not exactly the subtlest of moves; both Harden
and Westbrook have big, loud games, inarguably bigger and
louder than when the two began their careers together in
Oklahoma City a decade ago. Only through separation did
they fully become the anchors their respective franchises
needed them to be. By reuniting, they hope to now find
security in each other.
“We’ve accomplished a lot of accolades, individu-
ally,” Harden says. “Now it’s time to accomplish
something that we haven’t accomplished before.”
It’s a long way to June. Yet through the very fact of
being on the same team, Harden and Westbrook
have already engineered one outcome that never
should have been possible in the first place.
The deus ex trade machina, in this instance,
was Paul George. A year after re-signing with the
Thunder on a four-year deal, George requested a
trade that would ultimately send him to the Clip-
pers. What was a shocking development around
the league wasn’t quite so for Westbrook. “I can’t
be surprised if me and Paul were in communica-
tion the whole time,” Westbrook says. “So I wouldn’t say
I was surprised at all. I’m all for doing what’s best for my
teammates. If Paul felt like it was time for him to move on
and explore options, then I’mma back him. That’s the type
of relationship we have.”
Following a development of that magnitude, Houston
began its due diligence. “Once Paul went to the Clippers, I
reached out to Oklahoma City and they said they were open
to talk,” Rockets general manager Daryl Morey says. “So we
talked.” Harden and Westbrook did too. Over the years they
had joked about playing together again in the same way
two friends might daydream about a trip they know they’ll
never take. Harden was a stakeholder with the Rockets, and
Westbrook was entrenched with the Thunder. (“I just built a
new house in Oklahoma,” Westbrook says.) The very idea of
two of the highest-paid, highest-usage players in the league
on the same team was too preposterous to honestly consider.
Until George. There are no truly isolated events in the NBA,
least of all where the movement of a star player is concerned.
Harden checked in with Westbrook to better understand his
friend’s situation. “It wasn’t like that was the first time they
talked in years,” Morey says. “That was more like: Hey, is
something different now that Paul’s gone?
“I guess [Russell] said that there was.”
Westbrook and the Thunder worked together to find a
solution that made sense: a trade to Houston. Morey told
The Wall Street Journal that this latest move was the “biggest
strategic risk” of his tenure—a risk, he clarifies, having less
48SPORT S ILL US TR ATED- OC T OBER 21–28, 2019
“It was the best decision for me and
my career right now,” Westbrook says.
“And to be able to reunite with
A BROTHER, A FRIEND, that is something
that you dream about and live for.”GARRETT ELLWOOD/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES