Clippers Finally Acquire James Harden

Keith Smith
Keith Smith, Resident NBA ExpertOctober 31, 2023
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#nba #trade #james harden #james harden
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The James Harden trade saga (the 3.0 version, at least), is finally over. After months of back-and-forth drama, Harden will land with his desired team in the LA Clippers. In exchange, the Philadelphia 76ers will acquire a package of expiring salary and draft picks.

Because they are seemingly always involved in a trade that features draft picks, the Oklahoma City Thunder will help clear the path for the Clippers to trade an additional pick to the 76ers. The Thunder will pick up 2027 first-round pick swap rights, in exchange for sending a protected version of the 2026 Clippers first-round pick they own to the Sixers. (This is likely to end up in a “last favorable” situation of the 2026 picks Oklahoma City owns.)

But the big parts here are Harden to the Clippers, and the 76ers cleaning up their cap sheet to make a 2024 free agency run. Let’s dive in!

The trade details:

LA Clippers acquire
James Harden, P.J. Tucker, Filip Petrusev

Oklahoma City Thunder acquire
2027 first-round pick swap rights with the LA Clippers

Philadelphia 76ers acquire 
Nicolas Batum, Robert Covington, Kenyon Martin Jr., Marcus Morris Sr., two first-round picks (protected 2026 Clippers (via Thunder), 2028 Clippers), two second-round picks (2024 Pacers, Jazz or Cavs (TBD), 2029 Clippers) and a 2029 first-round pick swap

LA Clippers

Incoming salary: 

James Harden: $35.6 million

Filip Petrusev: $1,119,563 ($559,782 guaranteed)

P.J. Tucker: $11 million for 2023-24, 11.5 million player option for 2024-25

Total incoming 2023-24 salary: $47,774,063

Outgoing salary: 

Nicolas Batum: $11.7 million

Robert Covington: $11.7 million

Kenyon Martin Jr.: $1.9 million

Marcus Morris Sr.: $17.1 million

Total outgoing 2023-24 salary: $42,450,086

 

First, let’s break down how this will functionally work! The Clippers will acquire James Harden and P.J. Tucker and their combined $46,654,500 salaries as one bundle. Petrusev will be acquired as a single salary via the Minimum Salary Exception.

LA will send out the four players at a combined amount of $46,695,095 (that’s the four salaries, plus the allowable 110% bump for salary matching).

That means this deal just squeaks in by $40,595 within the salary-matching rules. And it requires Harden to waive his 15% trade bonus. If Harden wants that 15% bonus, the Clippers will have to find about $5.1 million in salary. That seems unlikely to be a thing, given Harden is finally going where he wants to be.

(There is a version of this trade where the 76ers break the deal down further and use 125% salary-matching rules. That version would create a larger TPE for the Sixers, but it would hard cap them. And Philadelphia would be just $2.8M under the hard cap in the scenario. That’s probably tighter than they want to be, simply to create a TPE that will likely go unused. We’ll know when the trade is actually completed which path the 76ers chose.)

As far as the basketball side of this trade…wow! A Halloween blockbuster!

The Clippers are even more all in now. They’ll have a core of stars including Harden, Kawhi Leonard and Paul George. They sapped some of their depth, but recovered a bit by taking on Tucker. And LA was able to keep Terance Mann too.

Harden, for all of his off-court nonsense and recent injuries, has generally been pretty durable. He’ll give the Clippers some coverage if (when?) Leonard and/or George have to miss some time. Instead of the offense becoming the Russell Westbrook show, LA will have a guy who can still create offense all on his own.

When the team is fully healthy, they’ve got a lot of options on offense now. The Clippers will be small-ish (Leonard will effectively be the starting power forward), but they should be fine. Leonard can guard up, and if they need to go with more a traditional four, Ty Lue can go with Tucker. And, lest we forget, Harden has been at his best in recent years at guarding, bigger, less-mobile players. So, the options are actually fairly plentiful for Lue to choose from matchup-wise.

On offense, the Clippers become even more deadly. In theory, at least. There are some questions about putting Westbrook in even more of an off-ball role, but Lue should be able to stagger his lineups enough to make sure he has two of the main scoring engines out there at all times. That should allow everyone to get enough touches to keep them involved.

As for depth, LA will have Tucker and Mann in place, along with Norman Powell, Mason Plumlee and Bones Hyland. That’s pretty solid, as far as a 10-man depth chart goes.

Mostly, this trade lends more short-term certainty to the Clippers. They are covered if one of the stars has to miss some time. That should keep the offense afloat, instead of things falling apart as they did in the 2023 playoffs.

Long-term, there’s just as much uncertainty as ever. Harden can’t be extended, because he signed only a two-year deal as a free agent in 2022 (two-year contracts can’t be extended).

That makes this a one-year experiment. If everything works out great and the Clippers make that long-awaited NBA Finals run, they can re-up with Harden, as well as Leonard and George in free agency this summer. If it doesn’t work, the team is out some more draft capital, but there isn’t any additional long-term salary commitment, minus Tucker’s sure-to-be-picked-up player option for 2024-25.

The Clippers have strayed back into familiar, yet scary, territory as far as draft picks go. Effectively, they are right back where they were a couple of years ago. LA has no control over their first-round picks until 2030. That was the exact situation they were in when they acquired George from the Thunder back in 2019.

But LA is the type of team that can conceivably spend their way out of troubles down the line. And if things really go south, the Clippers can always trade away their stars to recoup some draft picks.

Philadelphia 76ers

Incoming salary: 

Nicolas Batum: $11.7 million

Robert Covington: $11.7 million

Kenyon Martin Jr.: $1.9 million

Marcus Morris Sr.: $17.1 million

Total incoming 2023-24 salary: $42,450,086

Outgoing salary: 

James Harden: $35.6 million

Filip Petrusev: $1,119,563 ($559,782 guaranteed)

P.J. Tucker: $11 million for 2023-24, 11.5 million player option for 2024-25

Total outgoing 2023-24 salary: $47,774,063

 

The Sixers don’t achieve a ton on-court with this trade…at least at the moment. It’s unclear how much, if anything, Nicolas Batum, Robert Covington and Marcus Morris Sr. will contribute to Philadelphia basketball-wise. At least one or two of them will probably play, because the Sixers did open up opportunities at the power forward spot in this trade.

Player-wise, K.J. Martin is the most interesting guy the 76ers acquired. He’s got that athletic bounciness that the Sixers otherwise lack. He could start, or become a really interesting bench guy. Martin is also the type of player Nick Nurse will love throwing into games at a bunch of different spots and just asking him to create chaos.

The real gets here for Philadelphia were the draft picks, and the cap flexibility. That’s what they were seemingly always after, and Daryl Morey pulled it off.

Philadelphia picked up two direct first-round picks in this deal, plus a far-out pick swap. By taking picks in 2026 (the protections/conditions the Thunder added to this pick are TBD as of this writing) and 2028, along with the 2029 swap, the 76ers can wait to see if the Clippers crater down the line. It’s unlikely that all of Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and James Harden will still be playing at an All-Star level by the time the latter of those two picks are due. Heck, it’s unclear if they’ll even be at that level by the time the first pick comes due in 2026.

That’s more than a recouping of the draft capital Philadelphia spent to acquire Harden in the first place. That’s great work by Morey.

Beyond the picks, but of no less importance, the Sixers not only conserved their 2024 cap space in this deal, but they created even more. P.J. Tucker is a near-guarantee to pick up his player option for next season. That’s something Philadelphia would have had to deal with, as they dream of max cap space.

As it stands now, the 76ers will likely clear the decks almost as clean as they can approaching the summer of 2024. There are really two scenarios to consider.

Scenario A: Philadelphia goes for every dime they can get, while retaining Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey.

In this scenario, the Sixers renounce all of their free agents (including De’Anthony Melton) who aren’t Maxey, and they waive Paul Reed (assuming his contract remains non-guaranteed). We’ll also assume they trade their 2024 first-round pick for some sort of future pick down the line. (Both scenarios assume Philadelphia does not pick up Jaden Springer’s rookie scale team option for 2024-25).

In that case, the 76ers would have only Embiid at $51.4 million and Maxey’s cap hold at $13 million on the books. When you add back the roster charges (10 of them at the league minimum), Philadelphia would have a projected $65.2 million in cap space. The 10-plus Years of Service maximum salary projects to be $49.7 million for 2024-25.

That’s enough to sign a maximum veteran, with about $15.5 million to spend leftover. In addition. Philadelphia would have the Room Exception, which projects to be just over $8 million.

Scenario B: Philadelphia retains a couple of key players, in addition to Embiid and Maxey.

In this scenario, the Sixers renounce everyone who isn’t Maxey and Melton, and they also keep Reed. We’ll also assume they keep their first-rounder too, just for comparison’s sake.

This scenario leaves Philadelphia with about $43.3 million in cap space. That’s not enough for a 10-plus Years of Service maximum, but it is enough for 7-to-9 Years of Service maximum (projects to be $42.6 million for 2024-25). And, again, the 76ers would have the $8 million Room Exception to spend.

So, it’s kind of choosing between $22 million in additional cap space, or retaining Melton’s free agent rights, Reed and the first-round pick. There are plusses and minuses to both approaches. The guess here is that Daryl Morey will have an understanding of who is in play in free agency, long before having to make decisions on renouncements and waivers. (No, this isn’t a cheap tampering joke! It’s just a reality of how these things work.)

There is one other scenario in play…and it’s the most interesting one of all.

Morey reportedly wanted players, or assets to add players, in any Harden deal. He accomplished the former in terms of salary-matching and the latter in terms of actual assets. If Morey is committed to being a title contender, the 76ers are just below that level. They are a solid playoff team, but shy of the true contender tier. But that could all change with another deal or two.

In a very real sense, Morey added $46 million in tradable salary in this deal, and he also has the draft picks necessary to juice any offers he wants to make. That’s enough to get in the conversation for just about whatever star comes available next. It’ll take 60 days before Philadelphia can re-aggregate the guys they just acquired, but that’s still well in advance of the trade deadline.

There’s a world where the Sixers do a little “pre-agency” work and acquire a player ahead of the trade deadline. That would give Philadelphia the player now, to aid in a playoff run this season, while also presumably giving them the leg up on keeping said player moving forward. It’s also possible, Morey could flip some of the newly-acquired players and draft assets for a better player who is also on an expiring contract. Then, if things don’t work out great, they can move on, without having harmed the 2024 cap space plan.

The main takeaway: Philadelphia now has options that they didn’t have before. They recouped draft assets, they added tradable salary that can be used in just about any combination imaginable, and they did nothing to hurt their future flexibility. That’s mission accomplished as far as Daryl Morey’s stated trade objectives.

Oklahoma City Thunder

We’ll keep this one relatively short and sweet. The Thunder kicked the can down the road as far as a draft pick goes…maybe. Oklahoma City will reportedly add some protections/conditions to the 2026 first-round pick they are now conveying to Philadelphia on behalf of LA. Likely, that means if that pick becomes really good (top-five, top-10, lottery?) the Thunder will keep it, and send another pick to Philadelphia. Otherwise, the Sixers get it.

In exchange, Oklahoma City gets control over yet another Clippers pick in 2027, via swap rights. There is a very real chance the Thunder could be a considerably better team than the Clippers in 2027. Oklahoma City is young and improving rapidly. In four years, the Clippers will have gone from old to ancient, and will likely be on a downswing.

This is Sam Presti at his best. This is why he’s kept control of so many picks, even while having to waive some former first-rounders recently, due to roster constraints. Presti can insert his team into almost any deal by offering to help things along, while rebalancing his draft assets down the line. No one does that better than Presti does.

 


#nba #trade #james harden #james harden
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