Per ESPN<\/a>, he hopes to be \u201creceived with love.\u201d
\n\u201cThe love and the appreciation that I\u2019ve given to that city and that I still give to that city, I\u2019m hoping that the favor can be returned,\u201d Harden told ESPN in a wide-ranging interview.
\nThere were months of tension leading up to the four-team deal on Jan. 13 that sent Harden to Brooklyn, his preferred destination.<\/p>\n“I thought I would never leave that franchise,” Harden said. “I thought I was going to be in Houston, obviously, for the rest of my career. Things happened. I’ve got different goals, and I’ve seen a different vision for myself and my career and my family.”
\nHe continued: \u201cLike I said, it doesn\u2019t change the fact of how I feel about the city. But it just didn\u2019t go as well \u2014 as smooth \u2014 as I planned. The communication between myself and the front office got a little shaky. And now I look back at it and I see these other scenarios, other situations that are happening, specifically around other players that are in Houston, in different sports. And their transition is going very smooth. And I would\u2019ve hoped for mine to go that smooth, but it didn\u2019t. I am where I am now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
James Harden prepares to face his former team for the first time since being traded to the Brooklyn Net<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":194576,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[197,399],"tags":[],"rumors":[],"typology":[187],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-203269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eurocup","category-nba","typology-video"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2021\/01\/harden-durant-irving-nets.jpg","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203269"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=203269"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=203269"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=203269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}