CAMDEN, N.J. — At the moment, James Harden is a member of the Philadelphia 76ers. The Beard has been with the team since the second day of training camp at Colorado State University while the team works through his trade request.
Harden spoke about his situation at practice on Friday. He stated his relationship with the front office is beyond repair. He believes there is no more trust from the organization, and he is hurt by it.
However, he is a Sixer at the moment, and he has been a professional in practice. He has been working hard in the drills and has been praised for it by his teammates.
However, Harden has to get used to new coach Nick Nurse in practice.
“Great,” said Harden of learning Nurse’s schemes. “Nick is very versatile. He’s a player’s coach. He understands it and thus far — I’ve known a little bit when he was the G League coach in Houston, but obviously, he’s won a championship and he’s different. I’m a fan of him.”
While there wasn’t a previous relationship between Harden and Nurse from the Houston days, the two have had conversations. Among the topics, if the future Hall of Famer is going to play in any games, he has to be on the same page with his teammates.
“Just having conversations with him these last few weeks has been impressive,” Harden added. “He knows the game of basketball.”
It’s obvious the biggest difference between Nurse and coach Doc Rivers is the offensive scheme. While Rivers focused more on the pick-and-roll game and focusing on his stars, Nurse wants to get everybody involved on offense.
“I think it’s more spacing,” Harden said of the differences. “More opportunities for everyone and just unpredictable. He can change things up on the fly and things in one, five, six, seven possessions aren’t going right or in one quarter, he can change and make an adjustment which is very difficult to do, but he’s very good at that.”
While the Sixers continue to wait and see if Harden will play, Nurse has revealed that he has been working hard in practice and in the night workouts at the facility. However, nothing has changed in his playing status.
“I think it’s been exactly the same,” Nurse explained. “He’s been really good in practice. I know he’s working extremely hard almost every night. The workouts at night are really intense as well, and we’re just going day-by-day. That’s it.”
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