James Harden just crossed $500 million in career NBA earnings, becoming only the fourth player ever to do it, and the funniest part of that sentence is still the word “Cavaliers.”
Cleveland re-signed him for three years and $97 million, but only after Harden reportedly pushed back his own deal so the front office could finish a separate trade first, the one that brought Peyton Watson to Cleveland. Watson signed his extension, and a day later, so did Harden. Usually the star eats first and lets the roster sort itself out around whatever’s left.
I want to be annoyed about how well that was managed, and I genuinely can’t get there, because I watched what this exact Cavaliers core did with a full roster and Watson mysteriously not on it. The Knicks swept them out of the Eastern Conference Finals this spring, closing it out 130-93 in the same series where the Knicks hunted him on switch after switch. Harden can cross every earnings milestone the league invented, sit at $511 million with LeBron, Durant, and Steph Curry, and it will not un-sweep that series.
Checked.
Harden signed this deal at 37 years old, which makes him only the second player ever, after LeBron, to land $90 million guaranteed at that age. He also helped engineer a five-team sign-and-trade for a 23-year-old bench piece before cashing his own check, which is not how the aging-superstar playbook usually goes.
This is where it gets complicated, because I have to be honest for a second: that’s the kind of front-office move that wins in October and pays off in June. Cleveland front-loaded a role player’s development instead of hoarding cap flexibility for its own sake, and the cap gymnastics Cleveland was already doing this summer reads a lot smarter now that Watson is already in the building and Harden is locked up around him. If you want the full breakdown of the contract terms and the trade kicker, we already covered that — I’m not redoing the math here.
Shams had the number first:
https://twitter.com/ShamsCharania/status/2090484195520881018
Fourth player in league history. Wild number for a guy who spent his own summer clearing cap space for somebody else’s rookie deal.
My sister’s already texting the family group chat that I’m still bringing up May in August, and she’s not wrong. She also wasn’t in the building for Game 4. Cleveland can cash every check in the league. I’ll take the banner.
