James Harden is the product of an NBA that has jumped the shark

Adam Silver and the NBA need to ask themselves a question.

Do we want to be taken seriously?

Are we a sport? Or are we pure entertainment?

Do we care if we are written off by all of the well-intentioned people of the world?

Or are we officially in the business of views and engagement?

Do we care about the portion of our audience that still watches professional sports for the sports? For the teams? For the name on the front of the jersey instead of the names on the back?

Or are we Monday Night RAW?

I’d like to blame James Harden for the sheer ridiculousness that has unfolded over the last month. For declining a chance to become a free agent and then demanding to be set free. For calling in a favor and then throwing a tantrum when it wasn’t immediately granted. For expecting his boss to sacrifice his own individual well-being in favor of Harden’s.

I’d like to blame him for accepting a salary from the Sixers instead of whatever the free-agent market would bear. I’d like to blame him for ignoring the terms of the contract he opted into because he thought he could set his own. I’d like to blame him for throwing a tantrum when he realized that he was bound by those terms.

That’s what all of this is, isn’t it? It’s a tantrum. Harden is a man lashing out at everybody except the one who deserves it. He is in full-blown ego-protection mode. Next stop: full-blown embarrassment.

Think about it. Think about what any rational person sees.

Harden could have opted out of his contract. He could have signed with any team who was willing to pay him what he wanted. No team wanted him at that price, so he decided to make the Sixers pay it. He then demanded they trade him at that price to a team he’d rather play for. The Sixers didn’t acquiesce fast enough. So he declared that he’d never play for them. To reinforce his point, he arrived late to training camp. He ran 5′s once, skipped the preseason, and then left the team indefinitely. Ten days later, he arrived unannounced for the team flight to the season opener.

The Sixers were expecting all of this. They’d spent three months preparing themselves for Harden to make their lives difficult. His people telegraphed it. Go back and read the reporting. Harden’s leverage was the narrative. The back-channel message to the Sixers was, “Don’t make us make this uncomfortable.”

It was a silly way to do things. First, Harden’s agents demanded a trade. Then, they demanded he be traded to a single destination, thereby cutting off all escape routes. Then, they announced he would never play for the Sixers again, and told him to show up late to training camp, and to leave for 10 days, and to return for the team flight to the season opener.

Now, they expect everyone to be surprised that the Sixers’ reaction was, “Wow, we weren’t expecting you?”

I’d like to blame Harden for all of that. Bad advice, sure. But the company a man keeps is one of the few things he can control. Harden has surrounded himself with people who are either giving him bad advice or who care more about what he can provide them. Either way, they are not very bright. They have allowed Harden to destroy his legacy.

» READ MORE: Sixers president Daryl Morey faces career-defining season as James Harden saga looms over his legacy

I know that sounds hyperbolic. Let me defend it. History tends to judge things in threes. Strikes, stooges, Brontë sisters, denials of the Messiah. Harden arrived in Philadelphia having forced his way out of his last two teams. The first time, he could blame the bossmen. The Rockets didn’t want to try. He did. No harm, no foul. The second time? He could blame the other two guys. They checked out first. The third time? The Sixers were his chance to reestablish himself, to show it wasn’t about him, to correct the misunderstanding.

He botched it. He botched it so badly that the Sixers’ only option is to let him keep botching it. They may not get Terance Mann. But they’ll get what Harden is worth. A disgruntled, self-absorbed, inconsistent player for whom no team was willing to go out of its way.

It is clear who Harden is. So is the realm in which he operates. He turned his lone advocates into fools. He took the benefit of the doubt they extended him, tore it up, and made it rain.

The guilty party is obvious. Harden is an adult. He has a job, an employer, a contract, all of the things that come with being part of adult society at 34 years old. We call those things responsibilities here in the adult world. They can be a royal pain in the butt. But Harden accepted them, and now they are his.

That’s how it works. We are products of our own decisions. They don’t always work out. How could they? If they did, they wouldn’t be decisions. We either earn the right to call our own shot, or we submit to a risk-reward calculus. Sometimes we choose right. Sometimes we choose wrong. Always, we live with the consequences.

That’s called being an adult. A professional. A man.

It’s how things work in the real world.

Except, the NBA is not the real world.

Which is why I can’t blame Harden.

He is a product of an entertainment conglomerate that has spent the last two decades prioritizing individual stardom over collective legitimacy. I’m not going to sit here and argue that the NBA has done it wrong. It is a business, the goal is to make money, and the league is making a lot of it.

Its business is stars. Even the washed-up ones. At least, for however long they can still draw eyeballs. The entire industry shares in the spoils. Which is how you end up with straight-faced reporters and analysts arguing that Harden is the aggrieved party.

The Sixers are a willing participant. Jimmy Butler was a product of the system. So, too, was Harden. I suspect that the attitude of the rest of the league is that it’s Daryl Morey’s turn in the ringer. You play the game, you accept the prize. You salvage whatever you can.

It’s a stupid game. Entertaining? Sure. Profitable? No doubt. Also, unworthy of investment.

By the way, the Sixers ended up playing a fun season opener on Thursday night. But does that really even matter?