However Kevin Durant felt when the Thunder traded James Harden to the Rockets in 2012, he wishes people would stop talking about it. He responded to a series of tweets from ESPN’s Bill Simmons on Sunday by telling him to move on.
Simmons has been outspoken in his criticism of the Harden trade for three years, and in retrospect, it was a disaster for the Thunder. Harden is an MVP candidate in Houston, and Oklahoma City hasn’t gotten much from anybody involved in the deal except for the lottery pick that turned out to be Steven Adams. The Oklahoman‘s Darnell Mayberry published a column on Sunday examining the still-running debate over the three-year-old trade. Simmons had some thoughts in response:OKC newspaper piece about the Harden trade leaves out the key point - they didn’t have to trade him when they did. http://t.co/yrdgViPR9s
— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) April 5, 2015
OKC could have made a 2013 title run and stayed under tax, then dealt with Harden’s restricted free agency that summer. That’s just a fact.
— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) April 5, 2015
Last thing - I wrote about about OKC’s Harden dilemma just a few weeks before they traded him. Interesting re-read. http://t.co/OpI9hzfyDQ
— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) April 5, 2015None of that is unreasonable, nor is it anything Simmons — and others — haven’t written a million times since the trade. But one of the people most impacted by the deal, Kevin Durant, is tired of hearing about it.
@BillSimmons just let it go!
— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) April 5, 2015You can see why Durant and the Thunder are sick of the debate. They made the Western Conference Finals last year without Harden, and looked to be among the favorites in the west this season before injuries to Durant and Russell Westbrook, among others, destroyed their title hopes.