Woj: James Harden has ‘likely’ played his last game for 76ers

The future of James Harden, it's tonight's breaking news here on SportsCenter. Adrian Wojnarowski is reporting that James Harden is picking up his player option with the Sixers that will pay him 35.6 million dollars next season after averaging 21 points in a league-leading 11 dimes. Harden had been seeking a long-term deal but couldn't come together here with Philadelphia and Woj is joining us now with much more on this developing story. What does this now mean for James Harden as well as the Sixers? Kevin, what it means is that James Harden has likely played his last game in Philadelphia less than two years after forcing his way to the Sixers in a trade from Brooklyn. 35.5 million dollars he opts into and now he's available to be traded and the Sixers have already started to talk to teams around the league about a James Harden deal. But this was essentially James Harden looking out into free agency. If he had declined that player option and not seeing perhaps the long-term, the kind of long-term commitment he wanted from the Sixers or perhaps another team. Houston had been a team where there had been a mutual interest and the Rockets have over 60 million dollars in cap space, but their focus has been elsewhere in free agency. And I think for James Harden, his best chance to be on a contending team this year was to opt in and find a trade, but I think it's his expectation and also the Sixers that they're going to find a trade. We'll see how long that takes. What are the landing spots in your mind right now, especially with you saying, let's see how long it takes. The most prominent team out there with James Harden right now is the Los Angeles Clippers. They have been on the search for a point guard to lead that group. I think certainly there's a real opportunity for them to bring Russell Westbrook back in free agency, free agency. He was outstanding for them last year, but certainly Harden would bring a different dimension. They brought in John Wall last year in free agency. It didn't work out. What's the pathway to a deal there? I think this is a Clippers team that is not going to be interested in trading any of its good young players. Is there a deal with expiring contracts for the future draft pick? But the Sixers are going to want to get some value back for James Harden. New York's another team that I think is going to look at this. They've got a lot of assets. Perhaps they didn't have to give up much to get Harden. That's a tougher trade for Philly, putting them in their own division. There's going to be other teams interested in Harden, but Daryl Morey is in a window here where he's trying to win a championship around Joel Embiid. I'm not sure how quickly this is going to go. Okay, by the way, free agency is scheduled to begin less than 24 hours from now.