'He's a liar': James Harden slams Daryl Morey over his requested trade / News - Basketnews.com

James Harden has had enough of Daryl Morey after the Sixers paused trade talks of him. The All-Stat guard made his feelings abundantly clear during his tour in China.

Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports Credit Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

James Harden and the Philadelphia 76ers have seemingly reached a stalemate. A few hours after ESPN reported that the franchise put an end to trade talks for the player and are prepared to bring the 10-time All-Star to training camp, Harden chose to essentially burn all bridges.

The prolific scoring guard has made his intentions clear: he wants to be traded to the Los Angeles Clippers, since he requested a trade in July after not agreeing on a long-term contract extension with the Sixers. But recently, Harden escalated his standoff with the front office by publicly slamming 76ers President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey while on a press tour in China.

"Daryl Morey is a liar and I will never be a part of an organization that he's a part of," Harden told the gathered crowd. "Let me say that again. Daryl Morey is a liar and I will never be a part of an organization that he's a part of," he repeated.

It's clear that Harden isn't pleased that he wasn't offered a long-term maximum-level contract from 76ers president Daryl Morey this off-season. Instead, the team picked up Harden's 35.6m dollar player option for the 2023-24 campaign. The Athletic's Sam Amick reported that Harden "no longer wants to play for Philadelphia and has no plans of taking part in training camp".

Daryl Morey has made it clear that he's not going to trade Harden for anything but a fair return. "If we don't get either a very good player or something that we can turn into a very good player then we're just not going to do it," Morey said last month.

Harden, 33, averaged 21.0 points, 10.7 assists and 6.1 rebounds in 58 games this past season. He owns career averages of 24.7 points, 7.0 assists and 5.6 rebounds in 1,000 games (786 starts) with the Oklahoma City Thunder, Houston Rockets, Brooklyn Nets and 76ers. He joined the Sixers in the deal that sent Ben Simmons, Seth Curry and Andre Drummond to the Brooklyn Nets.

Apart from Harden's own discontent, one needs to recall that Morey is a disliked figure in China after he advocated for Hong Kong's freedom from the Chinese Republic in 2019. Morey was with the Houston Rockets at the time, but his words led to NBA preseason games being put in jeopardy, as the American executive was slammed by various figures for his comments.

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