It’s Time for James Harden to Be a Better, Bolder Leader for Houston Rockets

November 19th, 2015 by Jonathan Feigen Leave a reply »

HOUSTON — James Harden offered his version of the company line.

“Something had to change,” he said.

Rockets management agreed. But Harden was not talking about the change the bosses had enacted.

Rockets owner Leslie Alexander and general manager Daryl Morey believed that change had to be on the bench and fired Kevin McHale as coach, arguing that the team was “not responding” to the coach who led the Rockets deeper in the playoffs than the franchise had gone in 17 years.

Harden blamed someone else.

He blamed himself. Whether Morey and Alexander made the right call is uncertain. We’ll never know if McHale would have turned the Rockets around. However, Harden was unquestionably right.

The player who had been central to everything that had gone right a season ago was in the middle of everything going so wrong. Some of that was because of his outsized role, but that responsibility comes with being the face—and facial hair—of the franchise.

“I feel like, for me, I had to change in order for us to be more positive, get more ...

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