Why did Thunder give up Harden because of 4 million yuan and eventually ruin the dynasty? You will understand after reading it

As early as more than ten years ago, the Thunder had the opportunity to achieve a dynasty, but in the end they broke up the lineup with their own hands. Although I don’t know if the Thunder would regret how they traded James Harda now, for fans, this is obviously a very regrettable deal. You should know that they had just reached the finals in 2012, and the management broke up the Thunder’s third young master in the offseason. Especially after seeing Harden joining the Rockets, the fans were unable to feel relieved of this deal for a long time. So why did the Thunder send Harden away? Do you look down on his potential or for other reasons? Next, let’s analyze it!

Turn back to 2012, the Thunder lost to the Heat under the high attention. In this round of the series, they seriously exposed their shortcomings. However, at that time, the outside world was not too pessimistic about the Thunder's future. After all, their core players were still very young at that time. It was originally beyond expectations for them to reach the finals at that stage. Therefore, even though they lost to the Heat, many fans still firmly believed that as long as they were given time to the Thunder, they even had hope of achieving the dynasty.

However, the Thunder management obviously does not think so. The renewal of many core players in the team has made them even more worried, especially Harden and Ibaka. Both of them played a key role in their finals. The Thunder's salary space was not ideal at that time. Durant had signed a four-year maximum salary contract before, and Westbrook and Perkins also had a 5-year, 80 million yuan contract and 36 million yuan in four years. In addition, the salary of other players was as high as 43.42 million yuan, so the team's salary space was very tight. You should know that at that time, the league's salary cap was only 58 million yuan, and the luxury tax line was 69.81 million yuan. So if the Thunder did not want to pay the luxury tax, they would only have 26 million yuan of disposable salary space.

The Thunder management first chose to leave Ibaka with a four-year and 48 million contract. This is because the team already has outside ball-holding cores like Westbrook and Durant. In comparison, Ibaka was more irreplaceable for the lineup at that time. Also, at that time, many strong teams in the league had top inside lines, such as Duncan of the Spurs, Aldridge of the Trail Blazers, Griffin of the Clippers, Garnett of the Celtics, Gasol of the Lakers, etc. If you want to compete with these strong teams, the Thunder's inside lineup should not be too shabby.

In this way, if Harden wants to stay in the team, he can only sign a contract with the Thunder with an average salary of about 14 million yuan. Therefore, at that time, the management did offer him a 4-year offer of 56 million yuan. However, even though Harden had not reached the peak at that time, the price was still not enough. His personal ideal contract renewal was 60 million in four years. Considering his potential, this was obviously not a big talk in the Lions. In the free market, there were many teams who were willing to offer higher offers to Harden.

In this way, the Thunder and Harden's contract renewal negotiations reached a deadlock. At the same time, other teams began to call the Thunder to test whether Harden had been put on the trading shelves. Among them, the trading quotes given by the Rockets deeply touched the Thunder, which not only included Kevin Martin, who had averaged 20+ seasons per game, but also the column of Reggie Miller. The arrival of the two of them can also make up for the Thunder's lack of firepower on the outside, and the Thunder no longer had to pay luxury taxes. In this case, they finally chose to agree to the Rockets' deal.

However, in addition to the salary issue, another thing has also affected the Thunder's judgment on whether to keep Harden. That is, after the 2012 Finals, the famous NBA reporter Steve Keller reported that Harden hopes to gain more important roles, more ball rights and higher tactical status in the team in the future. But obviously at that time, the Thunder were more optimistic about Durant and Westbrook, so this report allowed the team to see possible ball rights conflicts.

It is worth mentioning that later, more than one industry insider mentioned that Harden seemed to have such an idea at that time, and their teammate Perkins at that time said that in the 2012 national team, a group of players led by Wade and James kept instilling in Harden that he deserved to have a team of his own.

However, the best way for Thunder at that time was not to directly choose to trade Harden. If they communicated with Harden sincerely, they could understand the latter's true thoughts. Because in later documentaries, Harden himself said that he was willing to continue to stay in the Thunder to play the role of the sixth man in the team, but as time has been too long, we have no way to figure out what the real situation was.

Judging from the final result, the Thunder obviously made the most failed decision in team history. They personally sent Harden, the future MVP and scoring champion, and each of the Martin and Lambs in exchange for it played a role. Therefore, after 2012, the Thunder did not reach the Finals again. The 2016 playoffs were their most promising year, but in the Western Conference Finals they were reversed by their opponents with a 3-1 lead. If Harden was still there in this series against the Warriors in 2016, he would definitely be able to greatly alleviate the offensive pressure of Durant and Westbrook. You should know that at that time, the Thunder lost because they were exhausted and could not respond to the opponent's offense at critical moments.

If the Thunder really left Harden, it is unknown whether the Warriors can dominate the West later. The firepower of the peak Durant, Westbrook and Harden are definitely no worse than any of the Big Three in NBA history. And later facts proved that Harden was obviously a better player than Westbrook, so if the Thunder chose to build a team around Durant and Harden, they might have achieved higher achievements than they did! But all this is over after all. It is likely that the former Thunder Third Young Master will find it difficult to return here in the future, especially Durant. His later departure caused great harm to the team and fans. Therefore, he, who once won the MVP here, was difficult for him to retire his No. 35 jersey by the Thunder.