{"id":453478,"date":"2026-02-07T00:30:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T00:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/453478\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T00:30:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T00:30:07","slug":"daryl-morey-takes-a-shot-at-cavs-guard-james-harden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/453478\/","title":{"rendered":"Daryl Morey takes a shot at Cavs guard James Harden"},"content":{"rendered":"

To say James Harden and Daryl Morey have a history together would be an understatement. They were one of the most successful marriages in basketball until they weren\u2019t. Morey fully believed in Harden\u2019s style of play for the better part of a decade. He worked with him and Mike D\u2019Antoni to create an efficient, small-ball team with the Houston Rockets<\/a> that was truly ahead of its time.<\/p>\n

That Rockets group never reached the Finals, but were good enough to do so. They unfortunately ran into the Kevin Durant Golden State Warriors<\/a> \u2014 a team that was possibly the best collection of talent assembled on an NBA roster.<\/p>\n

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The Harden and Morey partnership continued with the Philadelphia 76ers<\/a>. It worked well there until it came time to negotiate a new deal. Harden wanted a long-term max contract extension after the 2023 season<\/a>. The Sixers didn\u2019t give it to him, which led to Harden calling Morey a liar to a somewhat disinterested crowd in China.<\/p>\n

Harden\u2019s breakup with Morey and the Sixers was messy. Those hard feelings seemed to have lingered two and a half years later.<\/p>\n

Morey had a press conference on Friday afternoon addressing the Sixers\u2019 moves at the deadline. In them, he said that the rest of the conference didn\u2019t make any trades that impacted their ability to compete in the East, which would include the Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> trading for Harden.<\/p>\n

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\u201cFolks have speculated on the improvements of our East competitors,\u201d Morey said<\/a>, \u201cI don\u2019t see it personally. There weren\u2019t any needle movers in my opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to see this as anything other than a shot at Harden.<\/p>\n

Even if you don\u2019t think the Darius Garland for Harden swap drastically improves the Cavs, the change is significant enough to be a \u201cneedle mover.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also, the Cavs are one of the hottest teams in the league. They\u2019ve won eight of their last 10 game mostly without Garland, and vaulted past the 76ers in the process. Adding someone coming off an All-NBA season would seem to qualify as changing the landscape of the conference.<\/p>\n

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The Cavs play the 76ers once more this season on March 9. We\u2019ll see what kind of showing Harden has in that game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To say James Harden and Daryl Morey have a history together would be an understatement. They were one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[208169,8174,27494,14036,4576,2243,5050,6418,355,3234,2085,2113,99,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-453478","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-bill-streicher-imagn","9":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","10":"tag-darius-garland","11":"tag-daryl-morey","12":"tag-detroit-pistons","13":"tag-golden-state-warriors","14":"tag-houston-rockets","15":"tag-james-harden","16":"tag-nba","17":"tag-pennsylvania","18":"tag-philadelphia","19":"tag-philadelphia-76ers","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}