Daryl Morey wasn’t sure if the Rockets had the right assets to land James Harden. ( Melissa Phillip / Houston Chronicle )
Talks began in July, cooled off through the summer and then heated up again in the weeks before training camp. But by the time the Oklahoma City Thunder was close to their self-imposed deadline to sign James Harden to a long-term contract or trade him, Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s optimism had faded. He went to his son’s soccer game.
“They definitely made a decision to explore moving him over the summer,” Morey said. “It intensified in September. I thought if they were going to move him it would be before training camp. When they didn’t, I thought the window had closed.”
He was wrong. Thunder general manager Sam Presti knew that he could get the best offers for Harden if he were willing to move him in time for a team to sign Harden to a long-term extension. That meant simultaneously negotiating with Harden in the hopes to keep him and talking with other general managers about the structure of a deal to trade him.
The Rockets had been retooled to position themselves for that kind of deal. They did not, Morey said, have Harden in mind at the time. They chose Jeremy Lamb with the 12th pick of the draft because they believed him to be the best player available. They had traded Kyle Lowry to Toronto to get the Raptors’ first-round pick because Morey had come to find that other general managers would only move a star for a deal to include a lottery pick.
The Rockets continued to talk with Orlando about Dwight Howard, but those talks did not get anywhere near as far as they had at the 2012 trade deadline. Morey, however, still had the assets when Presti began exploring his options. By September, Presti had heard from Morey enough to have a good idea of how much he could get in that deal.
“Sam knew we were very interested in James,” Morey said. “In the end, it was over a two-week period. We talked once a day where we trade ideas. We had talked so much before October, the parameters about what each team would do were pretty well established.”
By then, it had become clear that the pick from Toronto was key. Presti had spoken with other teams as well. There were reports he sought a deal with Golden State centered on Klay Thompson. But Morey believed he could make the best offer by sending Oklahoma City immediate help with Kevin Martin, a strong guard for the future with Lamb and the sort of pick the Thunder would not have for years given the strength of its team.
“You prioritize the players or draft picks that could be involved in a deal,” Morey said. “We obviously wanted to hold on to that draft pick. Whenever we tried to take it out, they made sure it stayed in.”
Still, Morey was not optimistic, considering the chances “well below 50 percent.”
“They were up front they were going to go to James one more time and see if they could sign him and if they couldn’t would move him to one of the teams they were talking to,” Morey said. “I thought we had made the best offer, but I thought James would probably sign. I was wrong.”
At about 1 p.m. Oct. 27, Presti called to take the deal. The next hours were filled with the usual trade mechanics of calls to doctors, lawyers, agents, players and the league.
When Presti called, Harden still did not expect to be moving, and knew little of the options, less about the Rockets.
“It happened very quickly,” Harden said. “One minute I was at dinner with my family. The next minute I’m heading to Houston.”
Morey went to work, knowing that the Rockets future about to change dramatically, and that of all the times he thought he was close to that life-changing move, the time he did not expect it, it had finally happened.
“After that, it was mayhem,” he said. “It’s hard to ever celebrate a trade. It’s a constant grind and call all disentangle at any time.”
He does, however, have one regret.
“I didn’t get to see the rest of the (soccer) game.”