It’s no secret James Harden is my favorite basketball player and human being—I’ve gone through great pains to make sure of that. For the last 10ish years, I’ve watched him flit between teams, forced by a string of bizarre circumstances, downright tragedies, and Shakespearean betrayals. Each time, the internet and media trotted out one vicious narrative about his decision to leave after another, railing against his “body count” of teams he’s played for and left, and, above all, calling him a quitter. So, I should have known what to expect when I found myself at the Wells Fargo Center on Wednesday night for Harden’s first game back at the home court of his old team—his ex, if you will—with his new team. Still, somehow, the events of the evening and all the ensuing emotional landmines managed to shock me. In November, Harden left the Philadelphia 76ers after one-and-a-half odd years of, at different points, shining hope and crushing defeat. He pushed for a trade after a highly publicized, highly dramatic conflict with Sixers general manager Daryl Morey—the star executive credited with launching Harden’s career, who once called his decade-long relationship with Harden a “mutual love fest”—over breaking an alleged agreement to give Harden a super-max contract. After a prolonged, vitriolic process that last summer saw Harden declare to a room full of children at a charity event that “Daryl Morey is a liar and I will never be a part of an organization that he’s a part of,” he was traded to the Los Angeles Clippers on Halloween. So I didn’t exactly expect Harden to be welcomed back to Philadelphia with open arms. It’s a city famous for its, err, passionate sports fans (something I respect deeply) and, as a Ben Simmons apologist myself, I’ve seen what happens to former players during their first games back. (In Simmons’ case, ex-fans camped outside the Brooklyn Nets hotel to boo him once he arrived, and they did not stop booing him throughout the game, even as he was injured and spent the entirety of it on the bench.) But the first alarms went off for me when I stepped out of my Uber and saw the merchants waving their main offering: t-shirts featuring a drawing of Harden’s head, with his iconic beard in the shape of male genitalia, and the caption, “MOVE OVER SIMMONS. THERE’S A NEW DICKHEAD.” When it comes to my favorite basketball player’s good name, I am and will always be the DPOY (Defensive Player of the Year). But I kept walking, understanding that this was enemy territory and not the place to litigate who the real dickhead was between Harden and Morey. Next thing I knew, inside the stadium, I bumped into at least a handful of people wearing the phallic shirt, with a couple of odd Harden jerseys interspersed across the sea of bodies. As we watched the players warm up I found myself buzzing from anticipation and Twisted Tea, curious about what would happen when the Clippers starters were introduced and Harden was called forth. Then it happened. I bore witness to a crowd of angry men, women, and children rising to their feet in an out-of-body, almost feral furor to scream at and boo the man I love. Sure, it wasn’t exactly surprising, but it was still downright surreal. The rest of the game, the booing didn’t go anywhere; every time the ball landed in Harden’s hands, even if only for a millisecond, like clockwork, the stadium erupted. For the most part, I was thankful to be there; as someone who mostly watches these games via a stream…
