ESPN’s Bobby Marks says league should investigate Sixers over James Harden deal
The Philadelphia 76ers have not yet signed James Harden to a new deal after the future Hall of Famer opted out of his player option to allow the Sixers to have financial flexibility, but the agreement should be coming soon.
With Harden opting out, Philadelphia was able to go out and bring in PJ Tucker and Danuel House Jr. in free agency. This is because Harden is set to take a $15 million pay cut to open up potential signings for the team and improve the roster.
Harden taking this big of a pay cut has the league buzzing and it brings up questions of why he would take this pay cut. Some believe due to his relationship with former Sixers governor Michael Rubin, he will be receiving money on the side in order to make up for the money he is giving up.
Therefore, ESPN’s Bobby Marks, who worked with the Brooklyn Nets before joining ESPN in 2017, believes the league should investigate the Sixers over the Harden deal.
Marks was on “The Lowe Post” podcast and he said this:
Let’s just connect the dots here. You have an owner, or former owner, in Michael Rubin, probably one of the wealthiest American former owners, billionaire. Fanatics. Just has this big party. You got all these NBA guys there. There’s a relationship with James Harden already. There was a relationship with James Harden when he was in a Brooklyn Nets uniform, there’s no denying that, and now you have him taking $15 million less where I was texting with a couple teams and I said what was what’s the $15 million made up with? Fanatic stock? And they said ‘maybe’ so I would think that if you’re the league and you’re looking at—Hey, we got investigated for Andrei Kirilenko. Right? Kirilenko opted out of $10 million in Minnesota and signed with with for $4 (million) because we had a Russian owner and the league felt like that we were basically bank rolling him in an offshore account for the difference here. So, for me, I would think, because of the difference of what, as I said, it’s not $36 million, that the league should look into the Sixers and Philly can say like, ‘You know what? He’s doing it out of the charity of his heart because he wants to get the team better’ and that’s great. And maybe it is, but if I was the league, I would certainly look into as far as what happened in Philadelphia with his contract.
It is interesting to see Harden taking $15 million less, and maybe his relationship with Rubin plays a factor, but in this case, the veteran star is missing just one thing on his resume: a championship. This is a move that looks like a guy who is willing to sacrifice some money to bring in some help in order to finally get to the mountaintop in the NBA.
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