With Trade Of James Harden, ‘Scary Hours’ Proves A Tease For The Brooklyn Nets

After he made his debut with the Brooklyn Nets while being paired with Kevin Durant and waiting for Kyrie Irving to return from a personal absence, James Harden described the potential of the trio as “scary hours”.

This was back on Jan. 16, 2021 following a triple-double in an empty arena against the Orlando Magic after Harden was acquired for Caris LeVert, Jarrett Allen three first-round picks and four pick swaps, but as time moved on scary hours never came to full fruition.

Ultimately scary hours turned into 16 games together, which if you assume each game is about two and half hours, that comes out to 40 hours of real time.

And it seems the lack of scary hours, mostly due to Irving’s absence is among the reason after 80 games with the Nets, Harden was headed to the Philadelphia 76ers for a package that includes Ben Simmons.

The reports began surfacing on Jan. 25, 10 days into Durant’s absence with a sprained left knee and after a flat 10-point loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, there was a testy and somewhat uncomfortable exchange between Harden and reporters, resulting in him denying the report by saying:

“Of course I’m frustrated because we’re not healthy where there’s been a lot of inconsistency for whatever reason, injuries, COVID, whatever you want to call it. I think everyone in the organization is frustrated because we’re better than what our record is and we should be on the way up. That’s all it is.”

Often in these things, where there’s smoke there’s fire and by the middle of Thursday afternoon, the reports of the deal surfaced and six hours, 25 minutes after the deadline ended, Harden’s tenure was quietly over with his last appearance as a Net being a four-point showing in an ugly loss last week in Sacramento.

Ultimately, the 364 minutes the trio appeared on the floor were a tantalizing tease with the biggest evidence of how they dominated the Celtics over five games in the first round of the postseason last spring, highlighted by Game 4 when the trio combined for 104 points in a 141-126 rout.

Then it gradually fell apart. Harden reinjured his hamstring in the opening minutes of the second-round series against Milwaukee, tried to will his way back, especially after Irving injured his ankle in Game 4.

And when the team reconvened in October, there was the issue of Irving not being eligible for home games and initially being away from the team. That was until the Nets relented and allowed Irving to appear in road games in mid-December when a COVID-19 outbreak hit the team.

Harden’s frustration about Irving did not appear obvious as it was more of a subtle thing. It seemed subtle when Harden joked about giving Irving the shot himself after the trio dominated in a blowout win in Chicago on Jan. 12.

That was the last time “scary hours” appeared for the Nets. Durant was injured three nights later and the Nets soon began a 10-game skid that is ongoing, leaving them as another “what if” in the rich history of New York sports.

It is not quite the what if of the 1980s Mets or the 1994 Yankees.

The Mets won one title in a seven-year span and have not won since 1986, a time when the belief was they were a budding dynasty. Ultimately that dynasty crumbled into a 103-loss disaster in 1993 when the Yankees were getting good after four losing seasons in the wilderness.

By 1994, the Yankees appeared to be championship material in their second season under Buck Showalter. The only thing standing in their way was a strike that began on Aug. 12, 1994, resulted in the disastrous cancelation of the World Series, a scenario nobody hopes ever happens again, especially with the slow pace of the MLB-imposed lockout that has gone on for over two months.

In the meantime, the Nets will begin picking up the pieces of the scary hours that never fully evolved with the hope Simmons can be some semblance of the player who drew around 50 NBA personnel to his fourth and fifth college games at LSU against Marquette and North Carolina State on Nov. 23-24, 2015 in Brooklyn.

In his first game in Brooklyn, he finished with 21 points, 20 rebounds and seven assists and in the second game, Simmons he scored four points to go along with 14 rebounds and 10 assists.  Also, of note in those games is Simmons took all his shots inside in the 3-point line, taking 14 against Marquette and six against North Carolina State.

Simmons is still young enough to be salvaged, especially after the disastrous ending in Philadelphia last spring but it remains to be seen if a new set of “scary hours” can be created in Brooklyn with a player who is a career 56 percent shooter that has attempted 34 3-pointers and is also a career 60 percent foul shooter.