Could the James Harden trade mark the end of the NBA’s Big Three model?

So much for the NBA’s most recent incarnation of The Big Three. On Thursday afternoon’s trade deadline, the Brooklyn Nets shipped James Harden to the Philadelphia 76ers for Ben Simmons, Seth Curry, Andre Drummond and two draft picks. The Nets had hoped that adding Harden to a mix of players that included another former MVP, Kevin Durant, and seven-time All-Star Kyrie Irving would make them title contenders. Instead, the group flamed out in little over a year.

That the mix didn’t work, frankly, was not shocking. Acquiring Harden, who arguably deserved to win more than one MVP award during his time with the Houston Rockets, was always a barely calculated risk. Harden is one of the great scorers in NBA history, but he came to Brooklyn having worn out his welcome in Houston. Irving, meanwhile, forced a trade from the Cleveland Cavaliers and had spent his time with the Boston Celtics secretly plotting a move to Brooklyn alongside Durant.

The Nets had hoped that the talent on the floor would win out over any potential personality clashes. It wasn’t an utterly ridiculous notion, but the mix only occasionally worked. Harden’s arrival paid instant dividends for the Nets but he was limited by hamstring issues during last year’s playoffs, where the team lost to the Milwaukee Bucks in the second round. Any hope that the team would come together this season was dashed when Irving’s refusal to get vaccinated for Covid-19 ensured that he wouldn’t be able to play any home games.

According to The Athletic’s Joe Vardon, Harden’s second-straight forced trade was at least partly because he and Irving – literally for much of the time – couldn’t play together. In the piece, Vardon quoted anonymous sources that there was tension between the