Philadelphia 76ers: Where does James Harden want to put his money?

At this point, the Philadelphia 76ers aren’t completely in control of their future.

Yes, they have a few decisions left to make, including whether or not to pick up Shake Milton’s option, whether to retain their three players currently signed to non-fully guaranteed contracts – Isaiah Joe, Paul Reed, and Charles Bassey – and how to tackle free agency with only so many options from which to add new players, but there are two moves that they have very little control over that could ultimately decide the fate of the franchise moving forward: Will someone take Tobias Harris and will James Harden pick up his $47.366 million player option?

For the sake of discussion, let’s take a look at the latter question, as the former feels incredibly unlikely.

Harden has a choice to make. With $268 million already in the bank from the game of basketball and millions more earned from sponsorships like Adidas and Trolli, Harden is in line to make one of the single biggest individual season payouts in NBA history, which, considering his “diminished” game may also prove to be both the first and the final season of his career where his cap hit starts with a four instead of a three. If he picks up the option, no one will hold it against him – okay, some people will hold it against him – but if he doesn’t and instead accepts something like a three-year contract worth $100 million, it could open up access to the full mid-level exception and thus allow the team to sign his good pal from Houston, P.J. Tucker to the three-year, $30 million deal he reportedly desires.

So really, the question has to be asked: Where does James Harden want his money, on the court or in his bank account? The question, though far from easy, could play a big part in how the final act of his NBA career shakes out and whether or not he, Daryl Morey, and the Philadelphia 76ers can add a championship to their resumes before “The Beard” calls it a career.

James Harden can now define his future with the Philadelphia 76ers.

Whether James Harden plays one, three, or even five more seasons in his NBA career, his case for the Hall of Fame is locked. He’s led the association in scoring on multiple occasions, has double-digit All-Star appearances, and will probably finish out his career with the second-most 3-pointers made assuming he keeps up his typical clip over the next few seasons.

And yet, there will always be a few fans who point to his trophy case and boldly declare that Harden isn’t in the same league as the shooting guard who came before him because he never won the big one. Sure, they will say, his accomplishments were impressive and he led the Rockets to some of their most successful seasons ever – which is really saying something, considering their impressive history – but he was never able to overcome the premier performers of his era. They’ll compare him to Charles Barkley, Allen Iverson, and many more Philadelphia 76ers who were very good but never good enough, and he’ll have to take that criticism for the rest of his life.

Now granted, having folks joke about not winning a championship really isn’t that big of an issue, especially for a millionaire hundreds of times over with a healthy social life and a ton of off-court opportunities, but for a true student of the game who wants nothing more than to win it all, ending a career without checking that box could serve as a nagging bother that never really goes away.

If Harden doesn’t want to live with that ghost, there is something he can do about it: He can invest some of his future earnings into immediate on-court gains and make sure Daryl Morey puts the pieces around him to succeed. He can reunite with his buddy P.J. Tucker, push hard for an Eric Gordon trade, and maybe even advocate for a few more players who aren’t quite marquee-level talents but could benefit his preferred on-court style of play.

In the NBA, team building is hard. Even if you have the stars in place, which the Philadelphia 76ers, fortunately, do, selecting the best role players who can connect them all together is a lot easier said than done, especially with a player like Tobias Harris already locked into place at a $37 million cap hit. If James Harden wants to optimize the final years of his prime and take a real shot at the Larry O’Brien Trophy, he might be willing to take a longer-term contract at a lower cap hit to get it done. If not, well, then he must really trust Daryl Morey’s team-building philosophy, as the prospects of signing P.J. Tucker becomes virtually impossible.