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Rockets hopeful James Harden will play on Saturday
Jonathan Feigen Dec. 24, 2020 Updated: Dec. 24, 2020 11:20 p.m.
Houston Rockets guard James Harden (13) walks back to the court after a timeout during the first quarter of a preseason NBA basketball game between the Houston Rockets and the San Antonio Spurs on Thursday, Dec. 17, 2020, at Toyota Center in Houston.
Photo: Mark Mulligan/Staff photographer
The Rockets will soon play basketball again. Maybe.
Rockets guard James Harden will be eligible to play Saturday in Portland, the NBA ruled, if he continues to produce negative tests for COVID-19.
That could give the Rockets at least the eight players required to start their season, if additional players are not ordered to be quarantined. There is that potential with the NBA still reviewing contact tracing after additional positive COVID-19 test results.
The Rockets' season opener against the Oklahoma City Thunder was postponed on Wednesday when they did not have enough players available to play the game.
The NBA ruled Harden needed to have four days in quarantine, beginning with Tuesday, the day after he attended a social event in a Houston club. Harden was not suspended.
"The precedent is that discipline gets ratcheted up," NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in an appearance on ESPN on Thursday of the decision to fine but not suspend Harden. "It's Christmas. It was a first offense. The $50,000 is the limit of my authority in collective bargaining."
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Players are permitted to file a grievance if fined in excess of $50,000.
Harden was ruled out of the Rockets' season opener on Wednesday after the NBA reviewed video of him attending the event in violation of the NBA and NBPA Health and Safety Protocols, making him unavailable while in quarantine.
With Harden out and seven other players either returning positive or inconclusive tests or in quarantine for contact tracing, the Rockets did not have eight players available to play, leading the NBA to postpone the game.
"In a way, he got lucky because if the game had taken place last night as scheduled and he were unavailable because of his own actions, he would have missed a game and a paycheck," Silver said. "And so, it … ultimately would have turned out to be a much larger sanction.
"A little bit of luck there. I'd say also, we're just beginning these protocols. It seemed fair in the first instance. It's Christmas."
Though Harden was fined $50,000 for violating the Health and Safety Protocols, he could not be suspended from playing a game that was not played and will be rescheduled for the second half of the season. He theoretically can still play the entire Rockets schedule this season.
Had Wednesday's game been played, Harden would have been docked one game's worth of pay, $567,000. If he had been suspended, he would have been penalized $281,544,827 for every game missed.
The NBA and NBPA Health and Safety Protocols does allow suspensions for violations of protocols but has generally opted to treat the quarantine period as a suspension, as with Clippers guard Lou Williams' quarantine when he attended a club while excused from the bubble during last season's restart.
The Houston Chronicle's Jonathan Feigen, Jerome Solomon and Brian T. Smith discuss the state of the Rockets' relationship with James Harden and the early impressions of new coach Stephen Silas.
Harden, who had told the Rockets he preferred to be traded and did not respond when asked if his opinion on the Rockets' revamped roster had changed since he joined the team Dec. 8, missed Rockets training camp while in Atlanta and Las Vegas. He said his delay in arriving in Houston was for "just training."
He was also seen mask-less in several social settings while in Las Vegas and Atlanta during the Rockets' training camp, sometimes in posts on his own Instagram account. He was not subjected to any NBA disciplinary action from the league in those instances.
Silver said he distinguished violations after reporting from potential infractions before reporting for training camp.
"Anyone that is in a position of meting out discipline as I am can't succumb to frontier justice," Silver said. "I understand what Twitter would like to see happen there. But there is a union. There are rules. My job is to follow the rules, in this case, putting aside the prior conduct. This was a first violation for James under these new protocols. It didn't seem to suspend him for that act alone.
"We're learning as we go."
The NBA has yet to announce a final ruling on how long players that were in quarantine on Wednesday, including guard John Wall and center DeMarcus Cousins, would remain unavailable. The Athletic reported the quarantine period will last a week.
The Health and Safety Protocols are intentionally ambiguous about the quarantine periods necessary in contact tracing, allowing them to be adjusted based on the time in contact, the proximity, the setting if masks were worn and if there are symptoms.
The Rockets are scheduled to fly to Portland on Friday. If he continues to produce negative tests for COVID-19, Harden would be cleared to be with the team.
"Right now, I'm just focused on being here," he said. That has not seemed to ease tension, though the Rockets had said Harden has been professional and engaged in games and practices before he was not permitted to participate in either.
"Of course, my reaction is guys have contracts, they should honor them," Silver said. "To the extent there are disputes between teams and players, they should be held behind closed doors. Look, this isn't the first time we've had a star player express dissatisfaction with some aspect of his situation. It's been part of this league since its early days.
"It's not what you want to see as part of the league. You hope that James will bear down and be professional and he'll honor to the T every aspect of his contract. But these issues need to be worked out. It's been compounded now by this most recent violation. It's a highly unusual time. I think we have to take that into account. We also count on everyone settling down now, now that the regular season has begun again, and focusing on basketball."
The Rockets' regular season, however, has not begun. After Thursday's ruling, the start is again in sight, if still uncertain.
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Jonathan Feigen has been the Rockets beat writer since 1998 and a basketball nut since before Willis Reed limped out for Game 7. He became a sports writer because the reporter that was supposed to cover the University of Delaware basketball team decided to instead play one more season of college lacrosse and has never looked back.
Feigen, who has won APSE, APME and United States Basketball Writers Association awards from El Campo to Houston, came to Texas in 1981 to cover the Rice Birds, was Sports Editor in Garland before moving to Dallas to cover everything from the final hurrah of the Southwest Conference to SMU after the death penalty.
After joining the Houston Chronicle in 1990, Feigen has covered the demise of the SWC, the rise of the Big 12 and the Rockets at their championship best.
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