The question of loyalty has been a hot-button topic in the NBA this season. It began with the Clippers shocking the league by cutting Chris Paul in the middle of the night, effectively ending his storied career without a sendoff befitting a player of his accomplishments.
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With the trade deadline in the not-so-distant past, loyalty again became top of mind, especially when James Harden was traded from the Clippers to the Cavs. Reports at the time painted the picture that Harden had requested a change of scenery, but being as this involved the Clippers, too, who can even say.
Shortly after Harden arrived in Cleveland, he made some comments that still have fans divided.
“The whole quote-unquote loyalty thing, I think it’s overrated,” he said. “I think this is a business at the end of the day, and there’s a lot of money involved, and a lot of decisions that has to be made, you know?”
He then went on to say that he sees it from both sides, that front offices have the right to move on from a player, and the player has a right to do what’s best for himself.
The Cavs are 3-0 since Harden arrived, and despite currently being the 4-seed in the East, they’ve become the betting favorites to make it to the Finals. That’s a bit of a surprise considering how great the Pistons have been all year. At 40-13, they’re 5.5 games clear of the next closest team in the conference, and 7 games ahead of the Cavs.
Pistons coach JB Bickerstaff was a guest on the most recent episode of Road Trippin’, and he was asked about Harden’s loyalty comments. “I understand what he’s saying,” Bickerstaff said.
“This is, and we’ve all been treated this way at some point of time in our career, it’s been a transaction, where people make the decisions that they think are best for them. You don’t want to breed an environment where people feel that in your own building, but people are gonna make cold-hearted decisions in this business, so I get what he’s saying,” he added.
Bickerstaff has a unique perspective on loyalty, especially as it relates to Harden’s new team. He was fired by the Cavs after taking them to the conference semis in 2024.
Bickerstaff took over a team that was just 19-26 the season before he arrived, then he improved their win total to 22, 44 and 51 in his first three seasons, before taking them on their deepest playoff run since LeBron James was in town. That evidently wasn’t good enough for the Cavs, and so they fired him and hired Kenny Atkinson instead.
Atkinson led them to 64 wins last year, the second-best total in the league, but again Cleveland was ousted short of the conference finals. Bickerstaff, meanwhile, landed with the Pistons and immediately established his coaching bona fides by leading a historic jump from 14 wins the season before he arrived to 44 wins and a playoff appearance in his first year.
Bickerstaff understands the flimsiness of loyalty in the league as well as anybody, not only from his own coaching experience, but because he watched his dad Bernie bounce around the league as the head coach for five different teams and an assistant for several others.
The NBA is a ‘what have you done for me lately’ business, and it isn’t always fair. The Cavs thought they could do better than Bickerstaff, and so they sent him packing. Harden thought he could find a better situation than the Clippers, and so he allegedly forced his way out.
It will be interesting if these two men meet in the playoffs, because whoever loses that matchup may again be confronted with the fact that in this league, loyalty is fleeting.
