James Harden takes a Tom Brady like $14 million sacrifice to spur his 76ers to greater heights in year two

James Harden is all-in for his second year with the 76ers, and in his first offseason with the team, he approached it like Tom Brady.

Of course, taking a Tom Brady like mentality in any form is a great thing. Brady is a seven time Super Bowl champion, and he owns most of the passing records in NFL history.

Simply put, he’s the greatest quarterback ever. Those are high standards to match, but if you try to approach the game like Tom Brady, there’s a good chance you’ll learn something along the way and benefit both yourself and your team.

Harden is trying to adopt this mentality. He knows his 76ers have a lot to work on if they want to win a title, and the first thing he did to help his team was take a $15 million pay cut.

Harden opted out of his $47 million player option to sign a two-year, $68.8 million deal. In his first year, Harden will earn $33 million in his first year, and he’ll have a $35 million player option for the 2023-24 season.

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James Harden takes a pay cut that Tom Brady has made a habit of doing

Harden took a page out of the Brady playbook with this pay cut. Brady has surprisingly been one of the most underpaid players in the league despite being the greatest quarterback in NFL history.

While quarterbacks around him signed massive deals, Brady stayed pat. He knew making more money wouldn’t do his team any good, and he routinely gave his team the leverage they needed to sign better players and build a better overall team.

Consider this, Brady’s cap hit in 2022 was $11.8 million. That’s lower than guys like Matt Ryan, Sam Darnold, Carson Wentz, and Jared Goff.

In New England, Brady reportedly left somewhere between $60-$100 million on the table to help make his team better. He took a similar pay cut with Tampa Bay too. He signed a two-year, $50 million deal in 2020 with the Bucs, and after winning a Super Bowl, he could have leveraged a bigger deal.

Instead, he took another $25 million in 2022 and converted part of his salary to bonuses to help his team re-sign whoever they needed to.

Harden could see a similar impact in Philadelphia. The Sixers already signed P.J. Tucker away from fellow Eastern Conference contenders Miami Heat, for three years and $33 million. Philly also added Danuel House for two years, $8.5 million. Harden’s sacrifice could vault the 76ers into a much better place.

They struggled for depth after Embiid went down with injuries last year, and now, they have a lot more. Harden acknowledged this fact too.

“I think we have a much deeper team,” Harden told Yahoo Sports. “That’s something we wanted to address. If you look at our team now, we’re positioned to go a lot further. I like how we stack up with the rest of the top teams.”

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