James Harden is a tremendous basketball player, to the point where he would have been a completely defensible choice as the 2016-2017 NBA MVP. Beyond that, he is also extremely wealthy after signing a massive contract extension with the Houston Rockets that will pay him more than $220 million combined over the next six seasons.
The wealth part of the equation is now popping up a bit in the off-court world of the NBA, as Joe Budden recently opined on his podcast that Harden has, well, spent some real money in a local Houston strip club. In fact, Budden’s podcast “broke the news” that the All-NBA guard has a jersey banner hanging in the establishment.
Budden’s podcast mate, Mal, said the following on the show:
“James has his jersey like hanging from the top. They was doing that because they said James has been going in there spending like [a lot of money], you know what I mean? So they gave him his own jersey hanging from the rafters of the strip club.”
The good folks at Complex Sports then took that tidbit of info, performed some high-end research and unearthed evidence that, in fact, the banner is not a new creation but one that has existed for several years.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Vyne8wt4IW/
Regardless of when the banner was raised and the premise behind the decision to lift it, there is a comedic element to this. Harden has earned a reputation for living the dream off the court, and in the recent past, he became a meme for a reaction to a Nicki Minaj performance at the inaugural NBA awards show. As we saw this season, though, none of that matters when he plays (extremely) well and, for the most part, this doesn’t either. If Harden struggles in the immediate future after his epic playoff meltdown, however, it is a safe bet that someone will use this against him in a public forum.
