The same condition that prevented the Houston Rockets from winning a championship when James "Hardwired" Harden plied his trade in that market is the same condition that will prevent the Philadelphia 76ers from winning a championship as long as James Harden is an employee.
And what is that condition? In a word: Harmonics.
Some explanation is due of what it means to be Hardwired as that term relates to James Harden's inability to contribute towards winning a championship, as well as how Harmonics relates to the NBA.
First. James "Hardwired" Harden is not wired to win team championships, any more than your refrigerator is wired to operate off the same wattage as your computer screen. Harden is hardwired to succeed and be recognized as an individual, and as an individual only. If that means the remainder of the team has some degree of success, that's fine with him. If it means they remain or become mediocre underachievers, that, too, is fine with him. When you plug a hardwired scoring machine into an existing power system, it short-circuits a team's ability to function in a way that will result in a championship as long as the mismatched component remains in the power grid. More on that later.
Second. In order to maintain the high-level of charge that James Hardwired needs to produce a prolific number of points along with the high level of self- and public-adulation that he requires, he must suck the power out of other parts of the group, which leaves the remainder of team under-powered and without what is called "balanced harmonics" in the world of electrical/electronic power. In a building's power grid, the result of poor harmonics is the perpetual imbalance and inefficiency for the power power system. On a basketball team, well, you get the picture.
HARMONICS
Without getting into a detailed technical description of "harmonics" let's just say that's it's a kind of "overload." In reality it's more complicated than that, so I am going to pick some words and phrases from here and there to develop a comparison that the average sports fan might understand.
"Symptoms of harmonics usually show up in the power distribution equipment that supports the non-linear loads." In short, this means that you see James Hardwired Harden dominating the ball and doing James Harden kind of stuff that is primarily good for him and only secondarily—even if that—good for the team.
"Each component of the power distribution system manifests the effects of harmonics a little differently, yet all are subject to damage and inefficient performance if not designed to handle electronic loads." Let's break this down. "Each component of the power distribution system. . ." is each team Hardwired has played for or ever will play for: Oklahoma City, Houston, Brooklyn. Philadelphia ". . .manifests the effects of harmonics a little differently" means that the harmful effects of Hardwired's personal effectiveness will harm each team differently, but there is no doubt the team will be harmed. James Hardwired's harmonics affected the Thunder in one way, the Rockets in another, and the Nets in yet another way, ".. yet all are subject to damage and inefficient performance if not designed to handle electronic loads." That means that neither James Hardwired's present team or his past teams have figured out how to handle the electronic load that is James Hardwired. As a result each team was diminished by his presence and could expect nothing more than consistently inefficient performance as long as he was on the court.
So, How Do You Solve the Harmonics Problem?
In the electrical/electronics world, you have to look at five components: Neutral Conductors, Circuit Breakers, Bus Bars, Electrical Panels and Transformers. On the basketball court you look at the Point Guard, Shooting Guard, Small Forward, Power Forward and Center. In both cases, in a building or on an NBA team, there is an existing power plant. Usually NBA teams will switch out one or more of their components if the harmonics are bad. Unfortunately, often they do too little thinking about the remaining components before bringing in a new "transformer." Little or no attempt is made to right-size the transformer in relation to all the other components.
James Hardwired is a transformative player. Nothing wrong with that, in and of itself. But Kevin Durant is also transformative. So is Kyrie Irving. Each is a transformer not just because of his capacity (skills), but because of the way he is programmed—because of his mental and character construction. If the Nets were a building-management group, they would (or should) look askance at a building manager or engineer who suggested bringing in a new transformer with a different power level and different electronics than their two existing transformers in an attempt to make the old circuits breakers and panels work efficiently with the mish-mash of new and old transformers.
The Nets have a harmonics problem. Removing one of the preexisting transformers (anti-vaxxer Kyrie Irving, for example) won't help, as we already observed. But neither will having him back in the line-up. Kyrie and Kevin are not the transformers that are sucking all the power out of the other components on the basketball floor. It's James Hardwired Harden. And if you think the solution to the bad harmonics in the Nets organization is simply to change Harden's wiring, good luck with that. You should have brought in the right kind of transformer to begin with. You should have asked Houston. You should have asked OKC. You did not. So much for the Nets' harmonics.
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