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Clippers Re-Sign James Harden to Two-Year Deal
Shams Charania of ESPN just broke the biggest expected offseason news for the Clippers, which was James Harden opting out of his $36.3M player option for next season and re-signing with the team. The only question was what size contract Harden would receive, and the answer is a 2 year, $81.5M deal with the second year a partially guaranteed player option.
This deal makes a ton of sense for both sides. Harden got a raise of over $4M for next season and gets at least a partial security blanket for the following season as a reward for his mostly excellent 2025 campaign. The Clippers keep the floor-raising Harden for another season with Kawhi Leonard while giving them the option of moving on from Harden next summer or of having a clean cap sheet in the summer of 2027, when Harden and Leonard’s deals will expire. Considering how good Harden was in the 2025 season, this deal seems like a fair upgrade while enabling the Clippers to have some flexibility with team building. I predicted a 2/85 deal back in my Harden exit interview, so this is even more team friendly than I thought.
Harden will slot back in as the Clippers’ starting point guard, with Leonard locked in as a starting forward and Ivica Zubac as the lead center. That means the rest of free agency will be figuring out if the Clippers make any notable changes to the other two starting spots, whether bringing in a starting guard to replace Norm Powell or Kris Dunn, or a larger forward to enable Kawhi to slide back from power forward to small forward.
Having Harden on the team also just about guarantees that there won’t be a Kawhi trade (not really rumored, but at least mentioned by names as large as the Ringer’s Zach Lowe). This deal aligning Harden with Kawhi sure seems to indicate that the Clippers will be “going for it” to some extent in 2026 with this version of the team. The question is how much of the surrounding roster shifts around them.
Considering how skeptical I was of the Harden trade all the way back in fall 2023, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the Harden experience as a Clipper. Yes, there have been ups and downs, with a few rough playoff games. But the Clippers would not have sniffed the 2025 playoffs without Harden, and he’s mostly been enjoyable to watch play basketball.
The first major step of the Clippers’ 2025 offseason has locked into place. Let’s see where the Clips go from here.