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By 3:01 p.m. ET today, James Harden may or may not be a Net.
At long last, the NBA’s trade deadline will provide an answer to the biggest question that has been looming over Brooklyn, Philadelphia and perhaps the rest of the league for about two weeks: Would the Nets actually trade Harden to the 76ers for a package centered around Ben Simmons? There have been conflicting reports on whether or not the Nets would even listen to offers for one-third of their Big 3 — including coach Steve Nash insisting on Sunday that the Nets were not trading Harden — but the smoke only continued to get thicker on Wednesday.
ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reported that the teams were in the “deal zone” and that Harden “is screaming in every way he possibly can, ‘I don’t want to be here, get me out of here.’” On the same Wednesday episode of the network’s “Greeny” radio show, however, fellow ESPN insider Adrian Wojnarowski struck a different tone, reporting that “right now, there’s no negotiation going on between Philadelphia and Brooklyn.”


