The defense of Houston Rockets guard James Harden has been a hot issue in basketball circles. That fire was fueled when the Denver Nuggets' Ty Lawson posted a photo of Harden as the defensive coordinator of the Dallas Cowboys after the team struggled against his Washington Redskins.
Most assumed the post was a shot at Harden because that's how it came off. But Lawson refuted that in a conversation with the Denver Post. “It was just the Cowboys,” Lawson explained. “I wasn’t looking at James Harden.”
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But Lawson had to be aware that Harden's likeness was on the photo, and, as a Redskins fan, the semblance shouldn't have been lost on him. But as Lawson explained, it appears it was.
“I was just looking at James Harden, the way his face was, the way he was staring," Lawson said. "It looked like ‘I’m pissed because the defense is terrible.’ So I go to the View House to watch the Broncos game and I’m getting like 1,000, 2,000 retweets and people talking trash. And I’m like ‘What did I post?’ So I looked at it again. And people were saying that James is the worst defender, and that’s when I was like ‘Ohhh, what did I do?’ But it was at the point of no return. I couldn’t have been like, delete; everybody would have thought I was soft. So I just had to ride it out.”
Harden was with USA Basketball at the time of Lawson's post and they have yet to talk about it. Lawson expects to have some fun with it in the future, though.
“I haven’t heard from him yet, but I know he definitely saw it,” Lawson said. “I guarantee that Houston game is going to have a lot of fire.”