James Harden says Carmelo Anthony’s transition to Rockets will be ‘easy’

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James Harden
(Photo by: Scott Halleran/Getty Images)

The NBA’s Most Valuable Player in 2018, James Harden, says Carmelo Anthony’s transition to the Houston Rockets will be “easy.”

Anthony signed a one-year, $2.4 million deal with the Rockets. The veteran scorer averaged a career-low 16.2 points per game during the regular season with the Oklahoma City Thunder and shot only 40.4 percent from the field and 35.7 percent from beyond the arc.

Harden is excited to add Anthony to the squad despite what the naysayers say.

“We all see how it worked out (with Chris Paul). When you got two high-IQ guys who are unselfish and know the game of basketball, it’s easy,” Harden said in an interview with The Players’ Tribune. “Then, this year, coming off an MVP season, now you got to add Carmelo Anthony. It’s going to be easy. The transition is easy. When you got that many talented, high-IQ guys around who love to communicate and love to figure things out, the job is easy.”

Harden and the rest of his Rockets teammates will get together in the Bahamas during the first week of September for about a week to bond and play basketball before training camp begins. The Rockets players went to the Bahamas last year prior to the start of the 2017-18 season and went on to have the best regular season in franchise history.

Houston lost to the Golden State Warriors in seven games in the Western Conference Finals. The Rockets took a 3-2 series lead heading into Game 6, but Paul missed Games 6 and 7 with a hamstring injury and the team wasn’t able to close out the series without its All-Star floor general.

Harden says it’s important to build chemistry before the season starts and establish communication.

“The job gets hard when you don’t communicate,” he said. “That’s what it’s about. That’s where it’s misconstrued. You got guys that are, ‘Oh, how are they going to work?’ As long as we’re on the court and we communicate, things will be a breeze.”

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