James Harden’s Good Deed is Wrongly Being Criticized

James Harden has provided further proof that people will stick to their opinions they’ve formed, no matter what you do to prove them wrong. Here’s how his latest good deed has gotten misconstrued and misinterpreted.

By now, hopefully you’ve seen the video of James Harden in the Bahamas helping several families who have fallen on hard times financially. If you haven’t seen it, here it is courtesy of Alykhan Bijani of the Athletic.

James Harden and his friends were riding around in the Bahamas and were giving cash to people and children, including $10K to this mother and her family. (Via https://t.co/v7U1evs6l8) pic.twitter.com/XmFSB0a1xk

— Alykhan Bijani (@Rockets_Insider) August 10, 2019

Believe it or not, people have actually had negative things to say about this, which shows how Harden’s deed has totally been wrongly viewed.

James Harden is one of 4 players in the NBA on a super max contract, along with Stephen Curry, John Wall and Russell Westbrook being the others. Obviously Harden is beyond the point of being financially secured. But Harden has never been a “look at me” guy with his money, and frankly Harden (and any other athlete) can do whatever they please with their finances as its hard-earned and deserved. This is especially true for Harden, as he doesn’t possess freakishly natural athleticism.

But Harden decided to bless several presumably poverty-stricken individuals in the Bahamas, despite not even fully knowing these people’s situations. The video shows Harden passing out $100 bills and even giving a lady $10,000 without even fully knowing her life story or what happened to cause her to be in this financial state. Yet people are still criticizing an overall good deed that not everyone would do, even if they had the wealth.

I’ve read and seen the narrative that “he wouldn’t have recorded this if he really was genuinely wanting to help her” which just shows how people have made up their minds on what they will think about Harden. For starters, he wasn’t the one who actually posted this video. But even if he was, the fact still remains that he gave $10,000 of his own money to help someone he didn’t even know. Many think someone in his camp was the one who recorded the video for Harden, but we also can’t prove that. Even if that were the case, there would be no proof that Harden made the request for this person to post this.

If you think Harden planned to do this to somehow show he’s a good person, you are wrong on so many levels. For one, it’s not like he knew he was going to see this person or hear her story when he decided to make this trip through that area. On top of that, James Harden has never been a “look at me” kind of person so why would he start now all of a sudden on this Bahamas trip?

In addition, if you watch closely in the video, even several people who weren’t with Harden pulled their phones out upon realization that Harden was in front of them. So either way it would seem like Harden would have gotten recorded whether he wanted to or not.

But again we also have to remember the other things Harden does that DON’T get talked about, such as the James Harden Foundation which gives out scholarships, takes kids on Christmas shopping sprees, and even provides internships to high school upper-classmen. This is the biggest reason why the criticism is 100% off-base because he’s been doing these types of things. The fact that we’ve not been hearing about it is further proof that Harden is genuinely a upstanding citizen. If he was somehow doing this Bahamas deed for attention, I would think we would all constantly be hearing about the other things he and his foundation are frequently doing.

It reminds me of the criticism LeBron James faced when opening up his own charter school. It just confirms the fact that people have their own pre-conceived notions of an athlete so no matter what good deeds they do, they will always either get unnoticed or somehow get twisted negatively.

Kudos to James Harden for being the MVP in society and making a difference in people’s lives!