Does James Harden need to re-brand himself?

Rockets are leaders and trendsetters not followers. Why conform to be liked when it’ll have the opposite effect. Embrace the hate and villain role and people(even the morons) will eventually catch on when it becomes trendy to be a rockets fan.

He just needs to win. Being genuine and winning beats being a poser like Giannis any day. If not then humanity is in for some dark times.

 

Yes, he needs to win a championship

 

That doesn't even make sense. Just because a company employs mostly african americans doesn't mean it can't still be racist. What type of whitewashing are you believing? I mean, we are talking about a league where highly skilled African American millionaires make less skilled old white guys billionaires...and let's not forget Donald Sterling was openly racist and was only forced out of the league(finally) just over 5 years ago. Even the Steph example you gave is a good example of what I'm talking about. How is a story about a wealthy kid growing up with every privilege afforded to him somehow more compelling than guys like Lebron who came from a broken home and had serious adversity to overcome to not end up a victim of the ghetto - let alone the greatest athlete of his generation? You can choose to keep your head in the sand about it because maybe that's more comfortable to you, but I can assure you race and class are very relevant data points to how the league is covered and how the league is marketed.

 

Harden needs to just be himself... I think he has been trying too hard to brand and it's just not his strength. People who hate on him usually cry about fouls... OK? Tell your teams to play defense instead of fouling.... they are intentionally doing it.

 

Fix your problems first.

 

No, people need to change their views of Harden. He is who he is and I'm fine with that.

 

The only way to rebrand himself at this point in his career is to shave his beard, settle down and sign with Nike.

 

I'll bite. There's always been an argument that he's not the best player in the NBA, there's never been an argument that he's not the most innovative. That's been his brand to me, possibly the most creative scorer in league history finding imbalances, year after year and inventing moves to exploit them. I think his brain is his best attribute, not his step back 3, and that's what he needs to go to.

 

"Rebrand" is code name for shave. Indeed Harden does need to shave or rebrand as the question is phrased!