I think this points to what everybody had speculated. James took a pay cut with the hush hush promise of a bigger deal after the season. James probably asked for that player option thinking he could just leave, but there aren't a lot of teams lining up to give Harden a 4 year $200m deal. Now he's stuck, and Morey is stuck.
If they can find evidence of that, Morey should be banned for life and Harden should be banned for multiple years (only because they probably can't actually ban him for life with the CBA).
I sincerely give zero fucks about teams making promises about future deals in other sports, but the way the NBA is set up with the entire roster construction being about gaming ways to go over the cap, future promises are straight up cheating.