Again, only time will tell. Everybody (and I mean EVERYBODY) was shitting on Memphis and Orlando for those trades. Popovich wanted the league to launch an inquiry into the Pau trade because it looked so ridiculous at the time, and Orlando gave up the best C in the league for leftovers from several other teams (one of which ended up being Vucevic).
This is pretty disingenuous comparison for a couple of reasons. For one, nobody disputed that the Magic and Grizzlies SHOULD trade Howard and Gasol respectively, they just took issue with what they got in return. On the other hand, the issue people have with the Harden trade was OKC trading him at all instead of keeping him.
Secondly, the Grizzlies had peaked as an 8 seed and pretty much gotten as far as they could with Pau before blowing it up. Dwight had asked the Magic to trade him and had no intention of resigning, so it was also in their best interest to blow it up. The Thunder were coming off a Finals appearance and had 3 of the top 15-20 players in the world on their team, all under 25 years of age. Those teams could afford to trade their franchise guy for bit pieces and guys that were a few years away, guys like Marc Gasol who they could wait on, because their whole franchise was a few years away. If Adams and Lamb take 2 years to develop into nice players, that's 2 years of KD/Westbrook's prime you just wasted. The Thunder did not need to blow it up. They did not need to panic or rush into a trade. Everyone could see this coming as soon as they gave Perkins and Ibaka the money they did, so Presti should have seen it too. He essentially chose Ibaka over Harden, and I'm sorry, but nobody in their right mind would trade Serge Ibaka for James Harden, even if you include a couple of role players like Adams and Lamb. It was just a bad, lopsided trade done at the wrong time and was the culmination of Presti trying to be smarter than the room, and, worst of all, it never even needed to happen.