The Blazers offered him the incentive - and we're supposed to criticize him for responding to it? That just doesn't make sense.
The whole point of incentives is that they change behavior. If the Blazers didn't want that to happen, and/or didn't understand that nearly any incentive contract might create a conflict of interest between the two parties, they shouldn't have offered the deal.
Not that they should be upset. He shot 18% and 28% on 3s in the previous two years, on lower volume. It looks like the deal achieved what they wanted, in terms of overall performance for the year.
And as SL points out, if he was in a slump he *shouldn't* have been taking those shots, even from the team's perspective.
There's an implicit responsibility to help your team to the best of your ability.
Let's say IT had a clause in his contract rewarding him for 90% FT%. He's at 90.1% with 5 games left.
Are you cool with him refusing to drive to the basket, and immediately getting rid of the ball in end of game intentional foul situations?
If he'd been shooting 65% from the line in his last 10 games? I don't think I could reasonably criticize him.
If his decisions had no material impact on the outcome of the game? Same.
If he did do this in a meaningful situation, then IT himself would suffer consequences, both in reputation and future contract dollars. I suspect those considerations would be dispositive - IT simply would not do what you're suggesting, for all kinds of reasons.
And, it appears, neither did Harkless. His coach and GM know about the contract. If he'd done something truly adverse from a team perspective, he'd suffer the consequences either now or in the future.
Players face conflicts between individual goals and winning all the time. But we recognize that. We didn't criticize Bird's teammates feeding him the ball to get 60, because it probably didn't MATTER (though even there, that game wasn't a blowout). And until I hear something more conclusive about what Harkless did, I'm reserving judgment, because on the face of it this falls into the same category.