In what might be the biggest deal before Thursday's NBA trade deadline, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the LA Clippers agreed Tuesday to swap point guards Darius Garland and James Harden in a one-for-one deal that also sends a 2026 second-round pick to the Clips, per ESPN's Shams Charania.
Both teams are hoping this trade of 2025 All-Stars with nearly identical salaries will produce better results during disappointing campaigns. The Cavaliers are battling for positioning in the middle of the Eastern Conference playoff race after finishing atop the standings a season ago, while the Clippers' recent hot streak has lifted them only into the play-in tournament after a dreadful start.
Let's break down the implications of Cleveland and Los Angeles exchanging point guards and what it means for the rest of the 2025-26 season and beyond.
Grades
What this deal means for the Cavaliers: The more I think about it, the more I like Cleveland adding Harden to jolt a team that ranks eighth in offensive rating this season after leading the league in 2024-25 with 64 wins.
Garland's toe injuries have been a key factor in that decline. He has been dealing with toe issues since April, and offseason surgery hasn't solved them. Garland suffered a bruise to his troublesome left toe shortly after returning in November, and he is now sidelined by a big toe sprain on the right foot.
When he has been available, Garland, 26, is shooting just 36% on 3s, down from 40% a season ago. His usage rate has declined too, while Garland's steal rate would be the lowest since his rookie season. Those struggles are reflected in team performance. The Cavaliers have been outscored by 3.0 points per 100 possessions with Garland on the court, according to NBA Advanced Stats, which is the worst of any player on the team who has logged more than 500 minutes.
To stay afloat, Cleveland has relied heavily on Donovan Mitchell, who is averaging 33.9 minutes per game and has his highest usage rate since playing for the Utah Jazz. An extended absence for Mitchell could be devastating for the Cavaliers, who are two games back of second place in the East but only three games from falling into the play-in tournament.
Beyond that, Cleveland would ideally like to lighten Mitchell's load the rest of the way. He dealt with a calf strain and an ankle sprain during last season's playoffs, shooting just 24.5% from 3-point range during the Cavaliers' conference semifinals upset loss to the Indiana Pacers.
Enter Harden, who is still playing at an All-Star level at age 36. He ranks 11th in my wins above replacement player (WARP) metric this season, tops among players who weren't selected for the All-Star Game now that former Clippers teammate Kawhi Leonard was picked Tuesday as an injury replacement. Harden had played 44 of a possible 47 games before sitting out the past two due to personal reasons, and he is averaging 35.4 minutes per game.
Yes, Harden and Mitchell, 29, both like to have the ball in their hands. However, I think Cleveland coach Kenny Atkinson can draw on Harden's past experiences to keep both players healthy and fresh.
When Harden played with Chris Paul for the Rockets, getting within a game of the 2018 NBA Finals, Houston coach Mike D'Antoni strictly staggered their minutes to keep one on the floor whenever the score was competitive. Harden and Paul played together about 20 minutes per game, giving Harden 15 or so minutes per game as the lone playmaker and Paul around 12 minutes.
The current playing time for Harden and Mitchell translates to a similar stagger, so we're talking about less than half the game they'll likely be playing together. When that's the case, I think Brooklyn Nets-era Harden should be the model.
Playing alongside Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, Harden finished 28% of the Nets' plays with a shot, a trip to the free throw line or a turnover -- similar to Garland's 27% usage rate last season -- but averaged 10-plus assists per 36 minutes. Given Mitchell's history of playing off the ball alongside true point guards and the finishing ability of bigs Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley out of pick-and-rolls, Harden should be able to do the same with the Cavaliers.
Defensively, the 6-foot-5 Harden's size provides more options for hiding than the undersized backcourt of the 6-foot-1 Garland and the 6-foot-2 Mitchell did. Given Mobley's defensive versatility, it's possible Harden could end up checking power forwards at times, taking advantage of his uncanny ability as a post defender.
Certainly, I understand the concern about adding Harden to a team with NBA Finals aspirations given his track record of playoff underperformance. Still, this isn't breaking up a Cleveland team that was rolling like last season. The most likely outcome for the Cavaliers barring a trade was a loss within the first two rounds of the playoffs -- the same as the previous three postseasons.
Nobody knows Garland's health better than Cleveland, and if the Cavaliers were convinced he wasn't likely to return to last season's All-Star level of play regularly, moving on now made sense.
Harden was the best player whom Cleveland could likely acquire in a one-for-one swap. The Cavs will have to navigate Harden's player option for 2026-27, but they'll surely be happy to pay up if they reach the conference finals for the first time since LeBron James' departure in 2018.
What this deal means for the Clippers: a drastic change of course from their current path, which was built around contending now while keeping cap space available for the star-studded crop of potential 2027 free agents -- a group that includes Mitchell.
From that standpoint, trading Harden would have made more sense in December, when the Clippers were as many as 15 games below .500. They subsequently ripped off 16 wins in a 19-game stretch to get back in the play-in spot conversation in the Western Conference and suggest they might be capable of a playoff upset.
Nonetheless, I can understand the Clippers pulling the plug on their win-now strategy. Projections using ESPN's Basketball Power Index gave them just a 5% chance of reaching the top six and ducking not only the play-in tournament but also any chance of a first-round matchup against the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder. The Clippers would have to climb to at least eighth in the standings to have a chance at avoiding the Thunder in the first round, and the BPI has that happening less than 40% of the time.
More surprising is the Clippers' willingness to take on Garland's contract, which runs through 2027-28 at $44.9 million. Before this trade, starting center Ivica Zubac was the only Clippers player under a guaranteed contract beyond 2027, at a more manageable $21 million.
With Garland and Zubac on the books, the Clippers still have a path to max-level cap space in the summer of 2027, but they won't be able to offer two max players the chance to team up in L.A. without future moves.
It's certainly possible that Garland is back to playing at a star level by then. We've seen him bounce back from a down season before. Garland's performance to date is eerily similar to that of 2023-24, when his mouth was wired shut for a month following a jaw fracture. Back then, Cleveland resisted calls to break up the Garland-Mitchell backcourt, and Garland responded with the best season of his career in 2024-25. As the lower-spending team in this trade -- an unfamiliar position -- the Clippers don't face the same urgency to win now as the Cavaliers.
If Garland returns to the level he played at last season, this deal could be a huge win for the Clippers. They're swapping a 36-year-old who was in pursuit of a new contract -- surely the reasoning behind the willingness of the Clippers and Harden to work together on finding a trade -- for a player who is more than a decade younger. In the Dunc'd On Daily Duncs newsletter, Dan Feldman couldn't find a historical analogue where two past All-Stars so different in age were traded primarily for each other.
Getting younger could be especially important if the NBA strips multiple draft picks from the Clippers as punishment for possible salary cap circumvention relating to the league's investigation of Leonard's sponsorship deal with Aspiration. We've seen this season how important the energy provided by late-second-round picks Jordan Miller and Kobe Sanders has been to the Clippers' turnaround.
The Clippers' pursuit of 2027 cap space also ran counter to recent NBA trades. Stars have been more likely to change teams via trade-and-sign extensions than hit free agency since the Clippers signed Leonard in the summer of 2019, which is ancient history in front office terms. If Giannis Antetokounmpo and other stars find new homes this summer, the Clippers might want to forgo hoarding cap space either way.
My biggest concern is ultimately that Garland's toe problems might prove more difficult to shake than a fluke injury to his jaw. Given his small stature, any decline in Garland's quickness would be challenging to overcome. Consider the upcoming Clippers medical exam one of the highest-stakes physicals in recent NBA memory.
