Darius Garland and the Cavs Are Coming Up Clutch
Led by Garland and Donovan Mitchell, the Cavs’ deep offensive roster is clicking, and the rest of the NBA should be on noticeDarius Garland and the Cavs Are Coming Up Clutch
Led by Garland and Donovan Mitchell, the Cavs’ deep offensive roster is clicking, and the rest of the NBA should be on notice
It was as if Darius Garland were a kid again, counting down seconds on the shot clock.
3 …
He’d dribble on the concrete court outside of his home in Gary, Indiana, picturing this moment: zooming past a defender to set up the game-winning shot.
2 …
He’d launch a buzzer-beater from God knows how far, well beyond the 3-point line his mother, Felicia, painted on the driveway.
1 …
“Kobe!” Garland would scream in those moments, leaving a silky follow-through in the air for emphasis, as Bryant often did, as if to say: In case you didn’t know, I am that dude. Other times, young Garland would yell: “Derrick Rose!” or “Dame Time!”
“You work for those big-time moments,” Garland says.
On an icy February night in Detroit, facing the resurgent Pistons on the road in a chippy, back-and-forth game, Garland had a chance to play out that childhood dream. But he was no longer the Midwest boy just hoping to make the NBA. He was now the Cavaliers’ 25-year-old star point guard, a floor general playing the best basketball of his career for one of the NBA’s best teams. With five seconds to go, and the game knotted at 115, Garland pushed the ball up the floor, dodging not one, not two, but three Pistons defenders with a shifty crossover, swishing an improbable buzzer-beating game-winner from the Pistons logo.
The arena in Detroit fell silent as the Cavs escaped with a 118-115 victory. Garland’s teammates mobbed him as if they had just won a championship. “That’s what great players do,” Cleveland’s head coach, Kenny Atkinson, said afterward. “They make big plays.”
“He’s been incredible in the clutch,” Atkinson later said. “He’s been our big-play guy at the end of the game all year.”
The electricity of the moment in Detroit stuck with Garland as he returned to the team’s hotel that night. “Wow, that really just happened,” he said to himself, thinking about all it took to get here. He rebounded from a debilitating fractured jaw he suffered in December 2023, which sidelined him for two months. He had to have his jaw wired shut and was only able to sip protein shakes and blended meals through a straw that fit through a tiny hole at the corner of his mouth. It was terrifying when his doctors gave his family a pair of pliers in case he choked and they needed to cut his wires open.
He wasn’t sure then how his career—his life—would normally resume, but he returned to the court after missing just 19 games, in plenty of time for the Cavs’ postseason push. This season, he’s blossomed into a formidable one-two punch with Cavs star Donovan Mitchell, and he was a candidate to win the NBA’s Clutch Player of the Year award. But Garland says it wasn’t until his game-winner against the Pistons in February that he realized:
“Wow. I’m back.”
The Cavs are back, too. They’ve won more than 60 games for the first time since LeBron James anchored the franchise during the 2009-10 season. The current Cavs went on a surge after Garland’s Detroit buzzer-beater, winning 16 straight games thanks to a deep roster with a regular 12-man rotation. With a blistering 64-18 record heading into the postseason, Cleveland secured the East’s no. 1 seed, and it’s now a championship contender.
The Cavs offense exploded in a 121-100 win over the Heat in Game 1 of their Eastern Conference playoff series on Sunday. The offense was rolling thanks to contributions from all over the roster. Mitchell had 30 points, but Garland was electric, drilling five 3-pointers en route to 27 points and dishing out five assists. And Ty Jerome, who scored 28 points in only 26 minutes off the bench in his first playoff game, was unstoppable. A variety of players shined—and that’s been the story all season.
Hopes are high. And yet, there was no reason to believe this Cavs team would have this kind of potential this quickly. The Cavs won 48 games last year and fired their head coach, J.B. Bickerstaff. Naturally, in preseason power rankings, The Athletic ranked the Cavs as the 12th-best team in the league. ESPN ranked them 10th, and NBA.com ranked them ninth. But even after their impressive regular season, Garland is aware that some hoops pundits underestimate the team’s chances of winning it all.
“It definitely motivates all of us,” Garland told The Ringer earlier this month. “We’ve been having doubters forever since we started making the playoffs a couple of years ago. When you think of Cleveland, you only think of LeBron James or Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. So just to have this group of guys and the depth that we have, … it’s not just one guy or two guys that’s really carrying the load.”
“I think that’s what make us so unique, that we can play 15 guys in a game, and everybody will have a big impact,” he continues. “That’s what makes us so different than any other team because we have so much talent and so much depth that we can really push to the end.”
The Cavs aren’t just deep; they’re unselfish. They play both sides of the ball hard. Everyone seems to be in lockstep. And part of the reason it’s all clicking now, the reason the Cavs have transformed into a contender, is Garland’s maturation as a leader. He and his team are finally peaking when it matters most.
The Cavs have been steadily rebuilding since drafting Garland at no. 5 in 2019. Things looked bleak; the team had won just 19 games the prior season—a far cry from the heights Cleveland had reached before. The franchise had made four straight trips to the NBA Finals from 2015 to 2018 during James’s second stint in Cleveland and beat the Warriors to win the championship in 2016, but the team didn’t qualify for the playoffs in Garland’s first three seasons. And in his first season, the team won just 19 games … again. But Garland would prove to be the first building block of the transformation. The Cavs would win 22 games in 2020-21 before doubling their win total the next year with Garland as the leading scorer. It was a positive sign of the team’s growth, proving that they were on the right track.
Finally, in 2023, the Cavs clinched a playoff berth for the first time since 2018. And last season, the Cavs managed to overcome myriad injuries to win 48 games and reach the Eastern Conference semifinals, where they lost to the eventual champion Celtics 4-1.
After an offseason in which Mitchell signed a three-year, $150.3 million contract extension—including a player option for the 2027-28 season—the 28-year-old six-time All-Star averaged 26.6 points in 2023-24. He managed 28.6 points this season, making him the most consistent scorer in franchise history over multiple seasons outside of James.
When the Cavs lost to Boston in the playoffs, there was a concern that the backcourt had hit its ceiling. There was some speculation about whether Garland might get traded and questions about whether a Mitchell-Garland backcourt would work in the long term. Would Mitchell overshadow Garland? Which guy would have the ball in his hands in critical moments? Could Cleveland win with two small guards? But the Cavs felt they could work together—and play off of each other—and kept their core roster intact. Instead, the Cavs bet that a new coach, a new voice, could make it all work.
And Atkinson has pulled off the seemingly unthinkable, turning the Cavs into championship contenders. The Cavs are finally healthy and devastating teams with their more egalitarian, free-flowing offense that takes advantage of that deep bench. The new playing style is clear: Atkinson’s team plays faster and shoots more 3s than Cleveland did last season. Garland called Atkinson a “new breath of fresh air.”
When the coach was hired in June 2024, he immediately flew to Tennessee to meet with Garland. “[Atkinson] said he sees so much in Darius, like Steph Curry,” Felicia recalls her son telling her about that first meeting. “Just size, athleticism, just the way he shoots the ball. And he just felt that he would be a good coach for him.”
Garland’s brother Desmond recalls Darius telling him about how the new coach wanted to do things differently in Cleveland to take pressure off the Cavs’ starting backcourt. From Desmond’s point of view, that meant: “We’re just going to let everybody collectively eat,” Desmond says. “Everybody does a certain role, and it’s going to help in the end, because in the playoffs, they won’t be all banged up.”
Before arriving in Cleveland, Atkinson had long admired Garland from afar, telling reporters in January that during his time as an assistant with the Warriors and Clippers, he found Garland to be a player who was “always so hard to game-plan for.”
The new offense Atkinson installed in Cleveland includes more cutting, more movement, and the result has been more offensive parity. Cleveland’s bench ranks no. 1 overall in 3-pointers, and they were a top-10 team in bench scoring, assists, and steals in the regular season. “We just got a variety of ways we can hurt you now,” says Jerome, the hero of Game 1 versus the Heat, who has been a consistent spark all season long, averaging career highs in points and assists. “The ball’s not in one person’s hands for 48 minutes, which has really made us dynamic and really hard to guard.”
Big man Evan Mobley has made remarkable strides on offense under Atkinson, which has allowed the Cavs’ two-big lineup (Mobley and veteran Jarrett Allen) to function more smoothly. Mobley is averaging a career high in points (18.5), showing he has more versatility offensively than in previous years. Jerome, Isaac Okoro, Max Strus, and new addition De’Andre Hunter, who was acquired at the trade deadline, have all been key to the Cavs’ second-half surge. Everyone sacrifices for the greater good. “It’s the next-man-up mentality,” says Garland, who made his second All-Star team this season.
Garland’s passion, joy, and lift-everybody-up-before-himself mentality have injected the offense with an instant boost. He recorded career-best averages of 20.6 points, 6.7 assists, 2.9 rebounds, and 1.2 steals a night during the regular season. In January, he dropped 40 points and nine assists in a win over Toronto and helped the Cavs get off to one of the best starts in league history. After that game, Atkinson called him a “top-five point guard.”
“It doesn’t surprise me because of the talent and the smarts and what a great passer he is and good decision-maker,” Atkinson said earlier in the season. “He’s got the shot. He’s got everything. He’s a complete, complete point guard. … From my point of view, coaching him for the first time, I’m blown away by his control of end-of-game situations. He’s got a great feel for the game, a great IQ.”
Garland has continued to find his groove alongside Mitchell—each proving to be equally capable of taking over games. “There were some talks about [Darius] possibly going somewhere else,” Felicia says, repeating the narrative that she heard many times: “[Darius] and Donovan couldn’t work together. And [Darius] was like, ‘Ma. It can work.’ The way Kenny Atkinson is playing them, it’s awesome. Because, I mean, so many people felt that it couldn’t work. He and Donovan are close.”
As lethal as Mitchell has been, dropping 41 in a crucial win at Boston back in February, it could be said that he, too, is sacrificing, averaging his third-lowest point total of his eight-year career. Garland, too, could probably average 25 points a night if he were on a different team, but he says he appreciates being part of something bigger than himself.
But it isn’t just talent that has propelled Cleveland to the top of the East; it’s connection. There’s a chemistry that players feel not just in games but in practice, too. “It’s real,” Jerome says. “The bond we have is real. You don’t find that often in the NBA.”
Garland says the biggest difference from last season is the team’s camaraderie: “Last year, a lot of guys was in and out the lineup, especially our starting five. … It wasn’t a lot of games that we played together just with our starting five. There was just a lot of mixing and matching with the lineups.”
Garland, Mitchell, Mobley, and Allen all missed time because of injuries. But now, with a healthy starting lineup, the relationships they’ve built over time are clear. Much of the Cavs core has been together for at least three seasons. They’re young but tested. They’ve been through gutting losses. They don’t take the little things for granted, such as having fun on plane rides and simply enjoying each other’s company. “It’s like a brotherhood, like a grown-man AAU team type of vibe,” Garland says. “It’s super cool just being with the guys that you like to be around with off the floor because that makes the bond even stronger on the floor.”
Garland gets as much joy from creating plays and putting his teammates in prime positions to score as he does from scoring himself. He’s always loved to pass, to be flashy, to be silky—sneaking through traffic to deliver a dime. “That’s how I grew up playing basketball,” Garland says. “Trying to make the right pass and create for others.”
“I feel like I can get by anybody in the league. I can get by my defender with ease, so somebody has to help,” he continues. “Just making a right play to my wide-open teammate, that’s the right play to do. I’m willing to share the wealth with others.”
Garland had the ball on the left side of the floor. It was December 14, 2023, against the Celtics. With a much taller Kristaps Porzingis guarding him, Garland came off a screen and gave the big man a quick hesitation move to drive past him to the hoop. But on his way, he collided with Porzingis, who nudged him backward. Garland instantly fell to the floor and covered his face, grimacing in pain. Was it his head? His nose? His mouth?
Blood dripped from his face. After being examined, he eventually went back in and tried to keep playing. As he tried to talk to his teammates while on defense, he realized he was struggling to open his mouth.
Watching from home, his mother wondered: Had he cut the inside of his mouth? Broken a tooth? But then she heard two words from the doctor the following day: “It’s broken.”
It’s?
“His jaw.”
He soon learned he’d have to have his jaw wired shut for it to heal. Garland remembers the pain of barely being able to speak during the first few weeks of his recovery. He’d have to talk through his teeth, and sometimes his cheeks would hurt trying to communicate, trying to flash the smile his teammates were used to seeing from him. “I’m like the vibe creator,” Garland says. He’s always in charge of the auxiliary cord. He finds something to joke around about, not just with his teammates but also with the coaches. “I like to keep practices very fun and light,” he says.
But with his jaw wired shut, he strained to hold his smile. Sometimes it hurt when teammates would call to check on him and he couldn’t respond in the way he wanted: “I would just sit there and smile because I couldn’t really say anything to them,” Garland says.
It was shocking and devastating, but Garland had suffered setbacks before. Up until college, everything had gone smoothly. He had been an electrifying, if undersized, guard prospect out of Brentwood Academy in Nashville, where he won four state championships and was named the state’s Mr. Basketball three times. He was obsessed with pushing himself, driving to Brentwood to work out at 6 a.m. before the team’s morning practice, his classes, and afternoon practices. He had offers from Duke and Kansas, among other big-time college programs, but chose to stay close to home and play at Vanderbilt. But just five games into his freshman season, he tore the meniscus in his left knee.
He kept believing that he would make it to the league, working his hardest in rehab after having successful surgery. His resilient mentality served him well as he was recovering from his jaw injury in the early months of 2024. His parents and brother Desmond kept him strong, reminding him of a family mantra: “This too shall pass.” Darius set his alarm clock to “Through the Wire” by Kanye West, a song inspired by West’s own jaw being wired shut after a car accident.
Perhaps the toughest part, Garland says, was not being able to eat regularly. Felicia had to blend his meals, including his favorites—spicy rigatoni pasta, macaroni and cheese, and even a Caesar salad—into a soup-like mixture, adding extra chicken broth for some modicum of flavor. At times it was miserable, drinking a slush of solid food. But he and his family did their best. When he came home for Thanksgiving while the Cavs were on the road, Felicia cooked her turkey, dressing, and green beans and blended it all up for him to sip out of a straw.
Darius lost somewhere from 15 to 20 pounds over about a month and a half, he says, by the time he returned to the court in late January. The Cavs won eight of the first nine games after his return and eventually clinched the no. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference. They won their first-round series against Orlando before falling in the conference semifinals to Boston. Garland averaged 16.8 points and led the team with 6.2 assists in the Celtics series. But it wasn’t enough to overcome the veteran Celtics squad and its suffocating defense. Bickerstaff was fired shortly thereafter, and the restart began—and it has accelerated much faster than anyone could have predicted.
The Cavs’ team-first mindset is working not just because the team changed coaches but because an ethos of teamwork has been built over time. In a league where transactions are quick and stars jump from team to team, the Cavs have shown the benefit of old-school patience with their roster and the development of younger players.
Because of the bond players have with one another, they say they feel comfortable calling each other out when the energy is down or when someone makes a mistake. You can often see veteran Tristan Thompson, whom Felicia affectionately calls Garland’s “bodyguard,” standing up on the bench, screaming, “You got to make that!” if someone misses a shot.
“It comes from a place of love,” Jerome says.
“We have high aspirations this year,” Jerome says, “and we know that everyone has good intentions with each other. We know nobody’s yelling to be an asshole on purpose, but we got to hold each other accountable to get to where [we] want to go.”
Garland has grown into a more vocal leader. “In my first year, I was super quiet and just was trying to learn the ropes,” he says. Being louder has allowed him to elevate the play—and the effort level—of his teammates: “To try to get more out of guys, … try to make them play a little bit harder for us, and also do my job on the floor by playing a lot harder, getting my teammates involved.”
But teammates like Jerome say it’s Garland’s humility—his ability to accept criticism, to allow his teammates to get on him, too—that makes them respect him even more. Toward the end of the regular season, Garland was in a bit of a shooting slump, but he didn’t sulk. He still did the little things, including encouraging his teammates, making sure not to lose his voice even though he was struggling. “That’s where I think star players and really good leaders separate themselves,” Jerome says. “A really good leader is someone that’s going to be a really good leader when things are going well for themselves or bad for themselves.”
He has kept his focus on the big picture. During a tough stretch during an eventual win at Utah, Garland reportedly told Atkinson in the huddle, “Coach, what about fun? Let’s enjoy this, man. Let’s have fun. Let’s compete hard.”
The mood shifted. “I said, ‘OK. Let’s have fun,’” Atkinson reportedly replied. “Put a smile on your face. We love this game.”
Remembering that lesson has been a constant for Garland. As the Cavs start their playoff push, Garland hasn’t forgotten how far he has come. His mother recalled him recently telling her, “The only thing I could do now is prove myself to myself.” And in quiet moments, he reflects on all that he has endured. Back in February, on the plane to the Bay Area for his first All-Star appearance, he realized that it had been a year since he was sidelined with his jaw injury, drinking his meals through a tiny straw.
He couldn’t believe how quickly things had changed in just one year.
“It’s a blessing to be back in this position with the individual stuff,” he says, “but with the team aspect of it, just being back in this position, being number one, going into the playoffs?” He pauses.
This is what he practiced for, all those nights as a child on the concrete. To be here, to have a shot clock winding down, reminding him: It’s his time.
