The Cleveland Cavaliers are on a whole new level this season.
The Cavaliers are likely to enter the playoffs as the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed. They currently hold a five-game lead over the defending champion Boston Celtics and are the first team in the East to reach 60 wins this season.
Cleveland has taken the leap from being a second-tier team in the Eastern Conference — they had 48 wins last season — into being arguably the team to beat in the East. That’s a pretty big deal considering how good the Celtics remain as they look to repeat as NBA champs.
A major reason for that growth has been the play of All-Star guard Darius Garland. The 25-year-old just clinched his second All-Star bid this season with averages of 20.6 points and 6.7 assists per game while posting a career-high 47.2% from the field and 56.2% effective field goal percentage.
Garland attributes the team’s growth from a good team into an elite one due to their “camaraderie.” It is the third consecutive season that the quartet of Garland, Donovan Mitchell, Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley have teamed up together.
”I think our camaraderie is just really taking us over the top right now,” Garland told Basketball Insiders in an exclusive interview. “We’ve been around each other for about two-to-three years now, so we have some years under our belt. We’re really familiar with each other on and off the floor, which makes it a lot easier, especially because we bond off the floor so much.”
While Mitchell was already an established All-Star guard prior to his arrival as a member of the Utah Jazz, Mobley has developed into one of the top big men this season, clinching his first All-Star bid.
Meanwhile, the 6-foot-11 Allen is leading the NBA with a .710% field goal percentage and is averaging 10.0 rebounds per game.
The Cavaliers have a core that matches up with the very best of the NBA, with a league-high three players representing the team in the All-Star Game this season.
“The camaraderie is definitely a big piece of our growth,” says Garland. “Everybody’s just improving over the years. You see Evan’s evolution and his progress over the years. Me and Donovan being a dynamic duo in the backcourt, and then Jarrett and Evan being the twin towers down low in the front court.”
Darius Garland: “Our Depth Is Insane”
While much of the attention is focused on the Cavaliers’ core group of players, they also feature one of the deepest rosters in the NBA. Garland refers to shooting guard Ty Jerome as a potential Sixth Man of the Year winner and gives major props to Cleveland for acquiring De’Andre Hunter at the trade deadline.
Hunter had been averaging 19.0 per game with the Atlanta Hawks prior to the trade and is averaging 13.8 points per game since arriving in Cleveland.
Both Jerome and Hunter were teammates in college at the University of Virginia.
“We just have so much, and our depth is insane as well,” says Garland. “We can really go 15 deep if we really needed to. Ty Jerome probably playing the best of his career, hopefully Sixth Man of the Year.
“Adding DeAndre Hunter, one of his best friends at the trade deadline really puts us over the top and gives us a long defender that can really shoot the ball and really create for himself,” Garland continues to say. “It really helps us a lot. Those are a couple things that I really think that’s going to take us over the top.”
The sixth-year guard says he knew the Cavaliers would be “pretty good” and “better” than they were last year. Outside of the core growing up together after two previous playoff runs, bringing in veteran coach Kenny Atkinson — he previously coached the Brooklyn Nets — has also helped bring them to an elite level.
“I thought we were going to be pretty good,” says Garland. “I thought we were definitely going to be better than we were last year, especially since we didn’t play a lot of games together last year. A lot of people were in and out the lineup with injuries and other personal reasons. I knew this year we were going to come in hands-on and really ready to go from the jump and that’s what we did.”
Garland also attributes being “locked in” and the addition of the 57-year-old head coach as reasons for why the Cavaliers have emerged as not only the team to beat in the East, but the potential team to beat in the NBA Finals.
“I think that’s what started this 15-0 at the beginning of the season,” says Garland. “We were just super locked in in training camp and we were all connected on all cylinders. We knew what we had to improve on from last year and we were just ready to go. Kenny and his new staff was pretty eager to have us and ready for us to just learn their system and try to figure out what we really liked in our system. We just hit the ground running.”
