With the NBA Trade Deadline clear in the rear-view mirror, there has been enough time to reflect on the moves made by various teams around the league as they get closer to the playoffs. While some teams made only a single move, others made a few more, including the Cleveland Cavaliers, who were part of one of the higher-profile trades.
In the days leading up to the deadline, the Cavaliers sent away franchise cornerstone Darius Garland and a second-round pick to the Los Angeles Clippers for James Harden, elevating their backcourt in a swift manner.
This move caught the eye of those all around the association, including current Los Angeles Laker and former Cavalier Lebron James, who likes the move for the 11-time All-Star, feeling that it’s just what the team has been looking for.
“It felt like they needed another playmaker, someone that’s been there, kind of been in this situation before,” James explained on a recent episode of the *Mind The Game*podcast. “They added James [Harden], like you said, perennial All-Star, who is still putting up All-Star numbers, gives Donovan Mitchell another ballhandler guy who can make shots late in the game.”
To James’ point, Harden is having yet another productive year, averaging 19.3 points and 8.7 assists per game, while converting 45.5 percent of his shots from the field and shooting 42.1 percent from beyond the arc.
This wasn’t the only move that Cleveland was a part of at the deadline, as prior to the Harden acquisition, they made moves to pick up the likes of Keon Ellis and Dennis Schroder from the Sacramento Kings, adding even more depth to their backcourt. Given that James has played against Ellis several times during his tenure in the City of Angels, where he was a teammate of Schroder, he commended the Cavaliers’ earlier pickups.
“Those pickups that they got from Sac [Sacramento], Schroder, a former teammate of mine, you know that’s going to compete every single night, and Keon Ellis, a guy who is going to compete, make shots,” James stated. “Those guys are going to be really good for that team, especially in the East where there’s a lot of like bulk… You’ve got to have some dogs in there, so I think they added a lot.”
All of these pickups prime Cleveland for quite the postseason push, leaving the All-Star break sitting firmly in the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference, two games above the fifth-seeded Toronto Raptors, and one game down from the third-seeded New York Knicks.
2026 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.