CLEVELAND, Ohio — The difference between good players and great ones often comes down to what happens when no one’s watching.
In a revealing episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast, host Ethan Sands and cleveland.com columnist Jimmy Watkins unpack Kyrie Irving’s surprising confession about the “bad habits” that developed during his early Cleveland years — and how the current Cavaliers regime is working to ensure Darius Garland doesn’t fall into the same traps.
Irving’s candid admission on his Twitch stream provided a rare glimpse into the invisible challenges young stars face on rebuilding teams.
As Sands quoted directly from Irving: “Being a young player, when you’re on a team that’s not winning a lot of games, there’s a lot of bad habits that form. And that’s what ended up happening to me. When I was very young. I had a lot of bad habits.”
This confession hits differently when considering that the Cavaliers’ coach Kenny Atkinson has been laser-focused on reforming Garland’s habits.
Sands explained, “For Darius, we’ve learned from Kenny Atkinson that he’s wanted him to work on his game from the habits perspective more than his actual game on the court. That means diet, that means training regimen in the gym.”
The parallel is striking.
Both players entered the league as high draft picks on rebuilding teams, both possessed dazzling offensive skills, and both faced the challenge of developing sustainable professional habits without the immediate pressure of championship expectations.
Watkins brilliantly articulated how these situations can create problematic patterns: “When you’re on a lottery bound team and you’re the star. And there’s not a ton of expectations on you. Like get buckets. That’s enough.”
This tunnel vision on scoring might work on a 25-win team, but it becomes exposed when championship expectations arrive.
The podcast discussion suggests that the sudden introduction of a superstar teammate — LeBron James for Kyrie, Mitchell for Garland — creates a sink-or-swim moment for these young guards.
What makes this conversation particularly fascinating is the acknowledgment of just how young these players are when faced with these challenges.
“Darius Garland was 23 years old when Donovan Mitchell showed up,” Watkins points out.
The podcast suggests that Garland may have a significant advantage over Irving in this area — the benefit of learning from history.
While Irving had to learn hard lessons about professional habits through trial and error (and ultimately championship success), Garland is receiving targeted guidance from Atkinson and seems to be embracing the process.
Sands notes that Garland’s “next step is on the defensive end of the floor” and emphasizes that many of the habit changes involve strength and conditioning to improve his defensive capabilities.
This behind-the-scenes focus on habits rather than just skills represents a maturation in how the organization develops young talent.
As Irving’s career has demonstrated — from Cleveland to Boston to Brooklyn to Dallas — talent alone isn’t enough. The habits formed early in a player’s career often determine their ultimate ceiling.
For Cavaliers fans, the hope is that Garland is absorbing these lessons faster than Irving did, potentially setting him up for a more consistent career trajectory with fewer detours along the way.
Here’s the podcast for this week:
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