Chase Down Podcast Live, presented by fubo: Cavaliers Trade for Harden!
The Cavaliers traded for James Harden! Justin and Carter break down the trade, say goodbye to Darius Garland and more!
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-chase-down-a-cleveland-cavaliers-pod/id605877206
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yN2y735hCOgSZOmd1nQb2
Please Note: The opinions expressed by The Chase Down podcast are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of the Cleveland Cavaliers or its Basketball Operations staff, parent company, or partners.
16 Comments
34 minutes til they get to harden for anyone else watching
"Harden not pleasant to watch"
Eh I think that's more applicable to y'all
I appreciate greatness personally
Excuses for the looser winner celebrate
This trade literally ruined my week at work. I was so excited to see Ellis and schoeder play too. But this sucks and for harden of all players we could of traded for IFF we had to trade him
Makes me sick we did this to make mitchell happy. Mitchell hasn’t made it any farther and actually has some real bad failures in the playoffs. I would have let Don walk at the end of this if that’s what he wanted to do.
We've seen what the breakneck speed, 5 out style has looked like in the 'offs and it hasn't yielded those desired results. In the playoffs, the game naturally slows down anyway and it becomes that much harder to score.
It's still Donovan's team, but Harden's style is better suited for the playoffs. Spida may need to be the one to make the big adjustment. Tbh, I'm sure he knows that and he's probably fine with it. Whatever it takes to get the win.
Anything less than a hard fought ECF is a failure.
Man, Justin, your admission of relief at the narrative aspect of things really resonated, and I too probably need to work on some deep feelings of resentment along these lines. I've been so exasperated by the media criticism of this team, which was so often devoid of substance or accuracy. The endless commentary about two small guards being inadequate defensively was just never substantiated in either the regular seasons or playoffs, and (as so often pointed out on this podcast) isolations against Darius were never great opponent possessions despite all the hand-wringing. That's before you even get to the incredibly low-brow nonsensical commentary about toughness and this group being "soft", including hit piece after hit piece from Chris Fedor about Darius' supposed lack of maturity (???).
It really is bizarre and upsetting to see how divisive a group that won 64 games last year (and 48 and 51 the years prior) was for our fans. Every member of the core four has comported themselves with class and dignity, but Darius has especially stood out to me as a source of joy and leadership. A lot of players pay lip service to giving back to their communities, but I can think of few players who have genuinely embraced Cleveland like Darius, who has been extremely generous and selfless in the Cleveland community from the word go.
To be honest, I'll never understand why there's so much exceptionalism about Cleveland's supposed playoff failures. The Cavs' last three years in the playoffs have been a first round exit, a second round exit, and a second round exit. The Knicks, meanwhile, who the media rush to lavish praise on like it's their job, have had a… a first round exit, a second round exit, a second round exit, and a conference finals. In other words, there is absolutely no difference in our track record of results year for year, especially since we can definitely make a conference finals (if not more) this year. That's before you even note that the two Knicks second round exits were against badly injured Heat and Pacers teams, and that they could have easily lost in the first round against the Pistons last year with fair refereeing. I vehemently reject the idea that we didn't have what it takes to make a conference finals this year, and we well could have done more than that with a little health luck. I viewed Darius coming back to somewhere between 70 and 90% of the player he was last year as enough to give us a chance to compete for a championship.
There are plenty of fair warts to point out in our prior playoff exits: our lack of two way wing play in the Knicks series, where Okoro was the only Cav capable of slowing down Brunson, but he made every possession on offense 4 on 5; our inability to score effectively in away games in the Orlando series; and our abandonment of our offensive identity against the Pacers. But I also think it's true that the two biggest drivers of every early playoff exit were untimely injuries to essential players, and absolutely wretched shooting luck on both ends. I think people forget that these series are small enough samples that flukey stuff can happen. If you replay the Pacers series 100 without any changes (including the absolutely miserable officiating), then I bet we shoot better than 29% and the Pacers shoot worse than 42% from 3 in the vast majority of them.
Akin to the narrative relief, I will admit to being relieved to not having to worry about Darius's whistle anymore, or the prospect of injury. The game trending towards power and physicality have definitely disadvantaged small guards. This is on both offense and defense; on defense, the leeway given to players to push with their off arm to generate separation disproportionately affects weaker, smaller defenders. On offense, defenders have been empowered to go for more aggressive contact at the rim, especially if they can make contact with the ball first.
I am a huge Darius optimist (if it isn't clear from the wall of text above), and I was devastated to trade him for Harden, who is so much older and does not seem to have the same exceptional character that Darius does. I was hopeful that he could come back from his toe injuries and be more like the all-NBA player he was just last year. But I wonder what the Cavs front office knows that fans like me don't about his future health, and I acknowledge that it's possible that Darius may never be the same player again, though I certainly hope to be wrong, and will be rooting for him in Los Angeles. This year, he hasn't been the same player, because his game relies so much on his quickness and burst on his toes. He hasn't been able to generate the same separation, or get the same lift on his shots, or slide his feet on defense. And it showed in the statistics, where the Cavs have had a dramatically worse offensive and defensive rating with Darius on the floor.
Harden has never been my cup of tea, but now that the trade is done, I hope that he's able to elevate the offense with his brilliant play-making and scoring, especially spoonfeeding Ev and JA at the basket. His size, strength, and active hands will help him fit into our defense even if his effort isn't always great, and having two great rim protectors behind him should help cover up some of his worst warts. I too will be watching his FT rate, and will be suitably persnickety if it drops as a Cav. I hope that having the best supporting talent around him since his days as a Rocket will ameliorate some of the ways in which he's historically dwindled in effectiveness in the playoffs.
Loved how you guys talked and paid respect to the DG era in Cle. Helped me finally get over it a lil better 😂 Garland was a fam fav fr man. Just sucked how he kept getting hurt.😢
The Kyrie trade hurt wayyyy worse. will miss DG but trade should have happened 2 years ago like half the fans were saying.
if we ever got a small forward at some point in this process that could score consistently and had some size to him this would have worked out. We were constantly choosing between a defener and a shooter at 3 for years and whichever you choose the others had to make up for.
Garland in the playoffs was basically bronnie. I would have traded him for nothing just to dump his salary. He was born for the reg season, and has absolutely nothing to contribute to a contender beside his vanishing offense and his league-worst defense. Oh yeah, that's only when he is healthy.
Darius Pyrite
100% of DG wasn't nearly enough to win a title, figure it out
Cavs were dead set on having two small guards for this entire era, the correct number is zero
1:13:00 Offloading Lonzo wasn’t just a salary dump. We needed that final spot to fully sign Nae’Qwan!!!
Koby has proven to be too good at drafting and trading for us to be questioning him too much at this point. Let's see how things go.