LOS ANGELES — Darius Garland’s new life started with Dave Chappelle.
Garland vividly remembers meeting Chappelle. How could he forget it? Nineteen years old, freshly drafted to the Cleveland Cavaliers, out in Las Vegas for his first NBA summer league. Life was changing fast for Garland. There he was, shaking hands with the funniest man on earth, at the time.
Sitting in a Vegas green room before Chappelle’s show, Garland was excited to meet the iconic comedian. He was just excited to be in the room, period. These are the rooms in which you build the connections that open doors down the road. Those small moments can slightly alter the path of your life in ways you don’t see coming.
Running into Chappelle that night was unforgettable, but that wasn’t his most important meet and greet of the evening. That green room is where his agent, Rich Paul, introduced him to his now coach with the LA Clippers, Ty Lue.
“(Lue) actually just sent me the picture (he took with Chappelle) a couple of days ago,” Garland told The Athletic. “We just hit it off from there.”
After the show, Lue and Paul went to the casino, but Garland headed back to his room. “I didn’t have no money at the time,” he said. He’d see Chappelle again when the comedian came to visit Cleveland. Garland signed a jersey for him and now calls him his OG. Fame and fortune have brought him a lot of special things over the past seven years, but there were some dark times for him in Cleveland.
Though Garland has a good relationship with his former Cavs co-star Donovan Mitchell, he knew the writing was on the wall after his turf toe contributed to the Cavs’ disappointing second-round exit last summer. All the while, Lue was watching Garland evolve, seeing a player he could take to the next level. The trade to the Clippers finally gave them the freedom to move on and start anew.
“It’s a new chapter of my life,” Garland said. “Rich talked about it even last summer, before it happened, (saying) it’s probably going to be our last year there. So, I was ready for it. I knew it was going to come sooner or later. So, when it happened, I was like, ‘Let’s just do it. Let’s rock out.’”
Garland knew right away better days were ahead. Playing somewhere you know you aren’t wanted long-term is challenging. How do you show up to work every day and give it your best when you know it could all be for naught? He thought he was ready to start over, but he couldn’t know. Especially on a team that was so good in the regular season.
Once he arrived in L.A., he knew he was in the right place. It wasn’t just the sunshine, the ocean breeze, the excitement of driving down Rodeo Drive in the middle of winter, knowing he lived a stone’s throw away. He was in a place that was ready to embrace him.
“It’s like a new breath of life, like a revamp,” Garland said. “Being around the guys makes it a lot easier because they’re so welcoming. Everybody’s super silly. Everybody’s talkative. My first day there, they were holding their arms out, for real, like, ‘Welcome.’ A lot of big brothers on this team.”
Garland has come to the Clippers at just the right time for both parties. When the Cavs shipped him to L.A. in exchange for James Harden, there was widespread presumption that the Clippers going after an injured Garland meant they were pulling the plug on the season. Especially with Ivica Zubac heading to the Indiana Pacers for Bennedict Mathurin and draft capital, it seemed like this was the end of the road.
Since Garland’s Clippers debut on March 2, however, the team is 12-5, with the NBA’s fourth-best net rating in that span, per Cleaning the Glass. There have been a lot of clean wins against tanking teams, but there have also been impressive victories over the New York Knicks, Minnesota Timberwolves and Toronto Raptors; two close losses to their potential first-round opponent, the San Antonio Spurs; and now a five-game winning streak. With Kawhi Leonard playing his best basketball in years, the Clippers look like they haven’t taken a step back while getting much younger.
“The stuff he’s brought to this team, it’s extraordinary,” Clippers center Brook Lopez said. “Only he could do it. He’s made a huge change, a huge positive change for this group.”
Lopez has been one of Garland’s favorite parts of becoming a Clipper. When Garland learned he was going to Los Angeles, he knew exactly what he wanted from Lue. When he was drafted by the Cavs in 2019, Garland was effectively replacing the man he modeled his game after: Kyrie Irving. Lue was the coach who propelled Irving into a champion. It was the ideal fit.
“My first game out, I told him in the timeout, ‘I’m trying to fit in,’” Garland said. “He said, ‘Nah, this ain’t the time for you to fit in. They fit in with you.’ That was the first time he got on my ass, for real.”
The point guard has been doing lots of one-on-one work to hone his bag, working on how to go out and just be himself. But what Lue wants to see is more aggression, less fitting in and more imposing himself on the game.
“I just noticed since he’s been here, on misses, he gets the rebound, and he’s kind of just jogging it up, surveying instead of pushing the tempo to get in the paint early before the defense gets set,” Lue said.
Garland emphasized multiple times that Lue’s best skill as a coach is the way he instills confidence in his players while knowing how to put a chip on their shoulders to propel them. He praised the coach’s creativity on the whiteboard. “His ATOs (after-timeout plays) are, like, crazy. You know you’re going to get a good shot out of it.” He remembered Leonard’s game winner in Indiana, saying that all three of the play’s options were open. But it was too easy to give it to Leonard and let the former NBA Finals MVP go to work.
Now that Garland is running pick-and-pops with Lopez, he can create more room to roam in the midrange. Coming from a Cavs team that specialized in crowded spacing to play over the top, Garland is enjoying the free range he has to roam. Playing alongside a player with Leonard’s resume and championship experience has been exciting, running inverted pick-and-rolls and just feasting off the double teams Leonard draws all the time.
“It’s a lot easier to just play with him, play off of him,” Garland said. “Everybody is just playing freely. You don’t have somebody behind your back and somebody that’s over your back all the time. Just going out there, just playing the game.”
He looks back fondly on his time in Cleveland, grateful they took a chance on him with the fifth pick in the 2019 NBA Draft, even though he played in only five games in college. “I wouldn’t want to have done it nowhere else and wouldn’t want to take it back,” he said. But he’s struggled with injuries throughout his career, playing more than 70 games just once. The Cavs knew they needed a deep playoff run to secure a future with Mitchell, so they made the move for Harden. The Clippers needed to create some long-term sustainability, particularly with the specter of the Aspiration investigation looming. They found a 26-year-old two-time All-Star who is happy to be there and is excited about where his game, and life, will go from here.
There were some dark days in Cleveland, knowing his time there was numbered. But now he’s enjoying the sunshine of his next chapter in L.A.
“God blessed me with another day. That’s all I can ask for,” Garland said. “I see the sun. I talk to my family. I’m good.”
