Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily, presented by Amazon Prime for February 4th,

2026. I'm Dave DeFore here with Esperi. Coming up, we had another trade. James Hardin's been

traded to the Cavaliers for Darius Garland. Danny Cunningham is here to talk about the Cavs side of the deal.

And our man Lawrence Murray, Law Murray, is in town to talk about the Clippers.

Good morning, everybody.

Good morning, guys.

How's it going?

I mean, Danny, I don't know how it's going for you, buddy.

Danny Cunningham from the Locked on Cavs podcast, probably a bit of a shock for you to now be covering James Hardin when this wasn't really on anyone's radar until two days ago.

Yeah. When the trade deadline approached, I guess I mean, which still hasn't gotten here, even though it feels like every team in the NBA acted like it was Tuesday and today was nuts. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like it was insane. As this trade season approach, I thought we could see the calves get a little crazy, but I didn't think Darius Garland. I certainly did not think James Hardin would be part of that equation. So nuts is certainly a good way to describe it. I think that this is a move for the calves that is just like, hey, we didn't actually believe or we had to stop believing, I guess would maybe be a better way of putting it in the core four that they assembled

that they had, you know, believed in since Donovan Mitchell arrived in Cleveland and even with Garland

and Mowgli and Allen dating back before Mitchell's arrival in Cleveland.

So this was a certainly like if you would have told me this a month ago, I think I would have

been a lot more stunned than I am sitting here talking to you guys about it now, just having time to process a little bit, but wild nonetheless.

How much of the calculus is the issues that Garland has dealt with injury-wise over the last

couple of seasons and not necessarily knowing what you can get from him in the playoffs coming up and in the future.

I think a lot of it because I still do look at what was with Darius Garland when he was healthy and at his best and what that Cavs team.

And I know that last year's team is not this year's team.

But what the ceiling of that group was, particularly offensively with him as the engine, is through the roof. And this year, he was not the same guy. There were glimpses of it, right? Like we've seen him have good games this year, but the fact that now he has a toe injury on his other foot, it's hard for me to look at this situation and think that if Darius Garland were fully healthy, if he didn't have the issues he had in the playoffs last year with the left foot, didn't have the issue with the foot on the other side, the right foot. Now, it's hard for me to think that that trade gets made, but the calves are ultimately in a spot where they have pressure to perform. They have pressure to, you know, advance in the playoffs in an Eastern conference that is wide open right now. And I

guess the question becomes, well, who do you trust more? Do you trust James Hardin in the

playoffs or do you trust Darius Garland to be available and at his best in the playoffs?

It's a tricky question. I don't know. I don't know that either of them are great answers,

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