{"id":162984,"date":"2026-02-04T03:25:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T03:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/162984\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T03:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T03:25:10","slug":"clippers-trade-james-harden-to-cavaliers-for-darius-garland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/162984\/","title":{"rendered":"Clippers trade James Harden to Cavaliers for Darius Garland"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

James Harden<\/a> is headed to the Cleveland Cavaliers, with the Clippers<\/a> agreeing to send the 11-time All-Star back to the Eastern Conference during his highest-scoring season in six years, a person with knowledge of the agreement said Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

The Cavaliers are giving up point guard Darius Garland and a second-round pick, said the person, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the trade has not yet been approved by the NBA.<\/p>\n

That approval could come by Wednesday, when the Cavaliers and Clippers face off at Intuit Dome.<\/p>\n

Harden is averaging 25.4 points this season, his most since averaging 34.3 points in 2019-20. He\u2019s been a huge part of the Clippers\u2019 resurgence back into playoff \u2014 or, at least, play-in \u2014 contention after a dismal 6-21 start.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe means a lot to our team and we\u2019ve seen it the last three years,\u201d Clippers coach Tyronn Lue said Monday night when stories began breaking indicating such a move was close. \u201cWho wouldn\u2019t want to have James Harden?\u201d<\/p>\n

Cleveland will become Harden\u2019s sixth team. He played for Oklahoma City, then Houston, then Brooklyn, then Philadelphia and, since 2023, the Clippers.<\/p>\n

For the Cavaliers, it seems to be a move for right now \u2014 pairing the 36-year-old Harden with another star guard in Donovan Mitchell. For the Clippers, it seems to be a move with an eye on the future \u2014 the 26-year-old Garland is a two-time All-Star, averaging 18 points and 6.9 assists this season for Cleveland.<\/p>\n

Harden opted out of the final year of his contract last summer with the Clippers to sign a new deal that would have been worth $81.5 million for this season and the 2026-27 campaign. Next year is at his option, which basically meant he was on a one-year contract.<\/p>\n

He got that deal after averaging 22.8 points, 5.8 rebounds and 8.7 assists while returning to the All-NBA team for the first time since 2019-20.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Harden is headed to the Cleveland Cavaliers, with the Clippers agreeing to send the 11-time All-Star back…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[6265,58695,13507,15998,6665,58698,78972,3900,8695,48,52,51,47,50,49,4261,29898,7656,1417,427,72],"class_list":["post-162984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-assist","tag-cavaliers","tag-cleveland","tag-clipper","tag-clippers","tag-darius-garland","tag-highest-scoring-season","tag-inglewood","tag-james-harden","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-move","tag-new-deal","tag-person","tag-point","tag-team","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}