An idea was made for Darius Garland to become the point guard of the future for the emerging Cleveland Cavaliers. This thought dimmed which led to him making his way to the Los Angeles Clippers during the NBA trade deadline. Obviously, the reality that the league was still a business takes aback some players. Ty Lue was the first to reach out to their new guard and a shared love for Dave Chappelle made Garland integrate better with the Kawhi Leonard-led squad.

Chappelle played big factor in helping Garland, Clippers chemistry

Garland might be the biggest fan of the comedian. After getting drafted, his first splurge was to go watch Chappelle and then meet him. He will never forget that moment as a 19-year-old entering the Cavaliers system and, effectively, the NBA. Lue, who he did not know would become his coach, also shared the love for Chappelle and they started to bond over him. 

The Clippers guard outlined how that night at the draft went and how it has helped him soften up to his head coach more, via Jared Weiss of The Athletic.

“Lue actually just sent me the picture he took with Chappelle a couple of days ago. We just hit it off from there. It’s a new chapter of my life Rich (Paul) talked about it even last summer, before it happened, 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 said.

Since then, the Clippers have found a steady hand to run their offense and facilitate fastbreaks. Garland is also having a great time balling out beside Coach Lue and Leonard. He has played 13 games for them and scored 21.3 points on average while knocking down a career-high 51% of his field goal attempts. More than that, he also dishes out a whopping seven assists per night to keep the offense running.

“It’s like a new breath of life, like a revamp. 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 added.

Those bits of taking the NBA not too seriously have helped the Clippers quite a bit. They have won five-straight games to notch the eighth seed in the Western Conference. With just eight games to go, it looks like the hilarity of Chappelle has brought about a very positive team chemistry within the Clippers system. Garland, Leonard, and Lue still have a mathematically probable shot of going as high as the fifth seed. Will they be able to do it?

More NBA News: