{"id":583367,"date":"2026-02-05T04:10:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T04:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/583367\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T04:10:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T04:10:15","slug":"cavaliers-reveal-plans-for-james-hardens-debut-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/583367\/","title":{"rendered":"Cavaliers reveal plans for James Harden’s debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cavaliers reveal plans for James Harden’s debut<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> kicked off the trade deadline festivities by making the first blockbuster deal involving Darius Garland and James Harden.<\/p>\n

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This move comes days after the Cavaliers acquired two guards from the Sacramento Kings<\/a>, adding Dennis Schroeder and Keon Ellis in exchange for Deandre Hunter.<\/p>\n

Additionally, following the acquisition of Schroeder as a backup point guard, the Cavaliers traded Lonzo Ball to the Utah Jazz<\/a> in order to get cap relief.<\/p>\n

With Harden now on his way to Cleveland, the Cavaliers will get an experienced facilitator and one of the strongest scorers of all-time.<\/p>\n

Despite being in his age 36 season, Harden averaged 25.4 points per game in 44 games for the Clippers<\/a>, his highest points per game total since his last full season with the Houston Rockets<\/a> in 2019-20.<\/p>\n

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He continues to distribute the ball at a high-level as well, ranking third in the NBA with 8.1 assists per game, trailing only Luka Doncic and Cade Cunningham.<\/p>\n

With Cleveland having won six of their last seven games, Harden has been ruled out of Wednesday’s contest against his former team.<\/p>\n

That said, according to<\/a> NBA insider Chris Haynes, Harden plans to make his Cavaliers debut Saturday against the Sacramento Kings.<\/p>\n

With eight wins in their last 10 games, the Cavaliers have jumped up into a tie for fourth in the Eastern Conference with the Toronto Raptors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They’ll hope that Harden and the rest of their recent acquisitions can continue put pressure on their rivals.<\/p>\n

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More NBA news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cavaliers reveal plans for James Harden’s debut originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,909,306,305,193,3846,559,791,1219,24143,194,560,3211,4442,368,6,477,476,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-583367","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-cavaliers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cade-cunningham","10":"tag-cavaliers","11":"tag-cleveland","12":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","13":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","14":"tag-clippers","15":"tag-darius-garland","16":"tag-deandre-hunter","17":"tag-dennis-schroeder","18":"tag-houston-rockets","19":"tag-james-harden","20":"tag-keon-ellis","21":"tag-lonzo-ball","22":"tag-luka-doncic","23":"tag-nba","24":"tag-sacramento-kings","25":"tag-toronto-raptors","26":"tag-utah-jazz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116016069272282422","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}