Justin Rowan

He was playing through a lot of pain, and even though he was playing great the last 10 or so games in Cleveland, he said, yeah, I'm about at 75%, but I'm finding ways to play through it.

He was toughing it out, and I appreciate the hell out of that.

And the stats, basically, if you look at the season, it's a limited season, but he was as productive as De'Aaron Fox on the same or better efficiency.

Mm-hmm.

I think this is just a situation where it's going to take a year or two for Garland to fully recover from this toe surgery.

Obviously, it's tough because from a team building standpoint, as you mentioned, you're getting older and you're probably not getting any return on investment for Harden outside of what he brings on the court.

And I think that was some unease as a fan because...

you know, you always, like, even though they were a contender, you had this off-ramp in your mind.

You're like, you can go back to Garland and Mobley here, right?

You can pivot.

You can, you know, Garland, Mobley, and whatever return you get for Donovan Mitchell, you can feel good about that.

But I think this is the Cavs, you know, basically saying to the fan base, we're going to do everything we can to try to win a championship in this window.

And we have confidence in our ability to find talent, to do an eventual pivot at some point.

I do think that the emergence of Jalen Tyson has been a big part of that too.

They drafted him at 20.

He probably goes top five in a redraft.

And they found guys that are undrafted.

Sam Merrill was picked 60.

He was in the G League.

They turned him into an NBA player.