How Harden has changed the Cavs
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Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily, presented by Amazon Prime for February 17th, 2026. I'm Dave DeFore here with S. Baraheni and Justin Rowan. Coming up, big Cavs talk today. We're going to sit down with Justin Rowan and look ahead to the future of the Cavs, what they might do in the playoffs, and whether LeBron James is coming this summer. Good morning, everybody. What's up, ass? What's up, Justin Rowan? Welcome to the show. Justin Rowan, one of the hosts of the Chasedown podcast. He covers the Cleveland Cavaliers. Hope you guys had a good all-star weekend. I did. By the way, Justin, you're wearing a Jasper Canada shirt.
I'm wearing a Jasper shirt. Like, this is basically, you know, the podcaster's uniform.
Are you bribing me here with just a bunch of Canadian stuff on it?
And we got seabears.
How has James Harden impacted the Cavs' offense?
We got seabears underneath, man. So I'm doubling down. I'm pandering to you. I'm trying to make sure that this is a friendly reception here and also to make sure that Dave feels threatened. That's a really important part of this equation.
yes i'm very threatened by canadians you know it's that maple leaf on your backpack to hide the fact that you know or to cover for the fact that that's not american right that really scares me yeah okay are the calves scary to you now i think to some extent yes
So my biggest concern with the shakeups they did at the trade deadline is anytime you see a seismic shakeup like this, how often do those teams make the finals? Forget go out and win the NBA finals. So to to some extent, I'm concerned about that. Right. Like, I think. This is going to be a team that's very, very good down the stretch. They have an incredibly easy schedule after the All-Star break. There's a couple weeks here where they're playing some other contenders in the Eastern Conference. They play OKC, but we'll see who's available for that. But after that, it's a very, very light schedule. So this is a soft landing for them. But when they get tested in the playoffs and you don't have kind of that chemistry and continuity like you had in the past, I'm curious about how that's going to shake out.
But I do think the one aspect that is encouraging for me is I don't feel like Like it's a major shakeup from a style of play standpoint, right? Like they're bringing in another brilliant pick and roll guard that's going to run a lot of the same kind of stuff that Darius would have ran. Keon Ellis basically replaces what they had last year in Isaac Okoro. And Dennis Schroeder, a very, very, very discount version of Ty Jerome.
But outside of a facility like, yeah, he can make he can make that. Yeah.
Yeah, it's like stylistically, I just don't think it's a dramatic shakeup. Like if they brought in DeMontis Sabonis and now we're running a lot of offense through the, you know, him as a post creator. I think that might be a little more difficult. But, you know, the East is pretty wide open and this is a system that's pretty similar to what they've been running. So from that standpoint, I do think that there is a chance that it works out here.
And you, you look at, I mean, they haven't had a chance to play with Evan Mobley yet, but I think that's the next big kahuna there. Like how does the Harden Mobley tandem work? But Jared Allen has looked incredible in the first three games with Harden. Uh, he's averaging 24 points and 10 rebounds, which is like, that is incredible numbers at the center position, both offensively. And he's looked a little bit better defensively. That connection in general feels like it's going to thrive. Um, How do you think that works when it comes to postseason basketball for this team? Because so much of the last couple of years for the Cavs was there's far too much reliance on Garland, on Mitchell to create everything.
Is there more of a release valve now that you can involve Allen and potentially Mobley a little bit more?
I hope so. Right. Like I think one of the biggest misconceptions of the previous era of cast basketball is, you know, when they got to the playoffs, the reasons they fail or they fell short were everyone's preconceived notions.
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