After the Phoenix Suns and Houston Rockets agreed to a trade sending star forward Kevin Durant to Houston, it was reported that the Cleveland Cavaliers had offered up star guard Darius Garland as part of a potential deal for the veteran.
REPORT: The Cavs offered Darius Garland as part of a potential deal for Kevin Durant, per @KevinOConnorNBA pic.twitter.com/3lW7bKngtE
— Cavaliers Nation (@WeAreCavsNation) June 23, 2025
According to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, there’s a little more context required to complete the story. He shared that Suns were the ones to reach out with interest in Garland. In addition, he revealed that the Cavs would’ve needed more than just Durant in order to consider moving their All-Star guard.
“The Suns were the ones to reach out that had interest in Garland, it was not the Cavs that wanted to trade Garland.”
Windy says Cavs interest was in Durant + assets (Suns own Cavs ‘29 1st) and the Suns didn’t hang up.
Says Cavs talked to another team about offloading salary. pic.twitter.com/4rSWcTl0kI
— RealCavsFans.com (@realcavsfans) June 25, 2025
“The Suns, from what I am told, were the ones to reach out that had interest in Garland,” Windhorst said. “It was not the Cavs who wanted to trade Garland. Now, you know what I’ve told you over the last month, that the Cavs are under an obligation, because they’re going into the second apron, that they have to pay attention to anything like this because it becomes exponentially harder.
“So, the Cavs said the only way that they would ever consider this would be if they — the Suns — sent Kevin Durant plus other assets, and the Suns didn’t hang up the phone. And so, I’ll just point out that the Suns own the Cavs’ 2029 first-round pick because they got it from the [Utah] Jazz last year, and getting back your own picks in the distant future is somewhat attractive. But the Cavs to do that trade would have had to offload salary because they just couldn’t take it on.
“And I do think they had some calls about bringing in third teams. So, it wasn’t one call, and it wouldn’t have been just Durant, and it wasn’t them looking to trade Garland, but they made more than one call, and this was not last week. I mean, this was not two days ago. This was a while ago.”
It seems that the Cavaliers still value Garland quite highly, even though he wasn’t at the top of his game for Cleveland in the 2025 NBA Playoffs and just recently got surgery on his left big toe. Garland is expected to be sidelined for several months as he recovers, and Terry Pluto of Cleveland.com indicated recently that rival teams have been trying to trade for Garland at a bargain price lately thanks to his injury and surgery.
Few players at the point guard position in the NBA bring such excellent scoring and playmaking chops to the table like Garland does. In the 2024-25 regular season, he averaged 20.6 points per contest on 47.2 percent shooting from the field and 40.1 percent shooting from 3-point range to go along with a team-high 6.7 assists per game.
But for as gifted an offensive player as Garland is, Durant is the superior scorer of the two and would have formed a dynamic scoring duo with fellow star Donovan Mitchell in Cleveland. At the age of 36, Durant still scores the ball effortlessly, as he averaged 26.6 points per game with the Suns last season.
It should be interesting to see how Durant fares playing for the Rockets in the 2025-26 campaign and whether Cleveland’s decision to hold onto Garland will age well. Garland can certainly solidify that the Cavaliers were right to keep him by helping the team the 2026 NBA title.
The Cavaliers underperformed massively in the 2025 NBA Playoffs, but they seemingly have a real shot at winning next year’s title when factoring in all of the question marks surrounding some of the top contenders in the Eastern Conference.
