The NBA regular-season schedule is rather unforgiving. The Cleveland Cavaliers needed to take on the Toronto Raptors on the second night of a back-to-back after claiming a rousing 129-122 win over the Western Conference-leading Oklahoma City Thunder the night before. And with it being a back-to-back, the Cavs decided to rest Donovan Mitchell — thrusting Darius Garland into first-option duties on offense. Garland, as he’s done all season long, answered the call in a big way en route to a 132-126 win over the Raptors.
Garland torched the Raptors’ defense to the tune of 40 points on 14-22 shooting from the field and 4-7 from beyond the arc while adding nine assists and two steals. The Cavs’ floor general proved that he truly is well worth an All-Star nod with this incredible performance, and in so doing, he continued to climb the franchise ladder for most 40-point games.
According to Stathead, via the official ClutchPoints account on X (formerly known as Twitter), Garland now has the fourth-most 40-point games in Cavs franchise history (five), only trailing LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, and his current teammate Mitchell. It will take a while, however, for anyone to dethrone all-time leader James, as he has 75 such outings for the Cavs in his historic stint with the franchise.
Irving, meanwhile, has 19 49-point games for the Cavs, while Mitchell already has 14 even though Garland has been on the team longer than he has been. Regardless, this just goes to show how important of a player Garland is for the franchise, as he helped usher in a turnaround for the team with his emergence during the 2021-22 season.
That season, as one would recall, was when Garland made his first All-Star team. And if he keeps up this level of play, there’s no reason for him not to be included on the All-Star roster in San Francisco next month.
Darius Garland silences doubters with bounce-back season for the Cavs
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Last season did not go according to plan at all for Darius Garland. Garland suffered through an injury-ravaged campaign, and his performance dipped quite a bit. This raised questions of whether it’d be for the Cavs’ long-term best if Donovan Mitchell and Garland stuck together on the same backcourt.
However, all those questions have been squashed, thanks in large part to Garland’s emergence and Mitchell’s willingness to take a backseat. Through 36 games thus far this season for the Cavs, Garland is averaging 21 points and 6.7 assists on 50/43/92 shooting splits.
