Donovan Mitchell Talks About Co-Existing With James Harden

The Cleveland Cavaliers are going to have to make some adjustments. They decided to trade Darius Garland for James Harden at the trade deadline, and now they have the tall task of integrating a ball-dominant star like Harden into their offense. 

The Cleveland Cavaliers' incumbent star guard, Donovan Mitchell, spoke about what it will be like to integrate Harden onto the team. 

“I’ve never played with a guy like James Harden. I never had a guy like that on my team. And we’re not here to figure out like who’s bigger, better or whatever. How are we going to win? And I think having that relationship helps. But it also speaks to the type of people that him and I are. We’re trying to figure what’s right…For him to go out there and say he’s trying to help me, that’s huge. That’s huge for everything. That speaks to where he’s at. For us to coexist, just to be able to communicate and have that open dialog — ‘Hey, this is what I see. This is where I can help build off you.’ — we are great up here mentally, but also with that relationship we’re just trying to win the game. I don’t care how it happens. Let’s try to win the game. Winning is the end all, right? I’m not worried about how will fit and how we’ll coexist because we have the same goal in mind and it doesn’t matter how we get there. We just want to get there.”

While it seems like Harden and Mitchell are starting things on the right foot, Harden doesn’t have a great track record with joining other stars and winning championships. He tried it with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant. He tried it with Joel Embiid. Maybe things will work out better in Cleveland, but it is unlikely.