Ty Lue Explains Reasoning Behind Bringing Star Guard Off the Bench

It isn’t easy to integrate a star into your rotation partway through a season. Even having a key player miss part of training camp can be hard on a team, having a player come in with just a few weeks before the NBA playoffs is even harder. The better the player is, the more difficult it can be to figure out how to maximize them on their new team. 

The Los Angeles Clippers are dealing with that right now. They just traded James Harden, one of the focal points of their offense, and in return got Darius Garland. Garland isn’t as ball-dominant as Harden, but he is still a guard who like to control the offense. Figuring out how to maximize his talent without shifting the whole team’s offense is what Ty Lue is trying to figure out right now. 

 D. Ross Cameron (2026). Gui Santos & Darius Garland [photo], Imagn Images

Lue has decided to bring Garland off the bench for now, and he recently explained exactly why. 

“Just bringing him off the bench so he doesn’t have to play with Kawhi. So he can kinda find his own rhythm, his own timing, and just try to run everything through him. Just being aggressive, our pace picking up. That’s the thought process behind bringing him off the bench… That’s what he’ll be doing until we get his minutes up. Then, of course, you know he’s gonna be the starter.”

Garland is returning from injury, which allows Lue to bring him back slowly. Doing this by letting him find his rhythm with the bench is a good idea. Once he is fully back and healthy the Clippers can decide how they want to stagger his minutes with Kawhi so they always have a great scorer/play-maker on the court.