Our player preview series on the 2027 Clippers concludes with their star point guard, Darius Garland.
Basic Information
Height: 6’1
Weight: 192 pounds
Position: Point Guard
Age: 26
Years in NBA: 7
Stats (with Clippers): 19.9 points, 2.3 rebounds, 6.4 assists, and 1.2 steals in 29.1 minutes per game across 19 games played (17 starts) on 47.1/43.8/86 shooting splits (7.6 3PA, 2.3 FTA) with 60.2% TS
Contract Status: In the fourth year of a 5 year, $193M deal, making $42.16M this year
Expectations
No player on the Clippers has higher expectations than Darius Garland, who is rightfully expected to be the best player on the team this season. A two-time All Star, Garland was of course the primary trade return for the Clippers’ former star point guard, James Harden, who was mostly excellent for the Clips. Garland played well for the Clippers after the deadline last year, but he left a bit of a sour taste in the mouth of Clippers’ fans by underperforming in the team’s play-in loss to the Warriors. Garland appears to be healthy entering the regular season and now has the keys to the Clippers offense. I think some fans are a bit wild with stat predictions, but it’s certainly not unreasonable to expect 22-23 points per game and 8 assists or so; those are numbers he put up in Cleveland in 2022 in the last season before they traded for Donovan Mitchell. From an impact perspective, Garland being somewhere around All-Star level would be huge for the Clippers, and if he can touch the All-NBA level of play he’s flashed, even better.
Strengths
Darius is one of the best pull-up three-point shooters in the NBA. For his career, he’s shot threes at 38.9% on quite high volume (6.1 attempts per game), with just under 60% of them being assisted (off the catch, more or less) and only 13.6% being from the corners. While not Steph Curry or even Dame Lillard level, Garland is a step below as a ballhandler that defenses have to respect from distance from 30 feet and in. That shooting helps draw defenders up, and opens the court for the rest of the team. When Garland gets hot, he can get scorching, and those three-point shooting spurts were a big reason behind the Cavaliers’ league-best offense in the 2025 season.
If Garland were just an excellent shooter, he wouldn’t be a dynamic offensive force. Fortunately for the Clippers, that’s not the case, as he combines that three-point shooting with plus ballhandling and playmaking abilities. Garland at least 6.1 assists per game every season since his rookie year, and boasts an assist to turnover ratio of 6.7:2.9, or close to 2.5:1. He’s a crafty pick and roll operator who can get to most spots on the floor with ease, leveraging his speed to blow by defenders or get them on his hip so he can work his way into the paint. Once Garland has an advantage, he’s a strong passer that can make most reads on the court (he’s limited a bit by his height) and is committed to setting his teammates up for open shots. Honestly, in some ways, Garland is a throwback point guard very reminiscent of the “old school” way the position used to be played. He gets his team into its offense, runs plays, feeds players when they are hot, and scores when needed – he feels like a conductor of an offense more than a do-everything engine.
Weaknesses
At his very best, Darius Garland has been a slightly below-average defender. He’s not as tiny as say Trae Young or Tyus Jones, but he is a very undersized player for the modern NBA, and that makes defense a challenge for him. Garland does not have the height or wingspan to bother opposing shooters, nor does he have the strength to hold up against larger players on drives or in the post. Garland does play with effort, but he will always be a target for the top ballhandlers on opposing teams in mismatches and switches. That pressure is not as deadly on a game-to-game basis in the regular season, but it has proven to be a real challenge in the playoffs, and the Clippers will have to cover for him on a frequent basis.
Durability has also proven to be a challenge for Garland. He has played more than 70 games just once in seven seasons (2025), with all other seasons falling between 45 and 69 games. Garland has never had truly major injuries in the NBA, but he gets a lot of nagging ones (possibly another consequence of his size) that take him out for a handful of games here or there. This will be the first time that Garland has been the clear best player on a team in his career (he had an argument on the 2022 Cavs, but Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley were around his level probably), and we have not seen how he will hold up under that pressure and intensity yet. He seems to be coming into the season healthy, and the Clippers have to hope he will remain that way – this team just can’t withstand an injury to him on offense, especially if Brandon Ingram is also out.
Summary
Darius Garland is the Clippers’ player whose future on the team is hardest to predict. We know the young guys will be around for a while (or at least a couple of years) and that most of the veterans will probably be traded in the next year or so. Garland is the one guy who could truly fall into either “core piece” or “trade asset” depending on how he plays this season. If he disappoints (through play or injury) his contract will probably be unmovable this year, but he would move out of the core category and be an expiring contract next season. If he plays well but not amazingly this season, the Clippers could potentially move him via trade for positive value. And if Garland looks incredible, the Clippers could decide he’s a cornerstone of the franchise and extend him moving forward. Considering the Clippers do not own their own picks for a half-decade, a traditional tank is out of the question, so if Garland does re-establish himself as a star, the Clippers keeping him makes a lot of sense.