How Darius Garland Can Be an All-Star for the Clippers This Season

Point guard Darius Garland has been an All-Star twice, in 2022 and 2025, and the Los Angeles Clippers need that version of him in his first full season with the team.

The Clippers traded guard James Harden to Cleveland for Garland in February, and with forward Kawhi Leonard now in Toronto and several important players hurt to start the year, this is Garland's team to run.

He gave a quick preview of that in the preseason opener on Sunday in Honolulu.

Garland started and scored 15 points in just 15 minutes, made all four of his shots, three of them from deep, and added six assists as the Clippers beat the Golden State Warriors 104-101.

He was one of the biggest standouts of the night.

The more important news is his health.

Garland had surgery on his left big toe in June 2025 and then sprained his right big toe in January, so he never really got comfortable last season.

He told Andscape's Marc J. Spears that his toe is 100 percent and that he spent the summer getting stronger, and he has not forgotten what people said about him after a tough year.

"Everybody felt I was out of the league, basically," Garland said. "But now I'm trying to get that spark back. Trying to get back to that All-Star level that I'm used to being in."

Start with the opportunity.

The Clippers are without forward Brandon Ingram to start the season after heel surgery that also repaired a partially torn Achilles, and wing Max Strus suffered a partial tear of the plantar fascia in his right foot and will be checked again in four weeks.

That makes Garland the clear first option, and All-Star voters tend to notice guards who put up big numbers on winning teams.

He has also already shown he can do it in a Clippers uniform.

In 19 games after the trade last season, Garland averaged 19.9 points and 6.4 assists and shot 43.8% from three, and he had a 41-point game against Dallas in March.

His coach is in his corner, too.

Head coach Tyronn Lue told Andscape that Garland's summer of rehab and lifting every single day was very uncommon for a max player, and the early hints about the starting lineup are worth watching as camp goes on.

Garland is also the highest-paid player on the team at $42.2 million this season, so the Clippers are treating him as the face of whatever comes next.

None of this works unless Garland stays on the floor.

The Western Conference is full of great guards, and he will need to play close to a full season and keep the Clippers in the playoff race after they finished ninth in the West last year at 42-40.

If he does that while scoring around 20 points a night, I expect his name to come up in the All-Star talk by February.

The Clippers face the Toronto Raptors on Saturday in Vancouver, host the Denver Nuggets on Oct. 14 and open the regular season against the Sacramento Kings on Oct. 21 at Intuit Dome.