The Cavaliers — at 31-4 — are echoing greats like the '16 Warriors, but don't tell them that

CLEVELAND — It is probably still too early to speak the kind of history the Cavaliers are chasing into existence, and the team itself is going to considerable lengths to avoid the discussion altogether.

In an era when the NBA’s regular season is often discussed as something between a “process” and a “slog” toward the playoffs, Cleveland, through 35 games, is one of the best teams of all time. After Sunday’s 115-105 win over Charlotte which was not nearly as close as the score would indicate, the Cavs improved to 31-4, which is tied for the fifth-best record at this point in a season in league history.

“Fifth-best” is pretty rare, given that this is season No. 79 and the NBA has held 82-game regular seasons (not counting strikes, lockouts and pandemics) since 1967-68. The Cavs are the fourth team to win exactly 31 of their first 35, joining the 2004-05 Phoenix Suns, 1996-97 Chicago Bulls and 1980-81 Philadelphia 76ers. Three teams – the 1995-96 Bulls, 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers and 1966-67 Sixers – began seasons with 32-3 records, and the greatest to ever do it during a regular season, the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors, started that campaign at 33-2 en route to a league-record 73 victories.

Only the ’81 Sixers and ’05 Suns failed to reach the NBA Finals, and the Warriors lost a heartbreaking Game 7 to Cleveland in the 2016 finals.

The Cavs are just two games behind the Warriors’ pace, and if Cleveland were to maintain its .886 winning percentage, mathematically that would equate to a 72.6-win season. They don’t do partial wins in the NBA, so are you in the mood to round up?

“Absolutely not,” Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson scoffed, when asked Sunday if he ever thinks, as he’s driving into work, that he’s coaching one of the greatest teams in league history.

“Whoa, whoa, no, no, no,” said Darius Garland, the Cavs’ point guard and All-Star candidate, when Cleveland’s current pace was first mentioned to him after beating the Hornets. “Leave that (talk) alone.”

Recent seasons have featured numerous lower-seeded teams advancing deep in the playoffs (in 2023, the eighth-seeded Heat reached the NBA Finals and the seventh-seeded Lakers made it to the Western Conference finals), but when you start fooling around with the kind of regular-season record the Cavs are chasing, desired glory typically follows. To the point where a team like the Cavs might as well go all in for chasing 70 wins, which has only been done twice in 78 previous seasons.

“We don’t want 73,” Tristan Thompson offered from his corner locker stall. He’s the only member of the Cavs’ current roster who was in uniform for Cleveland when the franchise beat those all-time-great Warriors.

Fine, then, go for 72. That’s how many the ’95-96 Bulls won en route to one of their six Michael Jordan-era titles.

“I really don’t think it will (ever) become important (to chase regular-season history),” Garland said after scoring 25 points against the Hornets. “We all know what it’s like to win regular games. Our next step is to go to the Eastern Conference finals, go to the finals. I mean, the regular season is super cool, it’s like a ramp-up for what we’re trying to get to. If we’re on that pace, keep trying to win games, there’s nothing you take for granted. We’ll take it for sure, we love it, but our next step is to win playoff games.”

American pro basketball is a different sport now than when any of the previous truly dominant regular-season teams reigned. The proliferation of the 3, the dramatic uptick in possessions, and the way franchises manage injuries make them all more vulnerable to defeat each night. The whole league is wary of placing too much emphasis on regular-season results — experience has shown to be a great separator come playoff time.

If there is a main difference between the Cavs and the all-time great regular-season teams that went on to the finals, it is that this Cleveland bunch is largely a collection of players who have not yet forged their playoff legends.

The Warriors won their first NBA championship the season before they won 73 games. Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green had already become household names. The Bulls, of course, had Jordan and Scottie Pippen and won three titles before going on consecutive seasons of 72 and 69 victories. The ’72 Lakers had Wilt Chamberlain (as did the ’67 Sixers).

Outside of Tristan Thompson, who is no longer a rotation player but was a key member of those four NBA Finals teams the Cavs had from 2015-18, Sam Merrill logged one minute of one finals game for the Milwaukee Bucks in 2024 (and won a ring). Max Strus has played in a finals, with Miami in 2023, but was on the wrong end of the outcome.

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Donovan Mitchell, Cleveland’s biggest star, has never been to a conference finals. Garland’s playoff struggles are well-documented. The stench of being shoved around in recent postseason series — the Cavs lost to New York in the first round in 2023 and to Boston in the conference semis last year after being taken to seven games by Orlando in the first round — still lingers. After the last game Cleveland lost this season, on Dec. 8 in Miami, a rival league executive noted to me that Jarrett Allen struggled with the physicality of the Heat’s bigs — a stigma that’s apparently going to hang around until Allen gets the better of someone in the playoffs.

“The physicality rises in the playoffs, and that’s defensively applying more physicality, and then offensively they’re going to have to handle physicality,” Atkinson said Sunday, when talking about what, if anything, worries him about these Cavs. “We’ll just have lapses where teams start getting into us and getting into us and we don’t cut as hard, we don’t screen as hard, or we don’t get open like we should. So just having that edge to us on both ends in terms of physicality — play and play with more force. I think that’s the big one.”

Can Evan Mobley and the Cavaliers rise to the challenge in the playoffs? (Kevin Jairaj / Imagn Images)

There is another side to this coin. A side where the Cavs, entering play Sunday, had the second-best offense in NBA history, trailing last year’s Celtics by 1/10th of a point per 100 possessions. The No. 1 offense in the league resides in Cleveland, as does the No. 9 defense (having a top-10 offense and defense is often the magic formula to winning a title).

The Cavs have won 10 in a row, all of them by at least 10 points — a franchise record. They just returned home from a four-game Western Conference trip in which they not only swept their opponents but were never really in danger of losing. Typically, games after such trips for teams in the East are sluggish “trap” contests in which the home squad tries to readjust from jet lag.

The Cavs never led by fewer than 10 points in the second half against Charlotte (which, it should be said, has now lost 10 straight) and were ahead by 19 with three minutes left when they cleared the end of the bench.

“I think that this team is just as scary as those teams were (the ’16 Warriors and ’24 Celtics) because of how they go about playing offense,” said Hornets coach Charles Lee, who was an assistant last season in Boston. “I definitely think that they do a really good job of making you pay for your mistakes, which is probably what some of that pressure is when you have five guys on the floor at all times that are a threat and you know that if your pick-and-roll coverage isn’t tight, they’re going to be able to exploit something.

“I think that it’s different than, you know, Steph Curry coming over halfcourt and having that fear while he’s running all over, and Klay is doing the same. … it’s a different type of pressure. But, yes, (the Cavs) have such a great complement of offensive players and skill sets that they make you pay if you aren’t tight with everything that you do.”

According to most betting sites, Cleveland currently has the fourth-best odds to win the finals in June, behind Boston (which trails Cleveland by 5 1/2 games), the Oklahoma City Thunder (the West’s top team) and the New York Knicks (shrug emoji). The Cavs get dinged by analysts for an “easy” schedule so far, its relative health (maybe oddsmakers believe in Murphy’s Law?) this far, and the fact that Cleveland has faltered down the stretch of regular seasons for the last several years, albeit under a different coach (see Murphy’s Law).

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Whether the Cavs’ championship odds are a bet on a regression toward a mean that has not existed this season, or if it’s a simple lack of respect (the Cavs only have one player — Mitchell —  currently among the East’s top All-Star vote-getters), there is a chance to rectify some of that Wednesday.

The Thunder have won a franchise-record 15 in a row and are coming to Cleveland Wednesday in what is, hands down, the game of the year in the NBA to this point. Oklahoma City beat Boston Sunday by holding the Celtics to just 27 points in the second half and shutting out Jaylen Brown after halftime.

The longest winning streak of this season belongs not to OKC but to the Cavs, who won their first 16 games. The Thunder are 30-5 and are playing their way into their own shot at regular-season history; they’re tied for the ninth-best 35-game start and are on pace for 70 wins, which would be third-most all time. They have a bona fide MVP candidate in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, own the league’s top-rated defense and No. 7 offense, and their only loss in the last month didn’t even count. They fell to Milwaukee in the NBA Cup championship game — the only game during the regular season that doesn’t count toward a team’s record.

Oklahoma City, like Cleveland, makes you want to round up.

“I think the group has an appropriate fear of what’s coming,” Atkinson said. “When you play these great teams, you have to be even more perfect.”

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(Top photo of Donovan Mitchell: Luke Hales / Getty Images)