A statistical ode to the 68-win Thunder and the 64-Cavaliers
With the sort of assist that only Basketball Reference can dish
A popular lament this season:
Hey Stein! You didn't write enough about Oklahoma City and Cleveland.
Heard you.
And I'm trying to rectify this somewhat today, on the eve of the NBA playoffs launching, with a piece devoted exclusively to the top seed in each conference.
Partnering with my trusty pals at Basketball Reference, I have compiled a fivesome of standout statistical achievements for each team, which ruled their conferences pretty much all season.
That, mind you, was the regular season. Skeptics/critics/insert preferred term will be quick to pounce on the Thunder and/or the Cavaliers if they don't follow up their dominance over the past 82 games with some significant postseason success.
Yet it's also true that their regular seasons were anything but ordinary. Both Oklahoma City and Cleveland achieved things statistically that A) should be highlighted one more time before the NBA Tournament begins and B) add important context to illustrate why they've been so good so far.
Click the links within each item for the full data treatment:
🏀 I wrote in Tuesday's Power Rankings that the Thunder have a regular season resume that features pretty much everything you could wish to see except a win total that starts with a 7. This, of course, includes a higher per-game average margin of victory than we've ever seen in the NBA. Six of the other nine teams on this list went on to win the championship:
🏀 One of my favorite stats of the season: The 68-14 Thunder also won a Western Conference that featured eight teams with at least 48 wins by a ridiculous 16 games … after Boston won the Eastern Conference by 14 games last season. The 16-game gap in the West is the league's largest since 1991-92, when the Celtics — on a technicality — were seeded No. 2 in the East by virtue of winning the Atlantic Division despite trailing the 67-win Chicago Bulls and 57-win Cavaliers with a 51-31 record. The previous win disparity to match Oklahoma City's dominance truly occurred in 1975-76, when Golden State won the West at 59-23 and Seattle finished second at 43-39. Phoenix, mind you, represented the West in the NBA Finals that season despite going just 42-40.
🏀 As I like to say about the Thunder's rugged defense: They start guarding the visiting team as soon as it gets off the bus. They're also one of just two teams in the 21st century to average at least 10 steals and five blocks per game.
🏀 Oklahoma City needed just 72 games to get to 60 wins ... tied for eighth-fastest in league history. As the enclosed Basketball Reference list shows, only three teams above them failed to go on to win it all: 73-win Golden State in 2015-16, 67-win Dallas in 2006-07 and 67-win San Antonio also in 2015-16. (Cleveland's lone championship only gets more impressive when, on top of the 3-1 Finals deficit that it had to overcome, you remember the teams that didn't win it all that season.)
🏀 The Thunder had seven different players with 5+ win shares this season, which is most they’ve had in a single season since moving to Oklahoma City.
🏀 Oklahoma City finished the regular season with an effective field goal percentage of .560 and limited opponents to an effective field goal percentage of just .513. Only six teams have done so in a season ... and four of those entries came from the dynastic Warriors starting with their 73-win team in 2015-16 season to begin a run of four seasons in a row that they achieved the feat.
🏀 The Cavaliers didn't just start the season at a spotless 15-0. They also became one of just six teams in league history to post multiple 15-game winning streaks in a single season.
🏀 They likewise rank as just the second team in league history to post three winning streaks of at least 12 games in a single season ... along with the 2006-07 Mavericks who (gulp) were stunned in the first round of the playoffs by the We Believe Warriors.
🏀 This team is hard team to guard. To wit: Cleveland is the first team ever to shoot at least 58% on two-point attempts and at least 38% on 3-point attempts in a single season.
🏀 These Cavaliers are just the fourth team in NBA history to record double-digit wins in 10 straight games in a season.
🏀 This is the precise sort of compilation only Basketball Reference is capable of. Want to see the entire list of NBA teams that had three All-Stars like these Cavaliers did? Cleveland was the first team to do so since Golden State in 2021-22 and, yeah, we got you with that list.
BONUS NUGGET
🏀 Oklahoma City's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Denver's Nikola Jokić are obviously the clear-cut top two in the MVP race ... but the Thunder and Cavaliers have likewise combined to account for four of the top 10 names on Basketball Reference's MVP tracker.
Thanks, Marc! Cavs-Thunder would be such a great matchup in the Finals. They play offense. They play defense. They run. They can play half court. They play inside. They play outside. They shoot threes, but aren't reliant on them. Both coaches are brilliant and innovative. They are the kind of teams that people have wanted to see, unfortunately stuck in smaller markets. Really hope it happens so the rest of the country gets a chance to see and appreciate these two awesome teams.