History Tells Us About the Cavaliers as a True Title Contender?

We take a look into our historical TRACR database to determine whether this year’s Cleveland Cavaliers have the look of a champion.

At 52-10, the Cleveland Cavaliers hold the best record in the NBA. They are clearly a very good regular season team. But a true inner-circle title contender?

Are they better than the defending champion Boston Celtics (45-18)? Are they better than the Western Conference-best Oklahoma City Thunder (51-11)?

Unfortunately, in this league, you’re guilty until proven innocent. Nobody believes you have what it takes to win a title until you actually do it.

However, we don’t fall for old sports cliches. We use data and lessons from the past to inform our analysis. So, based on what we currently know about the Cavaliers, what does history tell us about whether or not they will be able to prove their splendor this postseason? 

It can be tricky comparing the past to the present because of the various changes in the rules and playing styles that can influence the way the game is played. Fortunately, TRACR (Team Rating Adjusted for Competition and Roster) gives us a way to compare different eras.

And we can use O-TRACR (the offensive variation of the metric), D-TRACR (the defensive variation), and overall TRACR to see what history tells us about this Cavaliers’ team. 

The Cavaliers Are In Good Company

As it stands, the Cavaliers have an overall TRACR of 12.3. Based on our database (which extends back to 1984-85), only four teams have ever had a TRACR over 12.0 for an entire season: the 2024-25 Cavaliers, 2024-25 Thunder, 1995-96 Chicago Bulls and 2023-24 Celtics.

Obviously, we still don’t know what will happen with the Cavaliers and Thunder. But it is a good sign that they are both in the same company as the defending champs in Boston and the 1995-96 Bulls (a team many believe to be the greatest ever assembled). 

If we widen the parameters to teams that have finished a season with a TRACR score of over 10.0, our sample size extends out to 12. Of the 10 teams whose story has already ended (remember, the Cavaliers and Thunder don’t count here), only three did not go on to win the NBA championship. 

Those teams are the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors, 2015-16 San Antonio Spurs and 2012-13 Thunder. As many of us are acutely aware of at this point, the ’15-16 Warriors hold the regular season record for most wins in a season (73) but didn’t win it all after running into LeBron James during his mission to bring a title to The Land. Coincidentally, the ’12-13 Thunder also made it all the way to the NBA Finals before falling at the hands of King James. 

As for the ’15-16 Spurs, like the Warriors of that season, they were a regular season juggernaut (67-15, 11.3 TRACR). However, that success didn’t translate well to the playoffs, as they were bounced in the second round. 

In defense of the ’24-25 Cavaliers, the ’15-16 Spurs aren’t a good historical comparison for them. That Spurs team had an average age of 30.1 years old, and its aging cast was out of its depth trying to hang with the younger/more athletic Thunder. Meanwhile, this Cavaliers team has a spry average age of 26.6 years old. 

But Not So Fast

So far, it seems like this season’s Cavs are in good company. But things get a little dicey when we add some more color to their success.

The Cavs are powered by a historically great offense. They currently boast the best regular-season offense in our database’s history with an O-TRACR of nearly 10. And they are miles ahead of the next-best Thunder (7.4) and third-best Denver Nuggets (6.3) in this season’s rankings.

In the last four decades, five teams other than the Cavaliers have had an O-TRACR of over 9.0 during the regular season. However, only one of those teams ended up winning the NBA title (1995-96 Bulls).

Of the other four teams, only one of them even made it to the NBA Finals (2015-16 Warriors). 

In total, there have been 39 teams other than the ’24-25 Cavaliers and Thunder to post an O-TRACR of 7.0 or higher.

Of those teams, only eight teams (20.5%) went on to hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy. Twenty-five of these 39 teams (64.1%) didn’t even get to the NBA Finals. 

A Saving Grace 

The good news here is that most of the teams that we looked at were one-dimensional. They backed up their bark on offense, but they had no bite when it came to the other end of the court.

That isn’t an issue with these Cavs. Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen, the team’s twin tower bigs, both rank in the top 40 in defensive DRIP (D-DRIP). As a team, the Cavaliers rank seventh in the NBA with a D-TRACR of minus-2.4.

Anyway, back to the 39 teams we mentioned in the last section. Only eight of those teams had a D-TRACR of -2.0 or lower (remember, when it comes to D-TRACR, the lower, the better). Of those teams, six went on to win the NBA Finals, and the two that didn’t still made it to the last round (’15-16 Warriors and ’12-13 Thunder).

The Bottom Line

No matter how good you are in the regular season, nothing is guaranteed in this game – especially when you have a team like the ’24-25 Thunder which has been just as historically great. 

At the end of the day, you need to be lucky and good to win in this league. The data clearly shows that the Cavaliers are good enough to pull it off.

Now, we just need to sit back and see if Lady Luck smiles in their favor. 

Data modeling provided by Stats Perform’s Matt Scott.

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