Sports Talk

After their big Friday night win against former playoff opponent Orlando, the Cavaliers have moved to 6-0 on the season. As the only 6-win team in the league, this places them solidly atop the NBA standings, and marks the team’s best start to a season since the 2016-17 team. Fans should be ecstatic, however, after a baseball season where the Guardians started as the hottest team in the MLB, before a steady decline in production after the All-Star break, the question Cleveland fans are asking is: is this just another unsustainable start, or can the Cavaliers go on a run this season?

Continuous roster turnover has become a staple of an increasingly player driven NBA, where team’s turnover roughly 36% of their rosters on average each season. The 2024 Cavaliers stand solidly as an outlier to this trend as they return 98.5% of their points scored and 98.3% of their minutes played from last year’s roster. Keeping with this trend, so far this season players retained from last year’s roster have accounted for 98% of minutes played early into this season. In essence, this is a near full return of the team which finished fourth in the Eastern Conference last year.

While roster turnover can at times be beneficial as teams bring in high-value players to bolster a roster, the Cavaliers already have a roster which should solidly place them in contention for a playoff spot next summer. The retention of a core of young talent headlined by a super star of Donovan Mitchell’s caliber is going to allow this team to continue a process of bettering their execution and on-court strategy that was started last season. That is not to say that change was not necessary, the departure of coach J.B. Bickerstaff and the hiring of Kenny Atkinson has appeared to reinvigorate an offense which seemed eager to devolve to isolation basketball last season. Atkinson’s Cavs team has shown an ability to find and create open shots and push teams in transition thus far and the results have spoken for themselves.

Despite their early successes, the Cavaliers still have a long road ahead of them to make it to the playoffs and championships are not won in November, especially with a Goliath-esque Boston Celtics team in the conference. Before we hand Boston a championship, however, I think it’s important to turn to college basketball’s march madness and reminisce upon the teams that upset 1 and 2-seeds. If we look across the UMBCs and Saint Peters, we’d find teams that are filled with players who have spent years playing together and can execute their offense and capitalize on their opponents’ mistakes given the chance, and that’s what this Cavs team has the opportunity to be this season.