While the 2024-25 NBA season is still young, it’s hard to argue that there’s a team that’s played better than the Cleveland Cavaliers to this point.
At 11-0, the Cavaliers have the best record in all of basketball, and Cleveland rallied in the fourth quarter to earn a win over the Brooklyn Nets on Saturday night.
After three quarters, it seemed as if the Cavaliers’ undefeated start to the season would soon come to an end. Heading into the final frame, Cleveland was losing by 12 points.
However, the Cavaliers won the game by five points after they outscored the Nets 35-18 across the final 12 minutes of action, and Darius Garland was key to the team’s productive final frame.
He scored eight of his 20 points in the fourth quarter, and after the Cavaliers picked up their 11th consecutive win, he implied that the team’s scorching start to the campaign is no fluke.
"I don't think this is just any old fluke" 😤@dariusgarland22 tells @SamMitchellNBA that this @cavs team is the real deal pic.twitter.com/Uz8VJrd6BK
— NBA TV (@NBATV) November 10, 2024
“Yeah, I think we are for sure,” Garland said when asked if the Cavaliers are ready to contend for a title. “I don’t think this is just any old fluke. We’ve played some really good teams out of these 11 games, and we’ve had some great challenges. Even tonight, we had a little bit of adversity — we had some challenges goin’ through the entire 48 minutes of the game. In the fourth quarter, we just turnt it up a little bit on both sides of the ball, and I think we can just do that for all 82 games and try and make it in the postseason if we stay healthy. So, I think that we have a really good chance of just bein’ one of those contenders for sure.”
The Cavaliers are amid their best undefeated start to a season in franchise history. Additionally, they’re one of just four teams since the year 2000 to begin a campaign by winning its opening 10 games of the season.
Cleveland is just four victories away from tying the Houston Rockets for the second-longest undefeated start to a campaign at 15 games. It’s worth noting that the iteration of the Rockets — led by two-way big man Hakeem Olajuwon — later went on to win the 1994 NBA title.
When looking at the Cavaliers’ upcoming schedule, it seems as if the team will have a legitimate chance to match the 1993-94 Rockets with a 15-0 record. Over its next four games, Cleveland will take on the Chicago Bulls twice as well as the Philadelphia 76ers and Charlotte Hornets.
All three of those teams have records below the .500 mark, and the 76ers are sitting at the very bottom of the Eastern Conference standings with a 1-7 record.
If the Cavaliers and Garland can continue to stack up wins in the near future, that will only strengthen their case as legitimate title contenders this season. Cleveland will be back in action against the Bulls on Monday night.
