Brian Windhorst says Cavs have ‘real chance’ to win it all: ‘Keep your plans for June open’

ESPN’s Brian Windhorst has been bullish on the Cleveland Cavaliers’ chances to compete for the 2025 NBA title for a little while now. He said back in February that he already had hotel reservations booked in Cleveland (and a couple other cities) for the NBA Finals and at the time claimed he’d already had his hotel room booked in Cleveland for “weeks, if not months.”

Recently, he doubled down on his belief that the Cavaliers are in the mix for the championship with some comments he made on Tuesday. He said the Cavs have a “real chance” to win their second title in franchise history this season.

Windhorst’s comments may surprise some folks after he said Monday that the Cavs “haven’t proven that they can win 12 games in a playoff setting.” However, he has been very complimentary of the squad this season and might have just been referencing Cleveland’s lack of postseason success in recent years with his Monday remarks.

The Cavaliers extended their current winning streak to 14 games with a 112-100 victory over star Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks on Sunday. With the victory, Cleveland became just the seventh team in the history of the NBA to put together multiple 14-game winning streaks in a single campaign.

Cleveland will try to tie a record for the longest winning streak in franchise history when it takes on the Brooklyn Nets on Tuesday. The Cavaliers set that record earlier this season when they started out the campaign 15-0.

If the Cavaliers can continue to win games at their current pace for the rest of the season, the team will end up with 69 wins, and that would put Cleveland in good company as far as NBA history goes.

Only four teams have won 69 games or more in a season. All but one of those squads went on to capture the league’s ultimate prize, with the 73-win Golden State Warriors in the 2015-16 season being the lone exception.

Cleveland has improved monumentally from just one season ago. The Cavaliers finished the 2023-24 season as the No. 4 seed in the East and lost to the Boston Celtics in a gentleman’s sweep in the second round of the 2024 NBA Playoffs.

The team will have an opportunity to show just how much it has evolved and matured compared to years past when the 2025 NBA Playoffs start up next month. Barring a late-season collapse, the Cavaliers will end up as the No. 1 seed in the East.