Cavs owner Dan Gilbert spent over $500K on fake snow machines that were used 1 time in postseason

The Cleveland Cavaliers’ stint in the 2025 NBA Playoffs wasn’t prolonged, especially for a team that headed into the playoffs with legitimate title expectations.

Once again, the Cavaliers couldn’t get over the hump and were eliminated in the second round of the playoffs by the Indiana Pacers.

The Cavaliers could not protect home court versus the Pacers, as they lost every one of the three games at Rocket Arena in the best-of-seven series. They dropped Games 1 and 2 and most recently lost Game 5 on Tuesday by nine points.

Considering the Cavaliers had a 2-3 record at home in these playoffs, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they hardly used the $500,000 worth of fake snow machines that owner Dan Gilbert installed. The machines were meant to pour out confetti when the Cavaliers went on a scoring tear, but it was used just once during their playoff run.

“Before the start of this postseason, Cavs chairman Dan Gilbert loved the idea of the ‘Cavalanche,’ so much that he paid more than $500,000 to install fake snow machines in the arena’s ceiling that could blast confetti throughout the arena’s bowl when the Cavs went on one of their patented offensive tears,” Jason Lloyd wrote.

“The Cavalanche machine went off exactly once in the entire postseason.”

The 2024-25 regular season was smooth sailing for the Cavaliers, as they won 64 games and secured the top playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. For much of the season, they were neck and neck with the Oklahoma City Thunder for the NBA’s best record. The Thunder went on to capture 68 wins, a win total that only seven teams in league history have reached.

The Cavaliers did carry over their play from the regular season into their first-round series against the Miami Heat. After all, they swept the Heat and won the series by a combined 122 points, the largest margin in NBA playoff history.

But the wheels fell off for Cleveland as soon as it did battle with the Pacers.

Big man Pascal Siakam won an NBA title with the Toronto Raptors in 2019, and guard Tyrese Haliburton, big man Myles Turner and several others Pacers appeared in the Eastern Conference Finals in 2024.

Maybe no team in the NBA has had a more disappointing stint in the 2025 NBA Playoffs than the Cavaliers, and the fact that Gilbert’s fake snow machines were hardly used is a good microcosm of how the Cavs fared with so much at stake.