Report: Cavs seen as ‘very good team’ with NBA Finals question marks

The Cleveland Cavaliers are still looking to exercise their playoff demons with their “core four” of Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland, Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen.

However, at the very least, the Cavs proved last season that they are a great regular-season team. During the 2024-25 regular season, they won 64 games, the second-most wins in a single campaign in franchise history. The Cavaliers were on track to set a franchise record for victories for much of the campaign as well.

Now, Cleveland is seen as a “very good team” with question marks about whether it can make or win the NBA Finals, per ESPN’s Brian Windhorst. Windhorst explained that that’s the national narrative around the Cavs after he talked with some people around the NBA at Summer League.

“Very good team, questionable whether they can win 16 playoff games or 12 playoff games,” Windhorst said of how Cleveland is perceived. “That’s really the thing.”

It’s certainly reasonable for folks to be skeptical that the Cavaliers will be able to win a title or even advance to the NBA Finals with this core, as the quartet has been together for three seasons now and doesn’t even have an Eastern Conference Finals appearance to show for it.

Last season appeared to be the year the Cavaliers might finally get over the hump in the playoffs, but they ran into a red-hot Indiana Pacers team in the second round. Poor injury luck certainly played a part in Cleveland’s second-round collapse, but that hardly softens the fact that the Cavaliers lost to the Pacers in embarrassing fashion in a gentleman’s sweep.

The Cavaliers will have an entire 82-game season to play before the start of the 2026 NBA Playoffs, but the 2025-26 iteration of the team will likely ultimately be judged for what it can accomplish in the playoffs following another second-round exit last season.

Maybe the Cavaliers will take full advantage of the open Eastern Conference landscape in the coming season and finally make a deep playoff run with Mitchell and crew. After all, teams like the Pacers, Boston Celtics and Milwaukee Bucks will all look different and could struggle to seriously push for an NBA Finals bid.