Are the NBA’s No. 1 seeds as good as the numbers suggest?

Two teams stood out above the rest during the NBA’s regular season.

Between gaudy stats and unique winning streaks, the Oklahoma City Thunder and Cleveland Cavaliers have put the league on notice and could shift the balance of power in their respective conferences come playoff time. 

While the numbers indicate that these teams are primed for post-season success, things can change in the playoffs.

When the modern-era Golden State Warriors first came into the spotlight and recorded a 67-15 record in 2014-15, led by an undersized guard in Stephen Curry, everyone knew they were watching an incredible season unfold. But a champion? An all-time great dynasty? That wasn’t necessarily the expectation. 

The Warriors proceeded to win their first championship of the Curry era, and then recorded the best regular-season record in NBA history the following season. They’ve made six Finals appearances since 2014-15, and won four titles. Greatness, indeed.

The Thunder’s 68-14 finish this season is the best a team has had since the 73-9 Warriors and is tied for sixth-best all-time. Of the six teams to have finished 68-14 or better prior to the Thunder, five have made the NBA Finals, and four won it all. To find another team that had a better season than this season’s Thunder, you have to go back to Michael Jordan’s 1996-97 Chicago Bulls. 

If we extend the list of top records in league history to include the Cavaliers, who finished 64-18, it grows to 29. Twenty of those teams made the Finals, 17 of which won the championship (not including this season’s Thunder and Cavaliers). Correlation isn’t causation, but a healthy percentage of teams to achieve this level of regular-season success translate it to the playoffs.  

A dynastic run like the Warriors put together is improbable considering the parity seen recently. (A different team has hoisted the Larry O’Brien Trophy in each of the six years since the Toronto Raptors won it in 2019.) But the Cavaliers and Thunder seem ready to usurp the existing hierarchy of championship contenders.  

To better understand if these two regular-season juggernauts are as good as the numbers suggest, we’ll examine their stats a little closer and see how they stack up against past champions.  

Oklahoma City Thunder

Any conversation about the Thunder’s excellence this season must start with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.  

After averaging over 30 points in consecutive seasons and rising from fifth place to a second-place finish in MVP voting last year, the 26-year-old Hamilton, Ont. native has vaulted his game to an even higher level. He averaged 32.7 points to both lead the league and set a new career-high. How he’s doing it is potentially conducive to playoff success. 

Gilgeous-Alexander is excellent in the mid-range, surgically getting to his spots and finishing. His 51-per-cent shooting from the area grades out in the 98^th percentile league-wide (according to Cleaning The Glass). His eye-popping 70-per-cent finishing at the rim is second among all guards (minimum two attempts per game) to fellow Canadian Shaedon Sharpe (who just dunks it a ton). When you combine Gilgeous-Alexander’s elite efficiency with the volume of shots he takes, the results are staggering.  

The MVP favourite is the only guard in league history to shoot better than 57 per cent on over 15 two-point shots per game. Fourteen others have done it before, all forwards or centres. Among that list are all-time great bigs Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Shaquille O’Neil and Patrick Ewing, and current stars Giannis Antetokounmpo, Anthony Davis, Zion Williamson, and Joel Embiid. Not even Jordan was able to achieve that combination of efficiency and volume from the guard position.  

Gilgeous-Alexander also ranks third among high-volume isolation scorers in points per possession (1.10) and second in total attempts (533). The ability to isolate is a key ingredient of playoff success – the last 10 teams to make the Finals have all had a top isolation scorer – and Oklahoma City has one of the best.   

Add that Gilgeous-Alexander finished third in the league with 210 steals plus blocks and sixth with a 105.7 defensive rating, and you have the full package, a superstar who impacts winning in every aspect.  

Yet, while the NBA may be a star-driven league, no one player can win the title by himself. That’s where Gilgeous Alexander’s superior supporting cast comes into play. The Thunder outscored opponents by an average of 12.9 points per game, breaking the previous record of 12.3 held by the 1971-72 Lakers.  

Prior to Oklahoma City breaking the record, every one of the top five teams all-time in point-per-game differential – last season’s Celtics (11.3), the 2016-17 Warriors (11.6), the 1995-96 Bulls (12.2), the 1970-71 Bucks, and the previous record-holding Lakers – won the NBA championship.  

Defence is arguably where a team’s cohesion is most important, and many have argued it wins championships. This bodes well for the Thunder, who finished with far and away the league’s best defensive rating (106.6). The difference between them and the second-place Orlando Magic was the same as the difference between the Magic and the eighth-place Cavaliers. Oklahoma City also has five of the top 10 qualified players in defensive rating. 

The Thunder paced the league defensively despite going without their anchors on that end, Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein, for extended periods of time. Holmgren and Hartenstein were in the 91^st and 77^th percentiles, respectively, in impact when it comes to deterring opponents’ shots at the rim this season (per Cleaning the Glass). Holmgren was third in blocks per game and first in opponents field-goal percentage within six feet of the hoop. Yet Oklahoma City managed to maintain close to same win percentage with one of the two out of the lineup and went 9-4 with both out. The versatility to go between jumbo and small-ball lineups successfully is invaluable in the playoffs, where playing the matchups is very important. And recent champions such as the Celtics (Kristaps Porzingis), Denver Nuggets (Jamal Murray), and Raptors (Kawhi Leonard) all learned to adapt to key players missing time during the regular season. 

The Thunder also have a bona-fide second option on offence in Jalen Williams. Coming off his first All-Star season where he averaged 21.6 points and 5.1 assists while proving himself to be a reliable self-creator, Oklahoma City can confidently put the ball in his hands if opponents try to take it out of Gilgeous-Alexander’s with blitzes and double teams.  

Maybe the most moving aspect of this transcendent Oklahoma City team is that they genuinely seem to love playing together. Just look at some of their post-game group interviews.

Cleveland Cavaliers

LeBron James may have brought a title back to Ohio, but he never achieved the regular-season success that Cleveland did this season.  

Considering Oklahoma City’s extraordinary final numbers, it’s easy to forget the Cavaliers led most of the way, holding the league’s best record for the first five months and rattling off two 15-game win streaks.  

They became just the fifth team in NBA history with two such streaks in a season, joining the Suns (2006-07), Lakers (1999-00), Jazz (1996-97), and Bucks (1970-71). Two of those squads – the Lakers and Bucks – went on to lift the Larry OB. Cleveland’s 64-18 record is also better than the team ever finished during LeBron’s streak of four straight Finals appearances during his second stint back home.  

Yet despite Cleveland’s phenomenal breakout, Boston is still the team to beat in the East.  

The defending champions have made the Finals in two of the last three years and picked up where the Warriors left off, further revolutionizing the three-ball to new heights.  

However, the Cavaliers may have some stylistic and tactical advantages that allow them to supplant the Celtics’ eastern supremacy.  

In the playoffs, the pace of play slows down and only the most connected and versatile defences remain, gumming up more of team’s initial actions and neutralizing advantages. In this environment, the importance of players able to create from a standstill for both themselves and teammates increases tenfold. And Cleveland boasts the most dynamic backcourt in basketball when it comes to live dribble creation. 

Out of the 50 highest volume pick-and-roll ball-handlers in the league (all with over 250 possessions as a pick-and-roll ball-handler) only 13 players average over one point per possession. Three are on the Cavaliers – Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell, and Ty Jerome – and no other team has more than one.  

Garland is also second in the NBA in assists out of drives. Boston’s best player is Jaylen Brown at 27^th. 

Meanwhile, while Boston’s tendency to hoist up threes often gives the Celtics a mathematical advantage, it also leaves them vulnerable to shooting variance. The Celtics went 4-8 in games where they shot under 30 per cent from deep. They have the pull-up shooters to make taking close to 50 threes work. But a couple bad shooting nights could also sink them in a playoff series against a team with more reliable sources of offence, like the Cavaliers. 

Thanks to their creativity, Cleveland attempts a high-quality shot diet of mostly paint looks and corner threes. The Cavaliers don’t have to rely on tough shot-making, but still have the personnel to make them when needed, shooting 48 per cent from the mid-range (first in the NBA, per Cleaning the Glass) 

The core groups of Celtics in the East, and the Warriors, Nuggets, and Lakers in the West may have more championship experience than the Cavaliers and Thunder. But based on the numbers and style of play, it feels like a change of the guard is coming.

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