On a Wednesday night in January, the Cleveland Cavaliers hosted the Oklahoma City Thunder in one of the most mammoth showdowns in regular season history. The Thunder were on a 15-game winning streak; the Cavaliers were riding a 10-game streak of their own. These were two teams leading their respective conferences and potentially on track to meet again in the NBA Finals.
The Cavaliers stepped up to the plate and hit a home run, winning the game to legitimize their standing as an inner-circle contender. Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley dominated the smaller Thunder front line, combining for 46 points, 21 rebounds and 13 assists. Many around the league thought differently about the Cavaliers after that game.
The victory was remarkable not only because it proved their ability to match up with the very best teams in the league. It's even more remarkable because the Cavaliers should not have been able to defeat the Oklahoma City Thunder. At least, no one else has been able to.
The Thunder are dominating the Eastern Conference
In the league's current 82-game schedule, each team plays every other team from the opposite conference two times: once at home, once on the road. The Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers meet twice and exactly twice. The Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors play each other twice. So on and so forth.
That means over the course of a season, each team plays 30 inter-conference games (and 52 games against their own conference). The Cavaliers, for example, have a 22-6 record against the Western Conference this season, with games remaining against the San Antonio Spurs and Sacramento Kings to close out the slate. They have dominated the West this season, and even more so until they stumbled through a recent road trip.
The Thunder, however, have taken domination to a whole new level. They are a mind-boggling 28-1 against the Eastern Conference this season, which means they have already clinched the record with one game to go. The Thunder have won 96.5 percent of their games against the East, shattering the previous record of 90 percent. Even if they lose their final game to the Detroit Pistons they will be at 93.3 percent.
The previous record was held by the 2000 Lakers, the 2007 Dallas Mavericks, the 2016 Warriors (all 27-3) and the 1950 Syracuse Nationals, who finished 9-1 in a much different era (stats courtesy of Dan Feldman at Dunc'd On). That 90 percent win percentage is impressive, but not impressive enough.
That means the Thunder have gone undefeated against 14 of the 15 Eastern Conference teams. They beat the Boston Celtics by a combined 19 points. They took down the New York Knicks by a combined 35 points. They just detonated on the Indiana Pacers to clinch the season series, with a combined scoring margin of 27 points.
There is an obvious caveat to this statistic, in that the Thunder did lose in the NBA Cup Final to Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks; that game, however, does not count toward any regular season statistics or records, so for the purposes of this stat it never happened.
That means the Cavaliers are the only team to stop the Thunder this year; if the Pistons lose to the Thunder tonight, it will mean a 29-1 record for Oklahoma City. Whoever wins the East will be climbing uphill to challenge the Thunder -- but the Cavaliers can boldly stride into the matchup knowing they did what no other East team could do this season.