Dolphins, Patriots, Braves, Oilers - Cavaliers joining best starts across all sports

The Cleveland Cavaliers have broken out to a 15-0 start, an unexpected but welcome accomplishment for a team that stayed committed to its core of players and has found new life. Ahead of a monumental showdown with the defending champion Boston Celtics on Tuesday nights, it seems fitting to see where the Cavs stand in relation to the best starts across all sports.

Looking at the current season, for a time the Cavaliers were tracking alongside the Kansas City Chiefs, who managed to check the box of both "defending champs" and undefeated, going 9-0 before losing to the Buffalo Bills this past weekend. In college football, it appears that three teams remain undefeated at this late stage of the season -- Oregon, Indiana, and Army.

In the NHL, the Winnipeg Jets got out to a dominant 8-0 start and remain out in front of the pack. Back in the spring, the Detroit Tigers were the last undefeated team in Major League Baseball, although they made it to just 5-0. In the WNBA, the Connecticut Sun made it to 9-0 before losing their first game.

Best undefeated starts in sports history

Zooming out, how does the Cavaliers' start compare to the best starts in sports history?

For the NBA, the Cavaliers have now tied the second-best start to a season of any team in the league's 78-year history. Only the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors, who began the year 24-0, did better. All three teams to start at least 15-0 in a season went on to reach the NBA Finals, with the 1993-94 Houston Rockets winning the title.

The NFL has famously had two teams make it through their much-shorter regular season without a loss. Tom Brady and the 2007 New England Patriots made it all the way to the Super Bowl before losing to Eli Manning and the New York Giants, starting the season 16-0. Decades before, the 1972 Miami Dolphins went a perfect 14-0 in the regular season and won the Super Bowl, the only purely undefeated season in NFL history.

The best start for a baseball team was actually tied just last season, when the Tampa Bay Rays reeled off 13-straight wins to start the year, tying with the 1987 Milwaukee Brewers and the 1982 Atlanta Braves for the best start in baseball history.

What about the National Hockey League? That honor goes to the 1984-85 Edmonton Oilers, who went 15 games before their first loss (starting 12-0-3); they went on to win the Stanley Cup.

Circling back to basketball, Maya Moore and the 2012 Minnesota Lynx set the best mark to start a season in the WNBA, winning 10-straight to open the year. That Lynx team, coming off of a championship, made it back to the WNBA Finals but lost to the Indiana Fever.

In college hoops, a number of teams have pulled off undefeated seasons. 20 times a team has entered the NCAA Tournament with a perfect record, the most recent being the 2021 Gonzaga Bulldogs who lost in the national championship game to the Baylor Bears. Seven times a team won every single game and won the championship, completing the perfect season: the first being Bill Russell and San Francisco in 1956, and the most recent being Bob Knight and Indiana in 1976; in between, John Wooden and UCLA completed the feat four times.

Finally, in women's college basketball, the feat was accomplished just this past year, when South Carolina ran the table, taking down Caitlin Clark and Iowa in the title game to cap a perfect season. UConn has done it a whopping six times, led by stars such as Rebecca Lobo, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Swin Cash, Maya Moore, Tina Charles and Breanna Stewart.

Getting off to a hot start is not a guarantee to anything, but the very best starts in the history of each sport came from bona fide title contenders, and more often than not they resulted in a championship. The Cavaliers will work to extend the streak and then to win a title and be worthy of the mantle they have taken on.