The Cleveland Cavaliers are destroying opponents this season.
There is no other way to phrase that, except to put increasingly evocative synonyms in place. They are clobbering opponents. Demolishing them. Atomizing them. What the Cavaliers are doing through five games of the season is likely illegal in some countries.
Cleveland is 5-0 this season, with four of those wins coming by double digits and three by 19 or more. They did feast on the struggling Toronto Raptors and Detroit Pistons, but the Washington Wizards they beat have gone 2-1 in other games, and they dominated the Los Angeles Lakers and took down their kryptonite, the New York Knicks, in Madison Square Garden.
No other team in the Eastern Conference is undefeated, and the Cavs' net rating of +18.2 is best in the East and second-best in the league, just ahead of the also-undefeated Oklahoma City Thunder and just behind the Golden State Warriors. They have the No. 1 offense in the league, something thought impossible for a team starting two bigs, and the No. 3 defense.
The Cleveland Cavaliers have a dominant lineup
The most dominant teams in the league are often led by their starting lineups, as that group tends to play a lot of minutes. The Cavaliers, remarkably enough, have been playing without one of their starters all season as Max Strus recovers from a severe ankle sprain. Dean Wade has started in his place, and that five-man lineup has a +10.3 net rating when on the court; that essentially means that every 100 possessions, or roughly one average game, that group outscores its opponents by 10 points.
Yet that group is not the most dominant group on the Cleveland Cavaliers. It's early, so the sample size is low, but among all five-man lineups that have played at least 15 minutes together, the Cavaliers have one that is near the top of the league, ahead of any others on the team.
That group: Donovan Mitchell, Sam Merrill, Caris LeVert, Georges Niang and Evan Mobley.
Together, those five have played 24 minutes together and outscored opponents by 40 points per 100 possessions. That group is smothering opponents defensively, somewhat of a shock given that the two weakest defenders in the rotation are a part of the group, and turning that defensive intensity into transition opportunities. Niang, much-maligned for his subpar shooting a year ago, is key to unlocking the spacing of that group.
Looking at that group, you may think that Donovan Mitchell and Evan Mobley are so dominant that they are carrying the bench players with them. And while each are having excellent seasons thus far, especially a more involved Evan Mobley, that hypothesis may be incorrect.
The secret to the Cavaliers' success
Let's look at the Cavaliers' second-best 5-man lineup: Darius Garland, Sam Merrill, Caris LeVert, Dean Wade and Jarrett Allen.
Suddenly the secrets to success look different. Are Sam Merrill and Caris LeVert secretly the All-Stars of the team? Not at all, but this group is essentially the mirror image of the other. One on-ball star guard, one dominant big man, and role players who space the floor between them.
The secret of the Cleveland Cavaliers' success is that they have two pairs of star teammates, who all smush together into the starting lineup but who truly shine when the floor is spaced and they are given room to work. That's why last year's Cavaliers team took off despite injuries in the middle of the season, because they had Donovan Mitchell and Jarrett Allen running with three floor-spacing role players alongside them.
The combinations don't matter; Mitchell and Mobley vs Garland and Allen is just how the substitution patterns have run for new coach Kenny Atkinson thus far. But the Cavs deserve credit for identifying and developing the right role players to fit around their stars, and what Atkinson has done is make the starting lineup the best it can be when all of the talent pours onto the court together.
The Cavaliers are not going to finish the season 82-0, and there will be changes to these lineups, with some players missing time and Max Strus returning later in the year. Yet what Cleveland has built is a team that is strong with its best players and even better the rest of the game, and that is going to lead to a lot of wins in the regular season.
A whole lot of wins.