The Cavaliers are no longer untouchable, but they still have a surprising and almost ideal start to the season. Before this Sunday's show against the Celtics, and despite a failed start to the week with two defeats against the Hawks, the Cleveland team is on a basis never seen before in Ohio in terms of record. But what remains at the end of the season from these slow starts in the NBA? Is starting in sixth gear synonymous with success in the playoffs? Historical precedents are contrasting.
This record of 17 wins for 3 losses after twenty games, which Boston will also reach in the event of success on Sunday, has already occurred fifty-two times in the past, and 11 times since 2010. Starting this strong historically offers serious chances of lifting the Larry O'Brien trophy at the end of the season: 40.4% of teams with such success were subsequently NBA champions (21/51).
60% chance of winning your conference
However, not all of them had the same success until the end. Nine teams with a record of at least 17-3 to start have lost in the NBA Finals. That is to say in total almost 60% of such prolific results which finished at least as winners of their conference.
The Cavaliers will hope to see this as a happy omen, even if it does not provide guarantees. They can ask their evening opponent the Celtics, authors of an 18-2 to follow up just after their 2008 title before falling in the conference semi-finals against the Magic. Or the Suns, 17-3 after twenty games then 64-18 to conclude the 2021/22 regular season and they too stopped in the second round.
The Sonics and the Spurs, historic losers
Worse, two teams have not even won a playoff series despite such a convincing start to the season. The Sonics of Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton (18-2, then 63-19 in the end) had not even passed the first round in 1994, in one of the biggest surprises in the history of the playoffs and the qualification of the Nuggets Dikembe Mutombo. The Spurs did the same in 2011, knocked out as soon as they entered the fray by the Grizzlies after an initial 17-3.
The Washington Capitols, for their part, had a strange season in an NBA from another era in 1948/49. The capital franchise started with an 18-2 record, before going an average of 20-20 during the rest of the regular season… but rebounding in the playoffs and reaching the final.
Golden State, the reference of the genre in the 21st century
Cleveland seems at least assured of one thing: participating in the playoffs. No team having lost less than five of its first twenty games has missed the final stages, the prize for starting with a bang but in vain going to the Jazz during the 2010//11 season. Utah, led by Deron Williams, Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap, started with 15 wins and 5 losses before ending the season in trouble with the departure of its historic coach Jerry Sloan and a negative record (39-43).
A real incongruity in this rather flattering history for teams in form from the start of the season. Since 1949, the teams leading the league after twenty games have obtained their ticket to the playoffs in 99% of cases, with a third even finishing as champions (33.7%) according to Champs or Chumps countdown.
The last decade has even been more favorable to early leaders, thanks in large part to the success of the Warriors: five of the last ten teams with the best record at this stage of the season have been crowned. But not the only immaculate 20-0 (and even 24-0), Golden State finishing in 2016 with a record 73 regular season wins before collapsing in the Finals.
