Welcome to Layup Lines, For the Win’s basketball newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Have feedback for the Layup Lines Crew? Leave your questions, comments and concerns through this brief reader survey. Now, here’s Prince J. Grimes.
It’s a great day to be a fan of basketball.
The Oklahoma City Thunder and Cleveland Cavaliers square off tonight in a meeting between the best teams from each conference, and it should absolutely be considered a potential NBA Finals preview.
Forget everything you thought you knew coming into the season, about how the Boston Celtics were head and shoulders above the rest of the Eastern Conference and how the Western Conference is wide open. If things continue on the path they’ve been trending through the first three months, these will be the last two teams standing in June.
The Cavs are are 31-4 and riding a 10-game winning streak into Wednesday’s game. The Thunder are 30-5 and riding a 15-game winning streak. This is historic stuff. It’s the first time in 53 years two teams in the same season have won at least 30 of their first 35 games. And we get to see those two teams play. It’ll be the first time in NBA history a team on a 10-game winning streak plays a team on a 15-game winning streak.
“This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.”
We’re about to find out.
Cleveland Cavaliers:
🔸 31-4 record (#1 in East)
🔸 No. 1 in offensive rating
🔸 No. 7 in defensive rating
🔸 No. 2 in net ratingOklahoma City Thunder:
🔹 30-5 record (#1 in… pic.twitter.com/9S5TMhtbZ1
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) January 8, 2025
If you have complaints about the NBA regular season, there’s no excuse to miss this one. It’ll be great hoops and have that playoffs feel we all love. It’ll also be fun to see the chess match between Cleveland’s No. 1 ranked offense and OKC’s No. 1 ranked defense. Will we learn anything that applies to the larger championship race? Probably not, but the Cavs do have a little more to gain from a win. They can change a lot of people’s perception about them in a way the Thunder don’t have to.
Though the Thunder are one of the youngest teams in the NBA, they’ve been trending in the direction of being great for a couple years now. They were the No. 1 seed in the West last season and entered this season with the conference’s best odds to win the NBA title. A loss to the Cavs won’t do much to change people’s opinion on the direction of this team, especially with Chet Holmgren still out and OKC being a 2.5-point road underdog.
The Cavs, on the other hand, can still feel somewhat… random? They’ve been a playoff team each of the last two years since trading for Donovan Mitchell, but they’ve never been higher than a 4-seed, never made it past the second round and never won more than 51 games. Now, they’re suddenly on pace for 70 wins?! In a season that started with just the fifth-best odds to win their conference? That’s honestly incredible, and also