A little over a week ago, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Oklahoma City Thunder gave us the best game of the season. Two historic runs collided on the court in Cleveland and delivered in a way we all hoped. The Cavs pulled away in the second half by flawlessly executing their offense down the stretch against one of the best defenses in the last 25 years. It was a massive flex for Cleveland and put another arrow in its quiver to convince the public to believe in its championship potential.
Eight days later, the Thunder prepared to use their homecourt advantage to get their lick back against the Cavs. You know how the old saying goes: “Revenge is a dish best served a little over a week later.”
In OKC on Thursday night, the Thunder obliterated the Cavs from start to finish. We had this amazing matchup the first time out and hoped the basketball gods would grace us with another fantastic game. They weren’t interested.
The Thunder were up 32-14 after the first quarter and didn’t ease up on the pedal, knowing how dangerous Cleveland’s offense can be from the first meeting. OKC dropped 43 points in the second quarter to push its lead to 26 by halftime before adding another 44 in the third quarter to build a comfortable 38-point lead with 12 minutes left. The Thunder ended up winning 134-114, but there’s not a lot you can really draw from a game in which one team leads by 42 at some point, especially when you know both teams are great.
Instead of trying to overanalyze a night where everything went right for one team and wrong for the other, let’s take an overall look at this matchup from the two games we’ve seen this season. Here are my five takeaways from the regular-season series and why each could be key should these two teams meet in the 2025 NBA Finals.
Thunder avenge loss to Cavaliers in rematch of league’s top teams
The ‘Race to 70’ really does matter here
I tend to make a real effort to avoid overreacting to regular-season matchups when it comes to projecting a playoff series. There is too much noise and randomness in the flow of the regular-season schedule versus knowing you have to beat a team four times in a seven-game span. The Cavs and Thunder each defended their home court in their two games so far.
This had me thinking about what could matter most if this is indeed a Finals preview. For many teams in this era of 3-point variance and forced parity by the league, I always wonder if home-court advantage matters like it once did.
With that being said, it might really matter when it comes to these two teams. The Cavs are 20-2 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. The Thunder have a mark of 18-2 in the Paycom Center. And you have to remember that neither team has a ton of postseason experience or success. Cleveland had an obvious level of comfort with its fourth-quarter execution when hosting OKC in last week’s matchup. The Thunder’s energy when it was their turn to host helped them blitz a good Cavs defense. Finding comfort in the most tense moments and under the brightest spotlight will be paramount to having or maintaining an edge.
The Cavs have underperformed for various reasons the last two postseasons with their current group. Some variables have been out of their control (injuries), while others have been indictments of roster construction. Naturally, it’s easy to compare the success of this group to anything the franchise accomplished with LeBron James, but that has nothing to do with this current era. These Cavaliers are contending but have only won six playoff games the last two postseasons.
By comparison, the Thunder don’t have any extra experience the Cavs don’t possess. In fact, they have less. OKC didn’t even make the playoffs two years ago, although it made a brief Play-In appearance. Like Cleveland, the Thunder made it through only one series last year before Dallas exploited many bad tendencies that befall young squads when faced with playoff pressure and expectations. They’re still learning on the job, and as the Boston Celtics proved for years, that can take a long time before it might result in becoming a champion.
I say all that to express how both of these teams might need to chase 70 wins this season to ensure Game 7 is on their respective home floor, should it come to that. Both teams are on pace for 69.7 victories, which is essentially 70. Reaching that threshold is special and historically rare, but each team might also need to do it to be comfortable at home for possibly the biggest game of the season.
Whose shooting do you trust more?
In the first three quarters of Thursday night’s blowout victory, the Thunder shot the lights out and screwed new bulbs into the light fixtures just to shoot them out some more. They were above 60 percent from the field and 45 percent from 3-point range. Shooting well overall isn’t anything new for the Thunder. They’re top 10 in field goal percentage for the season. However, this is a team that has struggled to make 3s, as they currently rank tied for 18th in 3-point percentage (35.4).
That’s a far cry from last season, when the Thunder were one of the best outside-shooting teams in the league. Even though they were middle of the pack in 3-point attempts, OKC had the highest accuracy with a 38.9 percent mark from deep. All season long, I’ve been waiting for the Thunder’s shooting to pick back up. It may not happen until injured big man Chet Holmgren returns to the floor. But while it is a little shocking to see them shoot so inconsistently after last season, it’s also a reminder of how poorly they shot in their six-game series loss to Dallas in the playoffs.
As for Cleveland, we saw this team look great offensively a couple years ago, and coach Kenny Atkinson has taken it to a brand new level this season. Although they shot just 13-of-42 (31 percent) from 3 in the loss to OKC, they’re still the best 3-point shooting team in the NBA. The Cavs, who knock down 39.7 percent of their 3s, attempt the fifth-most triples and rank third in such makes. Regarding this group’s own knack for regression, though, we also saw it shoot 32.7 percent from deep in a five-game series loss to the Knicks in 2023 and make only 28.7 percent of its 3s in a seven-game series win over Orlando last year. Against the eventual champion Celtics, the Cavaliers shot just 34.6 percent from deep in a five-game series loss.
We’ve seen both teams light up the other. We’ve also seen each squad fail to make key buckets in big playoff moments. Which team’s shooting is more reliable to you?
When both teams are whole, who guards SGA?
I keep having to remind myself that, despite its nightly dominance, this Thunder team still has Holmgren to add back into the mix. That’s a scary thought for most opponents, but it’s also fascinating to think about when assessing Cleveland’s potential defensive matchups. In the regular-season series between the Cavs and Thunder, we’ve seen a lot of moments in which Evan Mobley found himself trying to check Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The Cavs had success with this matchup when they hosted the Thunder last week, and Mobley’s length, mobility and intelligence give him as good a chance as anybody to try to contain the NBA’s leading scorer.
At the same time, SGA is so crafty that even defensive aces like Mobley can only contain so much before the dam breaks and the points start flowing out. The Cavs can quite easily use Mobley as SGA’s primary defender or as the first help defender when the Thunder only have one big man. But what happens when Holmgren is back and the Thunder can counter Cleveland’s two-big approach with Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein? It changes a lot of what both teams can do or even try to pull off.
To compensate, the Cavaliers may use defensive wing Isaac Okoro more often to check SGA. However, tthe Thunder’s MVP candidate can eventually crack that code, too, and deploying Okoro might hurt Cleveland’s offense.
The danger with throwing too many bodies SGA’s way is his willingness as a passer on a Thunder team that can swing that thing around the floor. There is no one way to defend someone like SGA, and some would argue the most you can do is try to get in his way and clutch your prayer beads whenever a shot goes up. But the matchup possibilities and problems formed by a fully healthy Thunder squad are immense.
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Getting off to a great start really matters
To be clear: this doesn’t just mean the first few minutes of the game, although that’s obviously an important part! But these two teams do have the NBA’s best first-quarter net ratings. Both squads’ execution and purpose are amplified when coming out of jump balls, quarter breaks, halftime or even timeouts. They thrive on putting gameplans and adjustments to the test. We saw the Thunder get out to a monster start against the Cavs Thursday night, and it proved vital. Even in a game where you blow out an elite team like the Cavs, the pressure to keep it going only heightens. This is because you know they can weather the storm and remain confident in their offense eventually hitting.
That’s what happened when the two teams came out of key breaks in the first matchup. The Cavs kept executing as the Thunder hiccuped with their shot-making. It doomed them. The Thunder didn’t let that happen in Thursday’s rematch, though, and came out of the break between the first two quarters with even more focus. Then, they did it again at halftime.
Cleveland knows this Thunder defense is quite deadly and relentless, so it needs good starts to not let the latter’s defense get in rhythm or the flow state we saw in the second matchup. If you know an offensive or defensive storm will eventually hit, you need to bank on scoring differential as early and often as possible.
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Whose team identity feels more sustainable?
Although Holmgren and Hartenstein will eventually anchor the Thunder’s big-man rotation, this is still a team that likes to play small. OKC enjoys the versatility, speed, lateral explosiveness and quick hands that create turnovers. It can roll out a small lineup of SGA, Lu Dort, Alex Caruso, Cason Wallace and Jalen Williams and feel completely fine in its defensive gameplan and and execution. The Thunder eventually will have the ability to play small, medium or big, but we know they thrive on being the small team that defends. Those lineups don’t shy from physicality.
On the other hand, the Cavs love playing with their own two bigs: Jarrett Allen and Mobley. They have a dynamic but small backcourt with Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland, so the two bigs behind them definitely matter. We’ve seen so much improvement with the Cavs’ big-to-big playmaking and using Mobley as an offensive focal point in general. They can defend and enjoy an expanded offense while big.
It’ll be interesting to see which identity is able to better sustain success once the postseason is here. Throw in the possibility of a rematch in the NBA Finals, and how either team adjusts away from its identity could be the difference between winning it all or being disappointed by season’s end.
We have a long way to go before either team is in the title round, though, if they even get there. Through all this, you can’t ignore the reigning NBA champion Celtics, nor can you blow past the West gauntlet in front of OKC. But this would be an incredibly fun NBA Finals matchup, even if Thursday night’s game didn’t give us the goods we wanted.
(Top photo: Joshua Gateley / Getty Images )
