On Saturday evening, the Cleveland Cavaliers moved to a perfect record of 11-0 with a narrow home win vs the Brooklyn Nets. The Cavs have already set the franchise record for most consecutive wins to open up a season, and point guard Darius Garland’s improved play has been a large part of the reason why, a trend that continued with an efficient game on Sunday vs the Nets.
The league is quickly taking notice of the Cavs’ hot start–they are now the only team still standing undefeated after a recent loss by the Oklahoma City Thunder–and recently, Garland got one hundred percent real on why he believes that it is sustainable.
“I don’t think this is just any old fluke,” said Garland, via NBA TV. “We’ve played some really good teams out of these 11 games and we’ve had some great challenges. Even tonight we had a little bit of adversity, we had some challenges going through the entire 48 minutes of the game, and in the fourth quarter, we just turned it up a little bit on both sides of the ball and I think we can do that for all 82 games… I think we have a really good chance at being one of these contenders.”
Is the Cavs’ hot start sustainable?
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Sustainable as in 82-0? Probably not, as the closest any team has ever gotten to reaching that mark was the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors, who finished 73-9. However, there is plenty of reason to believe that the Cavs will be able to remain at or near the top of the Eastern Conference playoff picture if they’re able to stay relatively healthy throughout the season.
We know about Donovan Mitchell and his status as arguably the best shooting guard in the entire NBA, but this year has seen immense improvement from both Garland and Evan Mobley, who has continued to expand upon the flashes of offensive dominance that he showed at times during the playoffs last year after Jarrett Allen went down.
The team is also filled with elite role players like Ty Jerome who had another great game on Saturday vs the Nets, as well as Isaac Okoro, who has turned himself into one of the elite three and D role players in the league.
In any case, the Cavs will look to make their record 12-0 when they next take the floor on Monday evening on the road vs the Chicago Bulls at 8:00 PM ET.
