Wednesday night's showdown between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Cleveland Cavaliers is chock full of enough fascinating matchups and overall basketball excellence to mark this as one of the season's can't-miss games.
It also has the chance to let perhaps the league's best-but-under-celebrated basketball team finally get the shine it deserves. Because a win tonight over OKC might, hopefully allow the Cavs to prove themselves in a season in which that should already have been easily accomplished.
The league should be past the still-too-evolving realization that this Cleveland team is every bit as elite as the Thunder, the Celtics or anyone else out there. They're the real deal. Every bit as dangerous and worthy of plaudits that their record 31-4 should have already foisted upon them.
This game alone should speak to that.
When the Thunder and Cavaliers square off tonight, it will be the first time in NBA history a team on a 15-game winning streak (Oklahoma City) faces a team on a 10-game winning streak (Cleveland).
It will be the first inter-conference game in NBA history this deep into a season that teams with winning percentages of .850 or higher play one another, and the first time since the 1971-72 season at least two teams have won 30 of their first 35 games.
The Thunder are 11-0 against the Eastern Conference this season. The Cavs are 10-0 versus the West.
The Thunder have the game's best defense. The Cavs have the best offense.
This a huge game between huge teams -- two huge teams.
And yet there seems, in every corner of the NBA, a lingering doubt. That's not true for the Thunder. But it is for their opponent tonight.
The doubt is not of Cleveland's outstanding play, per se, but of their place as a true, do-doubt, holy-crap-they-scare-us NBA contender.
"Cleveland?" one Eastern Conference general manager mused, when prodded about the Cavs being seen as a ferocious conference foe. "Great season. Really good team. Great on both sides of the ball. But are they quote-un-quote unbeatable? No.
"They're not the Heat when they had LeBron, Dwyane and Chris Bosh," he said. "They're not the Kobe Lakers, or the Spurs, or Golden State when the Warriors got KD. They're really good. But they're not a team you see and think, 'I don't see how we can beat them in a seven-game series.'"
It's a view widely shared out there, where in one breadth those in NBA circles want to praise Cleveland, and in another they like to say they're still not the Celtics -- or, for that matter, the Thunder, who, unlike Boston, are also not defending champions.
"I don't take the Cavs that seriously," another NBA front-office source said. "Not that level."
There's more of that out there, and the point has the same through line: Great story. Amazing start. But not one of the teams to beat. Not a David, sure, but also no Goliath.
Perhaps it's because Cleveland has done nothing without LeBron James in its history, and without him there his residual glow hasn't properly highlighted how good this team truly plays. Maybe it's because they are not, in fact, the defending-champion Boston Celtics, nor the young, interesting, deep-as-hell Thunder team they play Wednesday.
The Thunder, after all, have the betting favorite for this year's Most Valuable Player Award in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. They boast that best defense in the league, with an array of young talent and the bevy of assets General Manager Sam Presti has accumulated through a near-perfect rebuild since pivoting away from Russell Westbrook and Paul George in 2019.
It's hard not to feel the pull of a team bursting with young talent, atop the Western Conference, on this tremendous roll, still able -- if and when they deem its even desired or necessary -- to add even more firepower to what's already a rocketship.
But the Cavs aren't exactly chopped liver, bereft of star power. It's not as if they're just strolling along leisurely through another so-so NBA regular season. They've been brilliant, too.
Donovan Mitchell is, in fact, a superstar. He's averaging at least 20 points per game for the eighth straight season -- his entire career. The other players to do that in their first eight NBA seasons this century is a short list: LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Joel Embiid and Carmelo Anthony.
Evan Mobley has unleashed a career year, and is one of the best defenders in the league. Kenny Atkinson, in his first year as the Cavs head coach, looks like a head coach reborn after stints under Ty Lue in L.A. and then Steve Kerr in Golden State.
Both the Cavs and Thunder have top 10 offenses and defenses, a hallmark historically of an eventual championship team.
The Cavs may not have won last year's title or, like the Thunder, this year's narrative.
But a win on Wednesday, and Cleveland would be on track for a 73-win season -- on pace to perhaps tie the Warriors all-time wins mark.
That's a historic start. This is a historic match up.
And maybe, to boot, a Cavs win will finally give Cleveland the respect they've already clearly earned.
