The

Cleveland Cavaliers The Cleveland Cavaliers (often referred to as the Cavs) are an American professional basketball team based in Cleveland. The Cavaliers compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference (NBA), Ea ...

(also known simply as the Cavs) are an American professional

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

team based in

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

. They began playing in the

National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United S ...

(NBA) in 1970. This list summarizes the team's season-by-season records, including post-season, and includes select season-end awards won by the team's players and/or coaches. The Cavaliers were founded in 1970 as an

expansion franchise An expansion team is a new team in a sports league, usually from a city that has not hosted a team in that league before, formed with the intention of satisfying the demand for a local team from a population in a new area. Sporting leagues also ...

and since their first season, they have always played in the Central Division and the Eastern Conference. On October 14, 1970, the Cavs lost to the Buffalo Braves 92–107 in their first game. They have been awarded the first overall draft pick six times, choosing

Austin Carr Austin George Carr (born March 10, 1948) is an American former professional basketball player who played for the Cleveland Cavaliers, Dallas Mavericks, and Washington Bullets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He is known by Cleveland ...

(

1971 * The year 1971 had three partial solar eclipses ( February 25, July 22 and August 20) and two total lunar eclipses (February 10, and August 6). The world population increased by 2.1% this year, the highest increase in history. Events Ja ...

Brad Daugherty Brad Daugherty may refer to: * Brad Daugherty (basketball) (born 1965), American NBA player, currently a television sportscaster * Brad Daugherty (poker player) (born 1951), American poker player {{Hndis, Daugherty, Brad ...

(

1986 The year 1986 was designated as the International Year of Peace by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 ** Aruba gains increased autonomy from the Netherlands by separating from the Netherlands Antilles. **Spain and Portugal ente ...

LeBron James LeBron Raymone James Sr. (; born December 30, 1984) is an American professional basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Nicknamed "King James", he is widely considered one of the greatest pl ...

(

2003 File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A des ...

Kyrie Irving Kyrie Andrew Irving (; lkt, Ȟéla, italic=no, ; born March 23, 1992) is an American professional basketball player for the Brooklyn Nets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He was named the Rookie of the Year after being selected b ...

(

2011 File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...

), Anthony Bennett (

2013 File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment fact ...

) and

Andrew Wiggins Andrew Christian Wiggins (born February 23, 1995) is a Canadian professional basketball player for the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He was selected with the first overall pick in the 2014 NBA draft by th ...

(

2014 File:2014 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Stocking up supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic; Citizens examining the ruins after the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping; Bundles of wat ...

). In his last season with the Cavs, Austin Carr won the

J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award The J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award was an annual National Basketball Association (NBA) award given from 1975 to 2020 to a player, coach, or staff member who showed "outstanding service and dedication to the community." The award was named in ...

, the first of four Cavaliers to win the award (

Eric Snow Eric Snow (born April 5, 1973) is an American basketball coach and former professional player. He played the point guard position in the National Basketball Association from 1995 to 2008 and appeared in three NBA Finals. Known for his defense, ...

Luol Deng Luol Ajou Deng (born 16 April 1985) is a British former professional basketball player. He was a two-time NBA All-Star and was named to the NBA All-Defensive Second Team in 2012. Born in what is now South Sudan, Deng fled the country with his f ...

and LeBron James won the award in 2005, 2014 and 2017, respectively). As a Cavalier, LeBron won Rookie of the Year as well as two MVP awards and two All Star Game MVP awards. He also led the Cavaliers to five

NBA Finals The NBA Finals is the annual championship series of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Eastern and Western Conference champions play a best-of-seven game series to determine the league champion. The team that wins the series is awa ...

, including the last 4 straight, and won the 2016 title as Finals MVP. Cleveland's next first overall pick after James, Kyrie Irving, won Rookie of the Year in 2012 and NBA All-Star Game MVP in 2014. In their 48 seasons, the Cavs have achieved a winning record 23 times. Highlights include 20 playoff appearances, which included winning the Central Division championship seven times ( 1975–76, 2008–09, 2009–10, 2014–15, 2015–16, 2016–17, and 2017–18), winning the Eastern Conference championship five times ( 2006–07, 2014–15, 2015–16, 2016–17, and 2017–18), and winning the NBA Title in

2016 File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses during the 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh ...

. In five straight playoff appearances with LeBron James in his first tenure with Cleveland, the Cavs won more playoff games than they lost each season, something they only ever managed, barely, once before, in the 1991–92 season. Overall, their winning percentage through the years is .456, with 1660 wins and 1967 losses in regular season play (as of March 13, 2015). They are 84–84 in the playoffs, a winning percentage of .500. Cleveland's 2016 championship meant that the Eastern Conference's Central Division is the only current NBA division with more than three of its five franchises having won NBA titles (Cleveland joined Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee as teams with at least one championship).

Key

Seasons

''Note: Statistics are correct as of the .''

All-time records

Notes

References

;General * * ;Specific {{NBA season-by-season team history

seasons A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and pola ...