It's a Great NBA Matchup That No One Saw Coming

The NFL playoffs are set to begin this weekend. College football's final four kicks off Thursday. We're set for five straight days of America's favorite game, with juicy storylines and booming TV ratings galore.

But before all that, tucked into the middle of the week and flying a long way under the radar, there's the small matter of one the greatest matchups that professional basketball has ever seen.

It's a showdown between the top teams from the Eastern and Western Conferences. One has a record of 31-4. The other is 30-5. Together they have won 25 games in a row.

And if you have no idea who we're talking about, you're probably not alone.

At the start of the season, no one had Wednesday night's clash between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Oklahoma City Thunder circled as a potential game of the year, much less as an all-time classic. But by the numbers, that is exactly what this is.

It's been nearly a decade since two teams with a combined winning percentage of at least .870 squared off this deep into the regular season. That was when Gregg Popovich's San Antonio Spurs dynasty ran into Stephen Curry's Golden State Warriors, en route to their NBA record 73 wins. Before that, you have to go all the way back to 1972 to find a January matchup between two such accomplished teams, when Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain and the Los Angeles Lakers saw their NBA record 33-game win streak ended by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Oscar Roberston and the Milwaukee Bucks.

Those teams were loaded with NBA legends. It's fair to say that Cavs-Thunder, on the other hand, isn't exactly stacked with household names. In fact, most of America probably couldn't name a single player on the court - and the number of people who can correctly spell the name of Thunder star and MVP front-runner Shai Gilgeous-Alexander might be even smaller.

Add in the relative size of the teams' markets-Cleveland and Oklahoma City are hardly Los Angeles and New York-and you understand how a heavyweight contest of this caliber has managed to sneak up even on some NBA die-hards. Those that tune in will see a measuring-stick game between two teams that have the look of genuine championship contenders.

The Cavaliers boast the NBA's top offense, a whirring attack designed by a new coach, Kenny Atkinson. They lean on total team basketball-despite scoring more than 122 points a night, they don't have a single player ranked in the top 20 leaguewide in scoring.

The Thunder, meanwhile, have the sport's staunchest defense, led by a band of pickpockets who will swipe any loose dribble that appears in front of them.

In many ways, the Cavs and Thunder underline a curious reality about the parity-rich NBA of the 2020s. The league was once lorded over by dynasties that competed year after year for championships and built their best players into global superstars. (Think of Curry's annual showdowns with LeBron James in the NBA Finals.)

Now, due in part to financial rules that let top players earn more if they remain with their original teams, the NBA's playing field has leveled. Over the last six seasons, six different franchises have won the championship.