If history really does repeat itself, Cleveland and Oklahoma City might be en route to the NBA Finals

Hot starts in the NBA can mean two things; either a team is really good or really lucky. After almost two weeks, the verdict on both the Oklahoma City Thunder and Cleveland Cavaliers is that they're really good.

This success was expected for OKC; another year of experience for Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren will do wonders, plus the Thunder addressed their biggest need — rebounding — by adding Isaiah Hartenstein and then got Alex Caruso just for fun, basically. With Shai Gilgeous-Alexander remaining an MVP-caliber guard and the roster also having approximately nine role players who deserve minutes, this team had all the talent to be elite and now it's actually doing it (without Hartenstein so far, nonetheless.)

Cleveland knew it could be good coming off a second-round loss to the eventual NBA champion Boston Celtics, but with new coach Kenny Atkinson calling the shots and essentially the same roster as last year, there was fear of this team fizzling out. Quite the opposite has happened so far; Atkinson's system is working seamlessly, Darius Garland looks like an All-Star point guard again, and Evan Mobley is more aggressive than he's ever been before.

Oklahoma City is currently 5-0 and Cleveland is currently 6-0. The last time each team started with these records? Finals runs ensued.

New eras are proving successful for Cleveland and Oklahoma City

Granted, an awful lot has changed in the time between those Finals runs and today. The last time these teams started this well, they each had a pretty special player on the roster. OKC had Kevin Durant, who led the league in scoring that year at 28.0 points per game, his third straight scoring title. Cleveland, of course, had LeBron James, coming off one of the most memorable NBA Finals wins of the 2010s and still about to lead the NBA in minutes per game.

Are Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Donovan Mitchell equivalent to prime Kevin Durant and LeBron James? Well, no, but considering literally no one in the history of basketball is equivalent to those guys, the current iterations of OKC and Cleveland should still feel pretty good about the guys they have.