Highlights include 23 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 championship ...

In 2016, the Cavaliers won their first NBA Championship, marking Cleveland's first major sports title since 1964. The 2016 NBA Finals victory over the Golden State Warriors marked the first time in Finals history a team had come back to win the series after trailing, 3–1.

Six teams from each of the two conferences automatically advance to the playoffs based on regular season winning percentage, while those teams finishing seven through 10 from each conference compete in the play-in tournament to determine the final two playoff seeds.

The Cavaliers began play as an NBA expansion team in 1970 under the ownership of the ambitious entrepreneur Nick Mileti, who at one time owned not only the Cavs but also baseball's Cleveland Indians and the city's World Hockey Association franchise (the Cavaliers have since gone through several changes of ownership).