With the Eastern Conference’s best record at the end of the regular season, the Cavaliers appeared ready for a deep playoff run. In an attempt to add some excitement to home games before the postseason, owner Dan Gilbert spent $500,000 on fake snow machines, but his investment did not prove fruitful.
The Cleveland Cavaliers entered the most recent NBA season with the goal of making the playoffs for the third consecutive year. It was evident early on that they would be able to accomplish that goal, as the team had a scorching start with a 33-4 record halfway through January.
With the aid of the lopsided scoring runs they frequently went on to put some distance between themselves and their opponents, the Cavaliers ended up finishing with a 64-18 record and an average scoring margin of 9.5 points (second only to the Thunder, who finished at +12.5 en route to securing the best record in the NBA).
The team has adopted the term “Cavalanche” to describe those runs and even went as far as to file a trademark for the phrase toward the end of the season.
The Athletic reports that before the playoffs began, owner Dan Gilbert made the bold decision to spend $500,000 installing artificial snow machines inside Rocket Arena. These machines would be set to automatically spray the spectators with simulated flakes if a Cavalanche occurred.
They were set off when Cleveland defeated the Heat 17–4 in Game 3 of the series, which resulted in Miami being swept. But as the site points out, that was the only time they were utilized during the playoffs because Cleveland lost all of their home games against the Pacers in the second-round series and was defeated in five games without using a Cavalanche.