Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert
Kyle Terada-Imagn Images
The Cavaliers finished the regular season with the best record in the Eastern Conference and seemed poised to make a deep run in the playoffs. Owner Dan Gilbert decided to drop $500,000 on fake snow machines ahead of the postseason in the hopes of injecting some excitement into home games, but that decision did not end up paying off.
The Cleveland Cavaliers headed into the most recent NBA season hoping to punch their ticket to the playoffs for the third year in a row, and it was clear they were going to check that box pretty early on courtesy of the blistering start that saw the franchise boasting a 33-4 record midway through January.
The Cavs ultimately finished with a 64-18 record while posting 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) with the help of the lopsided scoring runs they routinely went on to put some distance between themselves and their opponents.
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.
According to The Athletic, owner Dan Gilbert decided to go one step further before the playoffs kicked off by spending $500,000 to install artificial snow machines inside Rocket Arena so they could be triggered to shower the stands with fake flakes whenever a Cavalanche occured.
IT’S SNOWING IN ROCKET ARENA FOR THE CAVALANCHE #LetEmKnow pic.twitter.com/spNol7tUru
— Isaac Okoro Fan Club (@IsaacOkoroFan) April 24, 2025
They were triggered when Cleveland went on a 17-4 run in Game 3 against the Heat during the series that ended with Miami being swept. However, as the outlet notes, that was the only time they were used during the playoffs, as there wasn’t a single Cavalanche to be found in the second-round series where Cleveland lost every home game against the Pacers before being eliminated in five games.
It’s unclear if the cost of the snow machines reflects the investment needed to make them a permanent fixture going forward, but I certainly hope that’s the case.