 the cleveland cavaliers, also known as the cavs, are an american professional basketball team based in cleveland, ohio. they began playing in the national basketball association (nba) in 1970 as an expansion team. they play their home games at quicken loans arena, which they share with the arena football league's cleveland gladiators and the american hockey league's lake erie monsters. they play in the central division of the eastern conference, the only remaining charter member of the division (all the other central division teams joined later from the now-defunct midwest division). the cavaliers have featured many nba stars during their history, including draft picks turned all-stars austin carr, brad daugherty, zydrunas ilgauskas, mark price, lebron james, and kyrie irving. past nba greats such as nate thurmond, walt "clyde" frazier, anthony bennett and shaquille o'neal have also played in cleveland (albeit near the end of their careers). the team has won three central division championships (1976, 2009, and 2010) and one eastern conference championship (2007), and has had 18 total playoff seasons. however, the team has also had a number of dubious distinctions, such as former owner ted stepien's tenure, which led the nba to create a rule regulating the trading of draft picks ("the stepien rule"), and a 26-game losing streak (which broke the record of 24&nbsp;games which was also set by cleveland) in 2010â11,list of national basketball association longest losing streaks which tied the record for the longest losing streak in major american professional sports. ==franchise history== ===team creation=== [[file:clevelandcavaliersfirstlogo
Basketball_clubs_established_in_1970 Cleveland_Cavaliers National_Basketball_Association_teams