A lot about the NBA is predictable season over season. Even more of it is not.

Pleasant surprises, disarming disappointments and unforeseen storylines and developments are the standard across the 82-game schedule. And with so much coming out of left field, acknowledging and appreciating all that we didn't see coming is the only call.

This space will spotlight the biggest surprises—both good and bad—the 2024-25 campaign has spit out so far.

Selections will cater to macro topics, such as entire-team performances and developments, rather than individual breakouts or curveballs. And the bar for entry is incredibly high.

Outcomes with even a puncher's chance of coming to fruition before the season—such as Jimmy Butler trade rumors—need not apply. We want the developments that are equal parts unexpected and potentially landscape-altering.

Cleveland Contending for 'Best in the NBA' Honors

Reasonable minds understood the Cleveland Cavaliers would be a threat in the Eastern Conference. Nobody predicted what we're seeing right now—at least not with a straight face.

Cleveland is just the fourth team in league history to begin the season on a 15-game winning streak. Through 27 games, it currently owns the 10th-best net rating of all time at plus-10.6, a mere stone's throw from the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors squad that won a record 73 games.

Speaking of which, if the Cavs' current pace holds, they will become just the third team to win at least 85 percent of their games. Their prospective company: those 2015-16 Dubs and the 1995-96, 72-win Chicago Bulls.

It feels a little early to be tracking the all-time regular-season stock of this Cleveland squad. Then again, the East is the East, and we are more than one-quarter of the way through the schedule.

So is it really too early? Especially when most of the Cavs rotation—including Evan Mobley, Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell, Jarrett Allen, Caris LeVert, Isaac Okoro and Ty Jerome—is playing the best or near-best basketball of their careers?

The Houston Rockets Arriving So Soon

Perhaps you saw the Houston Rockets providing an adequate encore to a 2023-24 campaign in which they won 41 games. Did you also see them vying for...second place in the Western Conference...and entering, at worst, the fringes of title contention...without making a single offseason acquisition beyond drafting the sparingly used Reed Sheppard?

There's still this tendency to write off Houston as plucky-but-ephemeral. Amen Thompson and Tari Eason are healthier and more experienced than they were last season. So, of course, the Rockets are better. They will invariably cede ground to more conventional contenders.

Maybe this turns out to be true. Houston's defense is harrowing, and it's scraping together juuust enough offense. But its first-chance attack ranks 25th, according to PBP Stats. And extensive big-game reps from Dillon Brooks and Fred VanVleet don't amount to enough experience.

Suggesting the Rockets are here temporarily or focusing solely on what happens in the postseason nevertheless misses the mark. They don't just have a top-two defense and top-seven net rating. They have the fifth-best point differential against teams that rank in the top 10 of that category.

This isn't a fluke. It's an arrival.

The East's Factory of Sadness and Confusion

Everybody knew a Philadelphia 76ers team built around Joel Embiid and Paul George would cope with absences galore. But these two have appeared in just three games together with Tyrese Maxey.

And the Sixers find themselves in 12th place nearly 25 games into the season. And this says nothing of Jared McCain's surprise Rookie of the Year candidacy that was then derailed by a torn meniscus.

The reigning NBA Cup champion Milwaukee Bucks have started to figure things out. And yet, their margin for error is slimmer than we imagined. Even during their most recent stretch, their point differential with Peak Giannis Antetokounmpo falls into the good-not-great bucket.

Most understood the New York Knicks would face defensive issues after trading for Karl-Anthony Towns and not having Mitchell Robinson. Did anyone think Mikal Bridges would be part of that problem? Or that New York would have a top-five net rating yet still feel one significant trade short of title contention despite just shipping out a trillion picks?

Absolutely nobody expected oblique injuries to sway the race for No. 3 in the East. Because, frankly, absolutely nobody had the Orlando Magic contending for that slot.

Oh, and by the way, the Atlanta Hawks are good on defense now. The Jimmy Butler trade rumors are predictable. Did we see them coming when the Miami Heat have been playing like a top-10 team at both ends for over a month?

The Brooklyn Nets have won more games than the Sixers—which is to say they won too many and needed to make a Dennis Schröder trade by Dec. 15. What happened to the Indiana Pacers? Why are the Chicago Bulls fun and winning just enough for it to be too much?

Making sense of the Eastern Conference beyond the Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers and a handful of expected bottom-feeders is an exercise in futility.

Overall Outlooks for the Kings and Clippers

It comes as little surprise that the Sacramento Kings have failed to emerge as title contenders despite the DeMar DeRozan acquisition. It is positively shocking that if the season ended today, they wouldn't even make the Play-In Tournament.

Granted, Western Conference margins remain nonexistent. The Kings enter games on Thursday just sitting in 12th place, which is also just four losses off fifth place. Their season is not beyond saving.

It also will not take much for that to change. One more bad stretch is enough to force recalibration of what's in place. That's assuming the front office isn't already doing so. If and when that introspection comes, does it wind up with the Kings tripling-down on the trade market? Or do they start to have some more uncomfortable, seller-type discussions?

Meanwhile, one of the teams everyone was oh-so-sure would miss the play-in is doing the exact opposite. The Los Angeles Clippers are playing hellfire defense and getting a Most Improved Player-worthy leap from Norman Powell. Never mind the play-in, these Clippers are over .500 and one loss behind a top-six slot.

We must default to them being paper tigers so long as the offense remains what it is now. But, uh, Kawhi Leonard could change that if he gets relatively healthy—and then stays that way.

There is also the prospect L.A. takes a swing on the trade market of its own. Months ago, you'd assume this meant shopping Powell or James Harden or Kawhi himself. Now, it likely means doubling down on a window everyone thought had closed—potentially including the Clippers themselves.

Denver's Pursuit of Zach LaVine

Zach LaVine currently tops the list of Denver Nuggets trade targets, according to The Athletic's Tony Jones and Sam Amick.

That is not a sentence I envisioned writing at any point this season.

Few left the summer feeling better about the Nuggets. But their dependence on Nikola Jokić is starker than ever. A LaVine pursuit—which will cost, at bottom, Michael Porter Jr. and the seldom-used Zeke Nnaji—theoretically reverses some of that vulnerability. And Denver's fans, more than anyone, understand Jamal Murray is a peak-and-valley personified.

Still, think about what we're contemplating here for a minute.

A team with the best-ever version of the already-generational Jokić, that has recently prioritized cost-controlled development, is looking to juice its offense of all things by acquiring someone who'd rank as its second-highest paid player.

These are bizarro times, friends.

Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@danfavale), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes.

Unless otherwise cited, stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference, Stathead or Cleaning the Glass.