5 Biggest 1st-Round Playoff Choke Jobs in NBA History

The NBA playoffs are a magical time.

Even though a team must endure four seven-game series to win an NBA title, it always appears to be a blur that happens to occur during the year. A month suddenly feels like a week as we view competitive basketball game after competitive game. You're witnessing 16 teams that have made it to the next level and are focused on one thing and one only: an NBA championship.

These teams all stand by the belief that they're going to win. From the No. 1 seed that records over 60 wins to the No. 8 seed that sometimes barely exceeds 40, every single team believes they will compete hard enough and flourish through scrutiny in order to achieve the objective that they've been attempting to reach for months.

Sometimes when you have one of those 40-win teams taking on a 60-win team, uncharacteristic stuff is bound to happen. The beautiful thing about sports is every single aspect of the game is unpredictable. Nothing is ever certain and anything is possible. Expecting the unexpected is one of the greatest reasons to watch a sport.

You can call it an obsession, but I call it adoration—an adoration for a game that goes against the norm and continually proves you wrong when you reach a moment where you believe you finally understand. The reality is that you never understand. Everything is uncertain and unpredictable, and that helps a lot in lives that can get monotonous.

With that being said, we take a look at five of the league's greatest first-round upsets. This list is in no particular order. It features five teams that have gone against the norm and did what was thought to be impossible by defeating supposedly superior teams.

The Miami Heat Lose to the New York Knicks...Again

If you judged the Miami Heat's game against the New York Knicks by their 100-67 thrashing Saturday afternoon, you probably wouldn't assume that the two teams had one of the most heated rivalries in NBA history.

Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Heat and Knicks plain didn't like each other. Animosity stemming from tension between Larry Johnson and Alonzo Mourning in Charlotte blew its top in one of the most embarrassing NBA fights ever seen. An altercation between Charlie Ward and P.J. Brown in 1997 also contributed to a memorable first-round series between the two teams in 1999.

In the lockout-shortened 1998-99 campaign, the Heat captured the No. 1 seed while the Knicks took the eighth seed. Most matchups between first and eighth seeds are lopsided, but not in this case, as New York only finished six games behind the Heat. This was the third consecutive postseason where the teams would match up.

The Heat won in 1997 thanks to suspensions to several key New York players, and the Knicks won in 1998 as a seventh seed. The 1999 matchup, even though it came after a lockout-shortened season, was one for the ages if you judged it by the past two series matchups. These were two teams who hated each other and had bad blood in the past.

It didn't matter if this came after a lockout; we were going to see two teams play each other to the final second.

Sure enough, it did come down to the final second. With the series tied at two games apiece, the Knicks had the ball with the seconds waning down in the decisive Game 5. Allan Houston had the ball in his hands, took the final shot and watched as it bounced on the rim a number of times before falling right before the buzzer.

The Heat would become the second No. 1 seed to ever lose to a No. 8 seed, while the Knicks would make it all the way to the NBA Finals.

The Sonics Can't Scale Mt. Mutombo

There was no lockout to blame here; this was a legitimate No. 8 seed in the Denver Nuggets beating a powerhouse No. 1 seed in the Seattle SuperSonics.

The Nuggets weren't expected to make much noise. They had a talented defensive juggernaut in Dikembe Mutombo and solid players in Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf and Dale Ellis. Still, that's not much talent to compete with a Sonics team that boasted a prolific tandem in Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp.

The Sonics were devastating in the 1993-94 regular season. They finished the season 63-19, which was a full five games ahead of the next-best team. With Michael Jordan out of the league and the Bulls having less of a chance to go for a fourth consecutive title, this was meant to be the Sonics' year to take advantage.

Instead, they ran into a Nuggets team that finished the season 42-40, five games behind the seventh seed and 21 games behind their first-round opponent.

The first two games of the series went exactly as we thought they would. The Sonics annihilated the Nuggets by 24 points in Game 1 and then 10 in Game 2. By this point, the Nuggets appeared to merely be a stepping stone on the Sonics' journey to their first championship since 1979.

Perhaps Seattle got a little too caught up looking forward because the entire outlook of the series changed once it shifted to Denver.

The Nuggets punched the Sonics in the mouth in Game 3 with a 110-93 beating. The Sonics could have taken Game 4, but faltered late before succumbing 94-85 in overtime. Even with the two disappointing losses, the series would shift back to Seattle, a location where the Sonics had just beaten the Nuggets by a combined 34 points in two games.

It wasn't the case. The two teams fought it to the end, but it was the Nuggets walking away with the historic upset by way of a 98-94 overtime victory. The series was capped off by the memorable image of a young Mutombo falling onto the court, clutching the basketball and screaming in disbelief.

What most people probably don't remember is how the Nuggets came a game away from advancing to the conference finals. In their semifinals series against the Utah Jazz, the Nuggets came all the way back from a 3-0 deficit for a deciding Game 7. Unfortunately for Denver, the run stopped there, with the Jazz winning Game 7 91-81.

In one postseason, the Nuggets became the first eighth seed in NBA history to defeat a No. 1 seed and then nearly became the first NBA team to ever come back from a 3-0 deficit.

The New Jersey Nets Make the Philadelphia 76ers Suddenly Feel Old

The 1982-83 Philadelphia 76ers will forever go down as one of the greatest NBA teams.

Not only did they annihilate their regular-season competition en route to a 65-17 record, but Hall of Fame center Moses Malone even went on to predict a complete sweep of the postseason by sweeping all three of their opponents.

They couldn't pull it off. They went a disappointing 12-1 that was capped off by a sweep of the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals.

The Sixers were riding high, to say the least. Featuring point guard Mo Cheeks, athletic forward Julius Erving and the aforementioned Malone, the Sixers were favorites to win it again the very next year.

They didn't finish as good as the year before, only compiling a 52-30 record, but they could still very well run the table and win a second consecutive championship. After all, how much could change in the span of a year? The Sixers still had their three top players and were coming off one of the most dominant postseason performances in NBA history.

The Sixers were slated to play the division-rival New Jersey Nets. The Nets were a young franchise that had joined the NBA in 1976 and had yet to win a postseason series. They made it to the postseason the previous two seasons only to get swept in both first-round series. Surely this team would be no match for a powerhouse like Philadelphia.

It was an interesting series—far more interesting than what anyone probably expected. The Nets took Games 1 and 2 in Philly, winning Game 1 by 15 and Game 2 by 14. The Sixers were in danger of being swept, but then gave the Nets a taste of their own medicine by winning both games in New Jersey.

The series came down to a decisive Game 5 in Philadelphia, and sure enough, the Nets ended up winning that game as well. With the 101-98 victory, the Nets advanced to the second round for the first time since joining the NBA.

The Sixers would bounce back to make the conference finals next season, but wouldn't make it to another NBA Finals until 2001.

The Houston Rockets Take Down the Showtime Lakers

The 1981 NBA playoffs certainly weren't drawn out as they are now.

There wasn't a seven-game series until the second round. The first round would be decided in a three-game series, which is a little ridiculous if you think about it.

The playoffs in the 1980s, however, didn't mess around. You either won immediately or you were done.

This didn't work out well for the Los Angeles Lakers. Featuring a starting lineup that included a young Magic Johnson and an unstoppable post presence in Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the Lakers were coming off their first NBA championship since 1972 after a 4-2 defeat of the Philadelphia 76ers.

While they couldn't match the regular-season success of that season, the Lakers still came away with a third seed after compiling a 54-28 record. Nevertheless, they were still heavy favorites to win the title. The duo of Johnson and Abdul-Jabbar was a prolific duo that was believed to be impossible to stop.

With Johnson's ball-handling and court vision at 6'9" and Abdul-Jabbar's sky hook that was impossible to block, what team could have the defensive weapons to limit these two?

Well, the Houston Rockets could. They were a young franchise with hardly any sort of playoff success. Prior to the 1981 postseason, the Rockets had advanced past the first round of the playoffs on only three occasions. They had never won more than 50 games in a season as a franchise and were coming into the 1981 playoffs with a 40-42 record.

The Lakers should have manhandled the Rockets, but it turned out to be the opposite. Houston pulled off the Game 1 upset in Los Angeles with a 111-107 victory, but the Lakers would avoid the monumental upset by winning Game 2 in Houston by five.

However, it only prolonged the inevitable, as the Rockets ended up taking Game 3 by a score of 89-86.

Once again, the Rockets, who were a low seed, didn't just stop with their first-round upset. They ended up making it all the way to the NBA Finals before bowing out in six games to the Boston Celtics.

The Golden State Warriors Unleash the Kraken

The 2006-07 Dallas Mavericks were something serious.

Equipped with a 67-15 record, the reigning MVP in Dirk Nowitzki and motivation stemming from their embarrassing NBA Finals defeat to the Miami Heat the previous year, the Mavericks steamrolled their way through the regular season. We were convinced that this would be the year where Nowitzki and Company would finally transition that excellent regular-season play to the postseason.

The playoffs and the Mavericks didn't exactly go hand in hand. They had won at least 50 games every year since 2000, yet made it to two conference finals and an NBA Finals on only one occasion. For some strange reason, Dirk and the Mavericks simply weren't ready for a seven-game series. They were losing to teams in the postseason that they were beating with ease in the regular season.

However, the 2006-07 Mavericks were different. This was a team that meant business, and they showcased that with their best season in franchise history, as well as one of the best NBA seasons in NBA history. They were ready to finally make their run to the NBA Finals with positive results as the outcome this time around.

They were slated to take on the Golden State Warriors. The Warriors hadn't made the playoffs since 1994 and barely made it to the 2007 postseason after recording a 42-40 record. They had an athletic lineup that included Baron Davis, Jason Richardson and Stephen Jackson, but they weren't expected to provide much a fight against a 67-win team that was extremely motivated.

Then the series started, and it went exactly as we thought.

Wait, did I say exactly as we thought? I meant it went completely haywire and the Warriors somehow beat the Mavericks 97-85 in Dallas' own house. Dallas would come back with a healthy 112-99 win in Game 2, but the damage was done. The Mavericks were vulnerable, and they simply were not ready for what would transpire over the next two games in Oakland.

The Warriors killed the Mavericks in Game 3 by way of a 109-91 victory and then won a tight one in Game 4. Golden State was up 3-1 in the series before Dallas won 118-112 back home. The Mavericks weren't done. If they took Game 6, then they would have the decisive Game 7 back home.

It didn't happen. Golden State came out swinging and didn't look back before ending up with a staggering 111-86 victory.