2014 NBA Playoffs: Will There Be a First-Round Upset?

With a terrifyingly physical team occupying the No. 7 seed in the West and a highly vulnerable former powerhouse stumbling into the playoffs with the East's top seed, you'd think the 2013-14 NBA postseason would be ripe for a first-round upset.

But the truth is, it takes some serious analytical stretching to see one of the favorites falling early.

The East and the Semantics of Upsets

For clarity's sake, we can rule out a few upset candidates right away. A jumble of teams in the East's middle of the pack make for a couple of series that wouldn't really fit under the "upset" heading, no matter how they turned out.

We're admittedly narrowing the definition of an upset here, but let's be honest: Would it really be a shock if a 44-38 Washington Wizards team on a four-game winning streak beat the 48-34 Chicago Bulls? That'd technically be a fifth seed beating a fourth seed, but nobody would bat an eye if it happened.

Nick Wass

And it wouldn't be a stunner if the Brooklyn Nets—who deliberately gave away two games at the end of the season to fall into the No. 6 spot—knocked off the Toronto Raptors? Everyone's been crowing about Brooklyn as a playoff threat for the past two months. It'd be a little silly to overreact if the Nets beat Toronto, wouldn't it?

For what it's worth, I don't think either of those "upsets" will happen anyway. But even if they did, they wouldn't send the world spinning off its axis.

We can also safely rule out the Charlotte Bobcats defeating the Miami Heat. Not because it wouldn't count as an upset, but because such an outcome is basically impossible. Miami doesn't drop first-round series; it flips the switch and dominates them.

You'll note we've left a certain series in the East unmentioned. More on that later.

The West: More Chalk

David J. Phillip

The Houston Rockets and Portland Trail Blazers have identical records, with Houston owning the higher seed because of a regular-season tiebreaker. Almost everyone is picking the No. 4 Rockets over the No. 5 Blazers, so perhaps we could rightly term a Portland victory an "upset," but it wouldn't feel like the shocker we're looking for.

If the Golden State Warriors get hot from the perimeter and leverage a small-ball attack to beat the No. 3 Los Angeles Clippers, that would definitely qualify as a full-on upset. But without Andrew Bogut, the Warriors' defense suffers immensely. It's difficult to imagine L.A. losing a series in which it will almost certainly have the advantage on the glass, in the paint and in the coaching department.

We can comfortably treat the matchup between the Dallas Mavericks and top-seeded San Antonio Spurs like we did the one between the Heat and Bobcats in the East.

Per CBS Sports' Matt Moore:

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This team cannot defend. Against other Western Conference opponents, they give up 110 points per 100 possessions. That's a blood fountain of a wound. Jose Calderon and Monta Ellis on the perimeter is a lot of the problem, and with Dirk not a great interior help defender, it gets tougher. Samuel Dalembert struggles to rotate, and Brandan Wright still is uneven in decision-making. They're going to create some tight games with their offense, but you need defense to win in the playoffs, as cliche as that is.

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Dallas is a flawed team, incapable of mustering enough defense to scare the Spurs, who beat the Mavericks in all four meetings this season.

The best bet for an upset in the West is the No. 7 Memphis Grizzlies taking down the No. 2 Oklahoma City Thunder. Remember, the Grizz beat OKC last year with Russell Westbrook watching from the sidelines, and they play with the kind of gritty defense and deliberate pace that could wear down the more athletic Thunder.

Sue Ogrocki

OKC's defense is vulnerable to long-range shooting and, if Memphis emphasizes Mike Miller and Courtney Lee's perimeter games at the expense of Tayshaun Prince's general uselessness, the Thunder could have problems. 

Of course, Memphis shot fewer triples than anyone this past season, which makes such a strategy unlikely.

Oklahoma City is a great team, capable of winning a title behind the star power of Kevin Durant and Westbrook, despite an uninventive offense and a defense prone to lapses. Memphis needs absolutely everything to go right to win this series.

I don't think that'll happen, but of the legitimate upset options out West, this is the easiest to envision.

The Best Option

R Brent Smith

The Indiana Pacers are the East's top seed, which means losing in the first round would, by definition, qualify as an upset.

Full disclosure: I picked Indy to dispatch the No. 8 Atlanta Hawks in five games because I think it's unwise to focus entirely on how the Pacers have been playing lately, while forgetting the 50 games in which they were the league's best team.

Those games happened. They count. And even if Indy only plays at a level somewhere between their early dominance and rough closing stretch, it should be enough to beat the Hawks handily.

But what if the Pacers' chemistry erodes further? What if Roy Hibbert's disappearing act can't be cured by a little rest and renewed focus? What if Atlanta spaces the floor the way everybody thinks it will and gets hot for a couple of games, perhaps stealing one of the first two in Indiana?

Per Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today, head coach Frank Vogel says the Pacers are doing their best to pull together:

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When you have high-character people, which (Pacers President) Larry Bird built this team on, you overcome all that and stay together. It's talking and listening. Listening is just as important. Hearing what someone else is saying is important.

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The point is, this is the hardest series to confidently predict because of the sheer range of possible performances the Pacers might turn in.

Ultimately, I still don't think Indy will lose in the first round, but given what we've seen from it lately, we know it's capable of laying an egg. After all, it did just that in its final regular-season meeting with the Hawks.

If forced to choose one, the Indiana-Atlanta matchup seems the most likely upset in the first round. But realistically, I don't see any upsets in the cards.

For entertainment's sake, I'd like to be wrong.