Biggest 1st-Round NBA Playoff Upsets
We're just days removed from the conclusion of college basketball's postseason, perhaps the most unpredictable event in all of sports.
The NBA postseason, by contrast, is sport's most predictable playoff. Nine of the last 10 championships have been won by a No. 1 or No. 2 seed. A seed outside Nos. 1-3 has not won the title since 1995. Last year's Cleveland Cavaliers were the first No. 4 seed to reach the Finals since the Boston Celtics in 2010.
The reasoning is rather simple: Basketball is basketball. Elite individual players affect basketball games more than any other team sport, and thus good regular-season teams tend to be even better in the postseason. Add in the seven-game series factor, and the NBA playoffs are not ripe for parody.
This even applies to the early rounds. Last year's New Orleans Pelicans were the first seed lower than No. 5 to reach the second round since 2014.
That said, the scarcity of upsets make the ones we do remember all the more special. Here's a look at some of the most surprising first-round results we've seen in NBA history.
1981: Defending Champ Lakers Implode, Lose to Rockets
Also known as the point where the fracture between Magic Johnson and Paul Westhead became a chasm.
The Lakers, a year removed from winning a championship, were taken out by the sixth-seeded Rockets 2-1 in the best-of-three series. Magic and Co. completely no-showed offensively in Game 3, allowing their opponents to earn an 89-86 victory.
Houston, which went 40-42 during the regular season, went on to pull off two more impressive upsets to reach the franchise's first Finals.
The Lakers' implosion reached a head six games into the 1981-82 season, when Johnson requested a trade and Westhead was fired.
1984: Nets Shock Defending Champion Sixers
Sixers: Julius Irving, Moses Malone, Maurice Cheeks and Andrew Toney.
Nets: Otis Birdsong, Darryl Dawkins, Michael Ray Richardson and Buck Williams.
We all know which way this should have gone. The Sixers won a title the year prior and looked like a perennial contender to fight for conference titles with the Boston Celtics. The Nets were an odd group of dudes with checkered pasts without much long-term hope.
It didn't matter.
New Jersey went into Philly and won the first two games of the series, and then after the Sixers stole two back on the road, it went back and won a third game on the road to advance. Nothing about this series makes any type of sense.
1994: Nuggets Beat Sonics, Become First No. 8 Seed to Advance
It took a decade from when the NBA expanded its playoffs to 16 teams for a No. 8 seed to reach the second round.
The Denver Nuggets made it worth the wait.
Not only did they knock out a loaded Sonics team—prime Shawn Kemp, prime Gary Payton, Detlef Schrempf and a young George Karl on the bench is about as stacked as you can get—they did it in style.
After the top-seeded Sonics took both home games to pull ahead 2-0, the Nuggets got theirs back at home and then went on the road in Game 5 for a 98-94 overtime triumph.
If your heart doesn't grow at the image of Dikembe Mutombo lying crumpled on the court hugging the basketball like he just won a title, you have no soul. Or you're from Seattle. In which case...sorry for the reminder and about the Sonics, guys.
1999: Knicks Beat Heat on Allan Houston Game-Winner
A quick asterisk is needed here because this was a lockout-shortened season and the Knicks were not a typical No. 8 seed.
They were a year on from upending the second-seeded Heat in the first round and part of a bitter rivalry that helped define the initial post-MJ years. Remember, the 1998 series between the two teams featured Jeff Van Gundy's infamous ankle-biting incident.
Still.
The Knicks not only went out as the No. 8 seed and defeated the top-seeded Heat again, they did it with one of the biggest shots in New York basketball history. Allan Houston took the ball with 4.4 seconds remaining, split a pair of Miami defenders and hit a one-handed runner to leave just 0.8 seconds remaining and give the Knicks a 78-77 Game 5 win.
Two decades later, it is probably the last truly great moment for the Knicks franchise. Houston's shot wound up setting up an improbable run to the NBA Finals, where they watched Tim Duncan hoist his first title.
2007: We Believe
Otherwise known as the greatest first-round upset in NBA history.
It's hard to remember a version of the NBA where the Golden State Warriors were a perennial sad sack, but that was the case heading into the 2007 postseason. They were making their first playoff appearance since 1993-94 and barely squeaked in at 42-40.
The Mavericks were a juggernaut. A 67-win regular season. Dirk Nowitzki was an in-his-prime MVP. They were also a redemption story hellbent on atoning for their Finals loss to the Miami Heat a year prior.
Everything about this series screamed sweep.
Whoops.
Baron Davis dunked on people's heads, Stephen Jackson rained threes and Andris Biedrins bullied on the boards as the Warriors shocked the world. While Golden State is now known as one of the NBA's best home-court advantages, the Roaracle was born in this series.
The Warriors missed the playoffs a year later and Davis left in free agency that summer, which ultimately led to the 29-53 record that brought them Steph Curry.
For a short stretch in 2007, though, not a soul alive wanted anyone other than Davis to be the Warriors' starting point guard ever again.
2011: Grizzlies Grind Down Spurs, Find Their Identity
Like the "We Believe" Warriors, the Grizzlies entered the 2011 postseason as a perennial doormat facing the class of the NBA.
Zach Randolph had finally matured after years of, umm, being not mature but few fully trusted him. Tony Allen was one of the most maddeningly inconsistent players in the entire league. Marc Gasol wasn't much more than Pau's baby brother. Rudy Gay and Mike Conley were promising and young but unproven.
The Spurs were...well, the Spurs. Pop. Duncan. Manu. Parker. Richard Jefferson. They won 61 regular-season games and were playing in an odd year, which in those days basically meant to pencil them in as world champions.
Then the Spurs ran into a grit-and-grind freight train. The Grizzlies bullied them over the course of a six-game series, with San Antonio having more games below 90 points (two) than times reaching triple digits (one).
An entire era of Grizzlies basketball was born in this series while one essentially died for the Spurs. Two months after being eliminated, the Spurs traded starting point guard George Hill for Kawhi Leonard.
Gregg Popovich handed more of the offensive reins over to Tony Parker and started developing the whirring style that would in the not-to-distant future take down the Big Three Miami Heat.
2012: Sixers Take Down Bulls, With an Injury Assist
Bulls fans remember this series far differently, as it's one that shifted the entire trajectory of the franchise. Derrick Rose's torn ACL in the fourth quarter of a Game 1 win over the Sixers was a blow neither the team nor the player ever recovered from.
The Sixers went on to win four of the next five games, becoming just the fifth No. 8 seed to advance into the second round. While it's easy to throw a huge asterisk next to that accomplishment, that Bulls team played without Rose for a long stretch in the regular season and still managed to tie for the NBA's best record.
A team led by the still-spry Luol Deng and Joakim Noah, along with Carlos Boozer and Richard Hamilton, was not an easy task for a Sixers team that did not even have a player score 15 points per game. But the defensive-minded group fought their way through six tough games before pushing the Boston Celtics to seven in the next series.
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