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The nature of the NBA Finals means basketball fans can usually expect an incredibly hard-fought series between a couple of fairly even-matched teams who represent the best their conference has to offer.
In the majority of cases, the sportsbooks tasked with figuring out which team has an edge in that championship showdown is going to end up posting some pretty close odds that don’t exactly give the favorite a huge edge over the underdog.
With that said, there are also more than a few scenarios where it would’ve been pretty foolish to bet against the franchises that spent the regular season and the playoffs cementing themselves as absolute juggernauts.
That includes the 2018 Warriors team that opened at -1000 before sweeping the Cavaliers and a 2002 Lakers squad that proved it deserve the staggering -2000 odds it was given before Kobe Bryant, Shaq, and the rest of the roster handily dispatched the Nets in four games.
The Denver Nuggets weren’t the beneficiaries of a four-digit betting line heading into their NBA Finals showdown against the Heat, but Nikola Jokić and Co. were still listed as -400 favorites over an eighth-seeded Miami team that repeatedly defied the odds in the first few rounds before coming into the series as +300 underdogs.
While the Heat entered the series with the chance to become the first eight seed to hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy when everything was said and done, they weren’t given the opportunity to make even more history thanks to another team that’s already set the mark to beat when it comes to the biggest shocker we’ve ever seen in the final round.
What’s the biggest upset in NBA Finals history?
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It can be a bit tricky to track down definitive odds concerning the NBA Finals when you consider how relatively recently sports betting has become normalized in the United States, but thankfully, the folks over at Sports Odd History have put together a pretty extensive list dating back to 1973.
As you’d expect, the favorite has prevailed significantly more often than not, although there are plenty of teams that have managed to pull off an upset to some degree.
The most notable example in somewhat recent history is the 2019 Toronto Raptors, who weren’t really expected to put up much of a fight against the Warriors but made anyone who took them at +230 pretty happy by winning the title in six games.
However, they have nothing on the team that earned the right to say they pulled off the biggest upset the NBA Finals has ever seen, which transpired when the Lakers and the Pistons faced off in 2004.
Los Angeles was “only” listed as -700 favorites heading into the series that year thanks in no small part to the dynamic duo of Kobe and Shaq; they hadn’t dominated to the degree they did during the campaign I mentioned in the intro, but they were competing in the Finals for the fourth time in five years after racking up three consecutive championships between 2000 and 2002.
Detroit, on the other hand, boasted a roster of guys known for their physicality, as the likes of Ben Wallace and trade deadline acquisition Rasheed Wallace led a defense complemented by an offense that largely revolved around Chauncey Billups and Richard Hamilton.
The Pistons headed into Game 1 as +500 underdogs, but they got off to a promising start by pulling out to a 1-0 lead with a decisive 87-75 victory.
The Lakers were able to respond with a win in overtime in Game 2, but the Pistons answered with a 20-point win in the following contest and never really looked back en route to pulling off what is commonly referred to as the “Gentleman’s Sweep” by capping things off in Game 5.
It’s not that hard to imagine another team managing to outdo that upset at some point in the future, but as things currently stand, the Pistons are still the underdogs to beat.