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Since the ABA and NBA merged after the 1976 season, 13 teams have entered the NBA Finals as underdogs and emerged as champions. That means that a little over 25% of the time, the team most people expect to win…doesn’t.
The late 1970s were particularly bad for favorites. Immediately after the merger, from 1977 to 1979, the Blazers, Bullets, and SuperSonics all beat the odds.
Upsets became exceedingly rare from 1980 to 2003, however, happening just twice in that span. This was the era of dynasties, with the Lakers (first led by Magic and Kareem and later by Shaq and Kobe) winning eight championships. Jordan’s Bulls achieved two separate threepeats, the Larry Bird-led Celtics collected three championships, and the Rockets and Pistons each went back-to-back.
The 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s have featured their share of repeat champions, but bettors have become less likely to guess which team would be doing the repeating; eight of the last 21 NBA Finals have been won by the underdogs.
The biggest upset by far was in 2004, when the Detroit Pistons entered the Finals as +500 underdogs to the Los Angeles Lakers. After winning three straight titles from 2000 to 2002, the Lakers had added Karl Malone and Gary Payton to a core of Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant for one last shot at glory during Phil Jackson’s last season as head coach.
It wasn’t to be, as Detroit, which only won two fewer games than the Lakers during the regular season, demolished the Lakers without superstars, just solid production from future Hall of Famers Ben Wallace and Chauncy Billups and midseason acquisition Rasheed Wallace.
The next two biggest upsets both came at the hands of the Golden State Warriors, who appeared in five straight Finals from 2015 to 2019 and were favored to win all of them. Three out of five ain’t bad. In 2016, after winning a record 73 games during the season and going up 3–1 to start the series, they lost three straight games to a Cavaliers team that finished 57–25. The lesson, of course, is that you can never count out LeBron James, especially when he’s flanked by Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love in their primes.
The next Warriors loss came in 2019 when the Raptors, led by All-Stars Kawhi Leonard and Kyle Lowry, knocked them out in six games. Though that was a very good Raptors team, the outcome would likely have been different had Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson not suffered serious injuries.
The Indiana Pacers, the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference, entered Game 1 of the 2025 NBA Finals as +530 underdogs to the Western Conference champion Thunder—and promptly won that game on a Tyrese Haliburton buzzer-beater. Oklahoma City won Game 2 easily, but if the 50–32 Pacers can manage to knock off the 68–14 Thunder, it would be the largest upset in NBA Finals history.
Ranking the Biggest Upsets Ever
Here is the list of every upset in an NBA Finals series since the 1976–77 season, in order of betting odds entering the series. The list was compiled using historical odds from Sports Odds History.
2004: Pistons defeated Lakers in 5 / +500
2019: Raptors def. Warriors in 6 / +230
2016: Cavaliers def. Warriors in 7 /+180
2021: Bucks def. Suns in 6 / +160
2008: Celtics def. Lakers in 6 / +160
2011: Mavericks def. Heat in 6 / +155
2012: Heat def. Thunder in 5 / +155
1977: Trail Blazers def. 76ers in 6 / +140
2006: Heat def. Mavericks in 6 / +130
1995: Rockets def. Magic in 4 / +130
1989: Pistons def. Lakers in 4 / +100
1979: Supersonics def. Bullets / +130
1978: Bullets def. SuperSonics / +120
