Top 10 NBA Playoffs Chokes & Meltdowns

In sports, there’s nothing worse than when your team plays well in a playoff series, positions an opponent one game away from elimination, then lets them come all the way back and steal the series. This very thing could happen to the Cleveland Cavaliers if they don't win game 6 against New Jersey.

It’s heartbreaking when your team can’t “close”. So let’s relive those moments. Here are the top chokes and meltdowns from all NBA Playoffs dating back to 1947.

10. #8 seed Magic melt down against Pistons in 2003 1st Round.
Instead of pulling off an incredible upset of the top seed Pistons, Orlando folded like a lawn chair made out of accordions, losing the final three games by an average of 20.3 points. Chauncey Billups was unstoppable in Games 6 and 7 for the Pistons, averaging 38.5 points.

9. #8 seed Lakers up 2-0 in Phoenix, drop 5-game series in 1993.
The aging 39-43 Lakers were a shell of their Showtime-era selves heading into the ’93 Playoffs. However, they had an outside shot at stealing the first game of the opening round since Phoenix point guard Kevin Johnson would be sitting out with a knee injury suffered celebrating the week before.

The Lakers outdid themselves, taking the first two from the Suns in brand new American West Arena, right before Charles Barkley’s bunch laid the hammer down. A particularly embarrassing moment occurred in the deciding Game 5, when a veteran Laker frontcourt featuring James Worthy, Vlade Divac, and Elden Campbell got schooled in a 112-104 OT loss by rookie Oliver Miller’s 17 points, 14 rebounds, and 7 blocks.

8. Stockton & Malone succumb to Nash & Nowitzki in 2001 1st Round.
With a 2-0 series lead and home court advantage, the deep and experienced Jazz appeared poised to make short work out of a young Mavericks team using only eight men in their rotation. In Games 3 and 4, third-year pro Dirk Nowitzki scored 33 points in Mavs home wins, yet a Jazz advance still seemed certain as they held a 14-point lead heading into the fourth quarter of Game 5.

From there, the Mavs outscored the Jazz 27-12 in the final period, and the go-ahead Calvin Booth bucket with :09 left shocked the Delta Center, and the Jazz went down as the only franchise in NBA history to blow two different 2-0 leads in five game series.

7. Hakeem’s Rockets nightmare for Suns in 1995 Western Semis.
Holding a 3-1 lead in the series and home court advantage over the sixth seed Rockets, loquacious Suns forward Charles Barkley remarked, “I don’t think any team in the world can beat us three straight games when two of them are in Phoenix”. Houston scraped by in those two road games, winning Game 5 in OT, and Game 7 by a score of 115-114, the first time in fourteen years that any NBA team came back from a 3-1 deficit.

6. Spurs squander 3-1 lead in 1979 Eastern Conference finals
With the series coming shortly after San Antonio’s hard fought seven game series against Philadelphia, head coach Doug Moe’s run-and-gun team fizzled out after taking a 3-1 lead over the heavily favored Washington Bullets, suffering three straight tough losses by the scores 107-103, 108-100, and 107-105. And face it, losing a series that way is almost enough to make you wanna switch conferences.

5. !994: Sonics become NBA’s first ever top seed to lose in 1st Round.
Up 2-0 and coming off a then-franchise record 63 wins, the Sonics allowed the 42-40 Nuggets to win three straight, including OT wins in Games 4 and 5 as Robert Pack and Brian Williams played some of the best basketball of their careers.

4. Suns win three straight, lose three straight to Lakers in 1970 Western Semis.
In only the second season of the franchise’s existence, the 39-43 Suns were sitting pretty with a 3-1 series lead over the dangerous Lakers. Phoenix stars Connie Hawkins, Dick Van Arsdale, and Gail Goodrich could hold their own against a loaded lineup including Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, and Jerry West, but the Suns fell apart after an ankle injury to center Jim Fox.

The 6-10 Fox was an average NBA center (12.9 ppg in ‘69-70) that ran the court well, a tough matchup for a slowed-down Chamberlain who just missed 70 regular season games with a fairly serious knee injury. Fox’s decent outside shooting also drew Wilt away from the basket, opening up the lane and allowing Hawkins and Paul Silas a better shot at offensive rebounds, but after his ankle injury the Suns were never the same. Phoenix should’ve wrapped up Game 6 in the friendly combines of Veterans Memorial Coliseum where they held a 5-0 record over the Lakers that season, and they even jumped out to an early 22-9 lead, but lost 104-93. The Suns lost the last three games by an average of 21 points, and Chamberlain grabbed 26.5 rebounds in the final two games.

3. Kobe’s #7 seed Lakers botch 3-1 lead over Suns in 2006 1st Round.
Forget simply blowing a 3-1 lead, Game 7 of the series will be remembered as the game where Kobe Bryant barely shot more than Smush Parker, Luke Walton, Lamar Odom, or Brian Cook. Unfortunately for Bryant, none of those other guys were straight coming off of a 50-point game, and the Suns smoked the Lakers 121-90. Bryant’s willingness to share the ball in Game 7 earned the superstar just one assist as the rest of his team shot 24-for-75 (32.0 percent), horrid compared to Phoenix’s blistering 61 percent. The 2006 Lakers went down as only the third team in NBA history to lose a playoff series after winning three straight games, the others being the 1969-70 Suns, and 1967-68 76ers.

2. 76ers first ever NBA team to blow 3-1 playoff lead in 1968 Eastern Finals.
Despite the 76ers’ home court advantage, Wilt Chamberlain fell to a 1-6 all-time series record against rival Bill Russell and the eventual World Champions. The historic meltdown no-doubt played a role in a major shake-up in Philly the next two months of the offseason. 76ers head coach Alex Hannum ditched town by jumping to the ABA, and Chamberlain was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers.

1. 76ers repeat history against Celtics, 1981 Eastern Finals.
Thirteen years after blowing a 3-1 series lead to the Celtics, the Sixers were knocked out of the playoffs in an even more dramatic fashion. Trying to knock an excellent Celtics team out, Philadelphia couldn’t close the deal, blowing a 6-point lead with 1:51 left in Game 5, a 13-point lead at home in The Spectrum (where they’d beaten Boston 11 straight times) in Game 6, and an 89-82 lead with five minutes left of Game 7 in the Garden, allowing Bird’s Celtics to outscore them 9-1 to close out the game. In one of the most exciting seven game series ever played, the Sixers lost the final three games by a combined total of five points. Hall of Famer Billy Cunningham had the grand misfortune of experiencing both Sixers heartbreakers firsthand, serving as sixth man of the 1968 team, and head coach of the 1981 bunch.

DISHONORABLE MENTION

1987: Jazz blow 2-0 lead to Warriors in 1st Round.
Karl Malone fails to win his first ever playoff series after an underdog Warrior lineup featuring Joe Barry Carroll and Sleepy Floyd stormed back to win three-straight and advance.

1990: Celtics blow 2-0 lead to Knicks in 1st Round.
Patrick Ewing averaged 36 ppg in the final three wins, knocking out a Celtics team that just set an NBA playoff record for most points (157) in Game 2.

NOTE: I don’t count Dallas blowing a 2-0 lead against Miami in 2006 as a huge choke or a meltdown. The Mavs never had the Heat on the brink of elimination. The same thing happened to Philadelphia in the 1977 Finals against Portland, and numerous times throughout the years. So I guess we need to get over that one.

Eric Moneypenny is a frequent contributor to FOXSports.com.