Worst All Time Basketball Game

Whenever I consider the worst all time game in any sport I can usually come up with a list that has to be cussed and discussed before I can narrow it down to just one.  The Worst All Time Basketball Game is no different.

I am a note taker and a cross checker of lists and I filled up two pages of notes about the worst NBA games ever to get my mind made up.  My first thought was not one game, but any game played by the Los Angeles Clippers.  Their loss column is something you have to look at twice to make sure you are seeing what you think you are seeing.  However, since I was trying to narrow it down to just one single game, I felt that I had to go with the Seattle vs Denver, first game of the first round of playoffs of the 1994 NBA season. It wasn't a bad game as you'll read, but, certainly for Seattle Supersonics fans, it has to be the worst game in basketball history.

The Seattle Supersonics, also referred to as the Sonics, were the top seeded team with an impressive season record of sixty-three wins and only nineteen losses.  Their coach at the time, George Karl, had ‘champions’ written across his forehead.  Why not, when you have the best team in the Pacific and Northwestern Divisions of the NBA for the current season, that is an ok thought to have.  He had every reason to expect his team to continue playing in the manner in which they had been all season long.

The Denver Nuggets had just finished the season with a record of forty-two wins and forty losses.  Not nearly as impressive as Seattle, but good enough to clinch the eighth seed in the Western Conference playoffs.  Their coach of record was Dan Issel, and while he may have wished for a more productive year, he was satisfied to be in the playoffs.  Denver only had a couple of players on their team with actual NBA playoff experience so they were considered the heavy underdog.

The Denver Nuggets lost the first game of the series by twenty-four points.  They did better in the second game but still ended up losing by ten points.  The third game of the series surprised everyone and the Nuggets beat the Sonics with a final score of one hundred ten to ninety three.  The fourth game was an even bigger surprise when the Nuggets again outscored the Sonics by nine points after the game went into overtime.  By this time, the Sonics had to be sweating bullets.  The assurance that they started the playoffs with was drying up fast.  They were tied at two games each and this next game would be the tiebreaker, and they wanted to do the breaking.

Those fans watching the fifth game of the series surely got their money’s worth when the game once more went into overtime.  The Denver Nuggets made NBA history in game five winning over the Seattle Supersonics by a score of 98 to 94.  The Nuggets would go down in history as the first eighth-seeded team to beat a first seeded team in the history of the National Basketball Association.

I guess if you are a Denver Nuggets fan, this game was perhaps the best basketball game ever. Just depends who you are rooting for I guess. Anyway, let us know which game you think was the worst all-time basketball game.

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