Every NBA team’s greatest playoff moment

Denver Nuggets: Super comeback vs. Sonics (1994 Western Conference First Round)

After two games in the 1994 Western Conference First Round matchup between the No. 1 seed Seattle SuperSonics and the No. 8 seed Denver Nuggets, it looked like the latter didn’t belong in the building with their opponents. Seattle opened up the series with a thunderous 24-point victory on their home floor. Though Game 2 was closer, it wasn’t all that close or even as narrow as the 10-point margin might suggest. In the five-game series format for the first round then, the thought was that the Sonics would roll to another win.

That, of course, was not the way things played out. When the series shifted to Denver, the Nuggets either fed off the crowd or just flipped a mental switch as a team. As badly as Seattle thrashed them in Game 1, they returned the favor in Game 3 as Reggie Williams and Dikembe Mutombo spearheaded a 17-point win. Building off that momentum, it was LaPhonso Ellis’ turn to step up alongside Mutombo in Game 3 as the Nuggets evened the series with a nine-point victory.

On the road for the decisive game in the series, though, the worry was that Denver would revert back to their form from the first two games against Seattle. But while the SuperSonics recaptured that level of play, the Nuggets were able to not lose all of their momentum either. Robert Pack exploded off of the bench for 23 points while Mutombo notched a second-straight eight-block game to squeeze by the top-seeded Sonics and complete a marvelous comeback that seemed near impossible when down 2-0 considering how they lost those games.