Once a team is up 3-1 in a best-of-seven series, it’s time to start looking forward to the next round or championship parade.
In most cases.
Few teams in sports history have taken a 3-0 series lead before losing three in a row before recovering. Some of them lost games and series once more.
This is history facing the Miami Heat, who won the first three games of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals against the Boston Celtics and then lost the next three, including Game 6 at home on Saturday night.
Game 7 is Monday night in Boston, and the Heat are 48 minutes away from historic obscurity. The NBA is called the Basketball Association of America (BABA) and has teams such as the Cleveland Rebels and the St. Louis Blues. No NBA team has blown a 3-0 series lead since 1947, when they had a team like the St. Louis Bombers. In this year’s Western Conference Finals, the Denver Nuggets took a 3-0 series lead over the Los Angeles Lakers before finishing with a best-of-4 win.
However, in other leagues, the lead collapsed after being 3-0. Let’s relive that dark moment (for one team in that series, anyway).
baseball
The most famous 3-0 upset in sports certainly occurred in 2004, when the Boston Red Sox stunned their hated rivals, the Yankees, and made Major League Baseball history.
The victory in the American League Championship Series from the jaws of defeat was a victory against the curse of the legendary Bambino, who had doomed the Red Sox to eternal defeat after selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920.
“This is definitely shocking to us,” Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez said. The Heat will soon feel this way, too.
In the only game where a major league team was down 3-0, the job wasn’t done. The Tampa Bay Rays entered the 2020 ALCS, played at a neutral stadium in San Diego due to the coronavirus pandemic, with a 3-0 series lead. The Houston Astros won their next three games, but Tampa Bay won the deciding game 4-2 before losing to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series.
“I’m not sure I went to bed,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said of the aftermath of Game 6. “It’s been hard. There’s no doubt about it. I’m very worried.”
No team has blown a 3-0 series lead in the World Series, but in the Japan Series, the Nishitetsu Lions won after coming from a 3-0 deficit against the Yomiuri Giants in 1958, and the Giants accomplished the same feat against the Kintetsu Buffaloes. In 1989.
hockey
The NHL has handed its fans four game losses, the most ever, with one of those losses coming in the Stanley Cup Final.
In 1942, the Detroit Red Wings won their first three games, but the Toronto Maple Leafs won four in a row. The Cup switched to a best-of-seven format in 1939 and this was the first series to go the distance.
“By Jiminy,” was Leafs great Syl Apps’ postgame response.
Four-game comebacks have also been achieved in previous rounds, including in 1975 when the Islanders took on the Pittsburgh Penguins, in 2010 when the Philadelphia Flyers took on the Boston Bruins, and in 2014 when the Los Angeles Kings took on the San Jose Sharks.
basketball
No NBA team has yet lost a series when up 3-0, but some teams, like this year’s Heat, have gone 3-3 and lost three in a row.
That happened once in the 1951 final. The Rochester Royals (now the Sacramento Kings by way of Cincinnati, Kansas City, Mo., and Omaha) took a 3-0 lead over the Knicks, who had won three. The game was down to the final seconds before the Royals’ Bob Davies finished it off with two free throws.
It is the Royals/Kings franchise’s only championship in any city. The Knicks’ first team had to wait until 1970.
Game 7 redemptions following three-game setbacks were also achieved in previous rounds: in 1994 by the Utah Jazz against the Denver Nuggets and in 2003 by the Dallas Mavericks against the Portland Trail Blazers.
Then again, there has never been a complete collapse in the NBA. But in basketball as a whole?
How could we forget the classic Beermen-Aces series?
In the 2016 Philippine Cup finals, the Alaska Aces looked set to win the title after winning three games in a row. (Their name comes from their sponsor, Alaska Milk, not their home base.)
But it would have been a mistake to leave out the reigning champion San Miguel Beermen, who did what no NBA team has ever done before and won four straight.
The Celtics are looking forward to playing against the Beermen on Monday night.
