In the final seconds of the 1994 playoff series between the Denver Nuggets and the Seattle Supersonics, there were only two possibilities: a miracle or a miracle. Either the Sonics would pull off a miraculous, last-second comeback, or the Nuggets would pull off a miraculous upset unprecedented in NBA playoff history. Before we see which miracle won the day, we should meet this western conference superpower and this scrappy underdog, and all the characters therein. Let's rewind.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00This can't be happening.
00:03It's May 7th, 1994.
00:05We're in Seattle for the deciding game five
00:08of a first round series
00:09between the heavily favored Supersonics
00:12and the very young, not very good Denver Nuggets.
00:16And the Nuggets are winning by four
00:19with just seconds remaining.
00:22Unless the Sonics come up with a miracle here,
00:25they're about to blow a huge opportunity in defeat
00:29while the Nuggets make history in victory.
00:32We'll see what happens,
00:33but first let's meet the two sides
00:35of this unlikely situation.
00:37Let's rewind.
00:42The stakes here are simple.
00:47Seattle is the top seed in the West.
00:49Denver's the bottom most eighth seed.
00:52Eighth seeds don't win, literally.
00:54This playoff format has existed for 10 years
00:57and a one seed has never lost in the first round.
01:00And it's not like the Sonics' place
01:02in the standings needs an asterisk.
01:05This is an extremely talented, mostly healthy team,
01:08the best, hottest squad in the NBA.
01:11It starts with Sean Kemp, the rain man.
01:13The Sonics picked him in the middle of the 1989 draft.
01:17Kemp was a risky choice, super young and mysterious
01:20since he couldn't play during his one year at Kentucky.
01:22Now, half the league looks dumb for passing on him.
01:26Kemp is as electric and offensive talent
01:29as exists in this league.
01:30He is big and fierce and quick and he will humiliate you.
01:35Last year, Kemp made his first All-Star team.
01:38This year, you can seriously count him
01:40among the best big guys in the NBA.
01:42And Gary Payton has made the leap
01:44as Kemp's perfect compliment,
01:46a shifty, nasty point guard who picks pockets
01:49and throws perfect lobs.
01:51These guys are like Stockton and Malone, except cool.
01:54They are the tandem of the future and also the present.
01:59Management realized that last season
02:02when the Sonics battled all the way
02:03to game seven of the Western Conference Finals,
02:06falling just short of a boss battle
02:08with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.
02:11And, well, the boss is gone.
02:14If you wanna steal a championship ring,
02:16the time is right now.
02:18Seattle executive Bob Whitsitt recognized that
02:20and beefed up with an award-winning off-season haul.
02:24The Sonics traded for Kendall Gill and Detlef Schrempf,
02:27star-like talents for tertiary lineup spots.
02:30So far, so good.
02:3263 wins, best in the league.
02:34Coach George Karl joined Kemp and Payton
02:37in the All-Star game.
02:38Seattle finished hot, too, with a 10-2 April.
02:42The Nuggets were supposed to be roadkill
02:44on Seattle's runway to glory.
02:46And they looked like it in games one and two of this series.
02:49Honestly, even after Seattle lost games three and four,
02:53you could excuse some overconfidence.
02:57The Nuggets, one might argue, are altitude merchants.
03:00They were a genuinely bad road team this year.
03:04But in Denver, elevation 5,280 feet,
03:08the Nuggets went 28-13.
03:10Opponents aren't accustomed to that thin air.
03:13And that goes for the Sonics,
03:14who made no effort to acclimate,
03:16returning to Seattle for practice
03:18between games three and four.
03:20The Nuggets said that was foolish
03:21and then proved as much by evening the series.
03:24But yeah, heading into this fifth and final game,
03:27back here around sea level in Seattle,
03:29where the Sonics were this season's best home team
03:32by a long shot, everyone expected a return to form.
03:35Four quarters and most of an overtime later,
03:39all of that is forgotten.
03:41Now, we're remembering some little warnings
03:43we may have overlooked
03:45because Seattle was so heavily favored.
03:48The night of game two, Payton got into a fight
03:51with teammate Ricky Pierce,
03:52and then Pierce got benched in the second half of game three
03:55and didn't exactly take it well.
03:57One has to wonder if these guys are mentally ready for this.
04:01And then there's the performance of the Stars.
04:03Kemp's numbers have been down,
04:05and he blew his best chance to put all that behind him
04:09at the end of game four two days ago.
04:12In the final minute of regulation, with Seattle up three,
04:15just one of these Kemp free throws
04:17could have basically ended the series.
04:20Brick, brick.
04:23Denver tied it up, then they won it in OT.
04:26At the end of regulation today,
04:28the Sonics needed two points to stay alive.
04:31Gary Payton's best effort was this contested air ball
04:35that, thankfully for Seattle,
04:36Kendall Gill cleaned up before time expired.
04:39Gill has come through not only in the clutch,
04:42but overall as the Sonics' leading scorer in this game five.
04:46And actually, Seattle's not alone
04:48in being carried by role players today.
04:52This game's leading rebounder?
04:54A Nuggets bench player, Brian Williams.
04:58Three years ago, Williams was a lottery pick
05:00of the Orlando Magic.
05:01But Williams never found a steady role in Orlando
05:04and struggled with a slew of medical issues,
05:07including serious clinical depression.
05:09He sat out most of last season,
05:11and in the summer, just two years after drafting Williams,
05:14Orlando traded him away to Denver,
05:17where he's become one of the league's most improved players.
05:20The big lefty's been a powerful interior presence
05:22off the bench in almost every game this season,
05:25none bigger than today.
05:27Wearing sneakers paying tribute
05:28to the legendary Ayrton Senna,
05:30who died tragically just a few days ago,
05:32Williams pulled down a career-high 19 rebounds.
05:37Six of those came on the offensive glass,
05:39which is huge for a Denver team
05:41that has shot just as poorly as the ice-cold Sonics.
05:44Their backcourt of Bryant Stith
05:46and the typically deadly Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf
05:49hasn't hit anything today.
05:51This game's leading scorer?
05:53Yep, a Nuggets bench player, Robert Pack.
05:57Pack went undrafted in 1991,
05:59but the point guard proved undeniable
06:01in Portland Trailblazers training camp.
06:04He, like Williams, came to Denver
06:06in a little deck-shuffling trade
06:08and quickly made himself known.
06:10Robert Pack is a killer.
06:12He's kind of like Sean Kemp
06:14if you hit him with a shrink ray,
06:15which is why you saw Pack competing with Kemp
06:18in this year's dunk contest.
06:20Pack didn't win, but a 6'2 guard
06:23throwing down a backhanded 360 is pretty special.
06:26Pack actually spiked one right on Kemp's head
06:29in game three earlier this week,
06:31perfect punctuation for that series-turning blowout.
06:34If the Nuggets pull this off,
06:36Pack will be known for a lot more than poster dunks.
06:39Weirdly, it all began with an injury.
06:42In the third quarter, with Denver down nine points,
06:45Pack fell quite hard from quite high up, right on his hip,
06:49the kind of tumble that could end your night.
06:52It did the opposite to Robert Pack.
06:55Immediately out of the timeout,
06:56he threw this absolute dime to Williams.
06:59Pushing off a miss,
07:00Pack had no problem finishing through traffic.
07:04At the end of the quarter,
07:05Pack showed that hang time to draw an N1.
07:08And Pack wasn't done.
07:10Denver's first points of the fourth quarter, cash.
07:13Give and go, smash.
07:16Out of nowhere, Denver had the lead
07:18thanks to an undrafted benchwarmer.
07:20Improbable, but there's more.
07:23Across three regular seasons,
07:24Pack is a horrendous 7-of-47 from downtown.
07:28It's not his thing.
07:29And yet, here he was in the fourth quarter
07:32of the biggest game of his career,
07:33connecting from the corner off of a Brian Williams O-bound.
07:37Williams found him again just a few plays later.
07:40Two cast-off bench players being so instrumental
07:44tells you something about Denver's makeup
07:46and about their style.
07:48This is the youngest team in the NBA
07:50and a bottom-tier offense.
07:52They are not gonna beat you with veteran know-how
07:55and they're not gonna outgun you.
07:57The Nuggets are here to ruin things,
07:59to suffocate your offense figuratively,
08:01even if they can't do so literally.
08:03Which reminds me, there's someone we haven't mentioned.
08:08Denver does have a star.
08:10He's just a different kind of star.
08:13Dikembe Mutombo is the first NBA player
08:16to come from the nation that, here in 1994,
08:19is still known as Zaire.
08:20A decade ago, his brother told him,
08:22dude, you're really tall.
08:24You must come play basketball.
08:26Dikembe did and promptly broke his face,
08:29but kept playing anyway.
08:30Scouts noticed the towering Mutombo brothers,
08:33but it was a government employee
08:35who started Dikembe on a path to the NBA.
08:38United States diplomat Herman Henning
08:40helped the Mutombos arrange for Dikembe
08:42to attend college in the US
08:44and directed him to Georgetown,
08:46where he would study on a USAID scholarship,
08:48originally intending to pursue medicine.
08:51Georgetown basketball coach John Thompson
08:53wasn't interested at the outset,
08:55but that changed once he saw some film.
08:57Dikembe spent his freshman year settling in,
09:00focusing on academics and learning English,
09:02and then debuted for the Hoyas as a sophomore.
09:05A scouting report typo informed the press
09:07that Georgetown had a new 5'10 point guard.
09:10They did not.
09:11They had a seven-foot interior monster.
09:14Another one, in fact.
09:16Playing with star center Alonzo Mourning,
09:18Mutombo distinguished himself on defense
09:21right out of the gates.
09:22The kid said, give me some more minutes
09:24and I'll break the school blocks record.
09:26They did, and he did, off the bench.
09:29Mutombo established himself as a special shot blocker,
09:32with the grace and timing to weaponize his length.
09:36Dikembe no longer planned to become a doctor,
09:38but he still wasn't sure he could hang in the NBA.
09:41For all his size and defensive prowess,
09:44he was way behind the competition on offense.
09:47Coach Thompson brought in his old teammate,
09:49the legendary Bill Russell, to say,
09:51hey, you can actually dominate the NBA
09:53without scoring much, believe me.
09:55Bill was right.
09:56In the 1991 draft, Denver selected Mutombo fourth overall.
10:01The Nuggets immediately relied on Mutombo to score a lot,
10:04and the rookie did his darndest,
10:06enough to be named the lone all-star
10:08on a very bad Nuggets team.
10:10But in the years since, Denver has deepened their rotation.
10:14Mutombo hasn't been an all-star these last couple years,
10:16probably because he's relied on
10:18much, much less for scoring.
10:21Dike is playing his game.
10:23It seems that we're looking at
10:25a true defense-oriented centerpiece,
10:28the rare player who can sell sneakers with his shot blocking
10:31and an incredible catch rate.
10:33Man does not fly in the house of Mutombo.
10:38This season, Mutombo led the league in blocks
10:41with over four a game,
10:42and he's up near the top in rebounds as well.
10:44These are the statistics to look at
10:47if you wanna understand how the Nuggets compete,
10:50this season and tonight.
10:52Of Denver's usual top scorers,
10:55only Lafonso Ellis has been effective tonight.
10:57It's just him and those bench guys.
11:00But Denver doesn't need much offense
11:02as long as they can drag you down with them,
11:04and that's what they've done to Seattle.
11:07Before game four, Dikembe had a dream,
11:09literally, that Denver would steal this series,
11:12and he's nearly made it come true.
11:15Mutombo has eight blocks tonight,
11:17which gives him 31 overall in this five-game series.
11:21That's a record.
11:22What's fascinating there is that
11:24the Sonics rarely play a true center.
11:26For most of this game,
11:28Mutombo has had to mismatch with Kemp,
11:30a quicker, better shooting opponent than he's used to,
11:33and Dikembe has still held his own,
11:35especially in critical moments.
11:38Mutombo actually could have already
11:39made this game's winning play
11:41if this shot didn't arrive just after the regulation buzzer.
11:45This clutch moment was much more appropriate.
11:48With 30 seconds left in OT,
11:50the Sonics still had a chance to retake control.
11:52Seattle came out of timeout down just two points
11:55and drew up a play for Kemp,
11:56who crossed up the slower Mutombo,
11:58got a step, and swat.
12:01Nuggets ball, Sonics forced a foul.
12:04And now it's a four-point game.
12:06This should not be the case.
12:09These star-stuffed, beefed-up Sonics
12:11should be on their way to title contention.
12:14These middling, offensively inept Nuggets
12:17shouldn't be winning in an oxygen-rich environment.
12:20But then again, a playoff team shouldn't star
12:23a shot blocker from Kinshasa
12:25and some nobody's-playing hero off the bench.
12:28Either Seattle will find a miracle
12:31or the Denver Nuggets will pull off the impossible.
12:34Welcome to a moment in history.
12:37That's all they want is possession of the basketball.
12:39They don't want...
12:40And Perkins shoots the two, blocked by Brian Williams.
12:45Eight seconds, Perkins.
12:48Another three, way short.
12:52That's it.
12:53Mutombo embraces the ball,
12:57and they are likely upset.
12:59One of the great upsets in NBA playoff history.
13:08Thanks for watching this episode of Rewinder.
13:10This list of names you're seeing
13:12is all the people who subscribe to our Patreon
13:15at the highest tier.
13:16They're getting not only early access
13:18and Patreon-only content,
13:20but more interactivity with our team
13:22and the stuff we make.
13:24I think one of them is my dad,
13:26but surely not all of them.