1995 Houston Rockets

Dikembe Mutombo also tallied 31 blocks across the five-game set. It was the first time in NBA history a No. 8 seed had knocked out a No. 1 seed in the first round of the playoffs.

No, an 8th Seed team has never won the NBA championship. An 8th seed has reached the Finals once 1999 New York Knicks.

No team seeded seventh or eighth has ever won the NBA title. In fact, only one team seeded lower than fourth—the 1994-95 Rockets, seeded sixth—has ever lifted the trophy.

The Steelers defeated the Seahawks by the score of 21–10. Pittsburgh, who finished the regular season with an 11–5 record, also became the fourth wild card team, the third in nine years, and the first ever number 6 seed in the NFL playoffs, to win a Super Bowl.

A total of 10 seventh and eighth-seeded teams have beaten Nos. 1 and 2 seeds since the NBA expanded the playoffs to include eight teams per conference in 1984.

The Bucks, champions of the Eastern Conference, play the Phoenix Suns, the Western Conference champs, for the Larry O’Brien Trophy, in a best-of-seven series beginning Tuesday. The Suns, the second seed in the Western Conference, have home-court advantage in the NBA Finals after going 51-21 in the regular season.

The seventh- and eighth-place teams in each conference play each other and the winner earns the No. 7 seed.

2020 NBA Finals

2 seed in Western Conference.

Orlando Magic Led by All-Stars Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway, new acquisition Horace Grant, and franchise cornerstones Nick Anderson and Dennis Scott, the Magic rolled through the Eastern Conference, winding up with a then-franchise best 57–25 mark.

Winter said, “[O’Neal] left because he couldn’t get what he wanted—a huge pay raise. There was no way ownership could give him what he wanted. Shaq’s demands held the franchise hostage, and the way he went about it didn’t please the owner too much.”

How many championships did Kobe Bryant win without Shaq? After the duo parted ways, Kobe was motivated to prove himself as the better player. Ultimately, Kobe accomplished this target at the end of the 2000s, where he won 2 NBA Championships.

1995

With the win, Orlando also became the last team to beat Jordan in the playoffs. Jordan famously stepped away from the game after Chicago’s third title after the 1992-93 season to pursue a Major League Baseball career. Appropriately, it was Chicago native Anderson who delivered the decisive plays down the stretch.

The Los Angeles Lakers became the final squad to gain entry into the three-peat fraternity when Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant celebrated Y2K in prolonged fashion, winning in 2000, 2001 and 2002. But no one has won three in a row since then.

The series loss to the Magic is often overlooked because it was just two months after Jordan’s return from retirement, but the Bulls didn’t lose because of Jordan’s rust. His shooting numbers were back up when he played the Magic, but Orlando’s frontcourt dominated an inferior Bulls opponent.

It was Shaquille O’Neal. Truth be told, O’Neal was statistically even more dominant than Jordan had been in those late 1990s. That 1999-2000 Shaq season ranks up there with the best that anyone has ever done: 29.7 points, 13.6 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 3.0 blocks per game. Regular-season, All-Star and NBA Finals MVP.

24 years ago today, Shaq, Penny and the Magic eliminated the Bulls in the 1995 Playoffs. After their victory over the Bulls in the Semifinal round, the Magic went on to defeat the Indiana Pacers in seven games, claiming their first three playoff series wins in franchise history.