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The 1994 Seattle SuperSonics looked poised to seriously challenge for the NBA championship.
They had stormed through the regular season en route to a 63-19 record, best in the NBA.
Their lineup was loaded with stars like Shawn Kemp, Gary Payton, Sam Perkins and Kendall Gill.
In the first round of the playoffs, they would meet the No. 8-seeded Denver Nuggets, a team that had qualified for the playoffs with a 42-40 record.
The Nuggets had no real stars to speak of and were far too inexperienced to hang with Seattle-or at least that is what conventional wisdom seemed to indicate.
The series started off predictably enough with the Sonics cruising to victory in Games 1 and 2 by double digits.
But when the series shifted to Denver, everything changed.
The Nuggets stunned the Sonics with an impressive win in Game 3.
They then won in overtime in Game 4, and the series went back to Seattle for a deciding fifth game that no one could have possibly believed would be taking place.
In Game 5, the Sonics looked like they were not interested in playing with Denver any longer. The Sonics jumped out to an early lead, but it did not last.
Led by the inspired effort of Dikembe Mutombo, and by a huge fourth-quarter effort by Robert Pack, the Nuggets seized control of the game, and suddenly it was the Sonics who had to get up off the mat to avoid elimination.
A basket by Kendall Gill with 0.5 seconds remaining would send the game to overtime.
But in overtime the Nuggets would show everyone what they were made of.
When the final horn sounded, Denver had pulled off one of the biggest upsets ever by the final of 98-94, and we were left with one of the most recognized images in NBA playoff history-Mutombo clutching the final rebound and falling to the floor, overcome by elation.
The Nuggets had just pulled off the second-biggest upset in NBA playoff history.
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