Should the Series Be Over if a Team Goes up 3-0?

[Michael Jordan]

I think we will see a team come back from 0-3 in our lifetime. It will be a scenario in which the team up 3-0 loses a key player to injury or the team down 0-3 gets an injured player back in the lineup.

[Stan]

It's crazy to me that 3-0 comebacks have happened a handful of times in hockey, but literally have only happened once in baseball & basketball combined.

[Bornstellar]

No. Given enough time, eventually someone will do it. And when it happens it's gonna be legendary.

[Knightfall]

Its obvious you're not a fan of basketball. Change the channel if you even watch and just stop watching all together.

[axeman23]

And give up a chance at further "3-1" goodness? Surely not!

[JJ_PR]

This is a terrible idea. It's a best of 7, period. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Wammy Giveaway]

An excerpt from today's article "Inside Story Of 'One, Two, Three... Cancun!" written by Howard Beck for Sports Illustrated:

“I’m not gonna sell my guys out,” O’Neal says. “Look, we all have the same mentality. Bro, when you go down 3–0 against the Spurs and Utah, there ain’t no coming back. Everybody knows that. You can go down 2–0 and have a chance, but when you go down 3–0, one game left? There ain’t no comeback. So I don’t want to just blame it on them. We all had that outlook, including me: Well, we’re not gonna win this year. So let me go and put up my 40 and then after the game go back to Orlando and chill.”

Everybody keeps saying that a 3-0 comeback will happen someday, and there is growing evidence of this: more 3-1 comebacks since the Clippers collapse in 2015, including the first ever 3-1 comeback in the 2016 NBA Finals by Cavaliers, and the double 2-0 comeback that both Clippers and Bucks had in 2021. But what makes 3-0 comebacks feel final is pretty much summed up by Shaq. Teams just give up: they accept that the opponent is invincible, knows the proper offensive and defensive counters, is well coached, and plays for the good of basketball. I'll also add that a 3-0 comeback would be a bad look for the league if they were expecting a specific champion in mind. Say they were catering to the legacy teams in Lakers or Celtics, or a specific player like LeBron James, Luka Doncic or any future star of the league. This is assuming the league is rigged, of course.

We just saw this year that Nick Nurse had the right idea: nobody comes back from down 3-0 because the mountain seems so high to climb. The playoffs may be a different animal from the regular season since you're A) going up only against the best of the best (relatively speaking, you could still get a lesser seeded opponent thanks to upsets) and B) you only face four teams, not the entire league. In the regular season, when you have a three game losing streak, your answer to getting back in the winning column is the schedule in which a lottery team comes to town as a pick-me up win. But because the opponent in the playoffs is just that one team, they'll have all the time in the world to shut down the new counters the losing team came up with on the fly. For some teams, it takes time to catch up, hence the limited number of times a team has come back to tie the series at three a piece. Nurse's answer was genius: "Win Game 4, and now it's a 3-1 lead." The fact that his opponent was the 76ers coached by Doc Rivers, whose own legacy is mired in multiple 3-1 collapses and doesn't seem to take competition seriously until the last possible minute, when the criticism of Philadelphia was at its loudest, and what you got was the makings of a dumb comeback. In other words, the only way a 3-0 comeback would ever happen is if the opposing team didn't take their lead seriously.

3-0 comebacks always start with the opponent taking Game 4 off just so the losing team can leave the Finals with a win in the name of pride, hence the term a "free game," or "gentlemen sweep" as coined by No Dunks. Come Game 5, it's back to business.

If a 3-0 comeback were to occur in today's NBA, I could see it under the following conditions:

1. Major Injury: The superstar or key role player gets hurt and has to sit out the rest of the series, or until Game 7. In the meantime, the team does their best to hold down the fort, knowing they have four chances to close it out. I don't think this has ever happened.

2. Discipline: A key player is suspended for at least one close out game, lasting until Game 7 or is ruled out entirely. Cavalier's 3-1 Finals comeback coincided with Draymond Green accumulating enough flagrant foul points to trigger a suspension for Game 5, ruining the Warrior's invincible psyche for the rest of the series.

3. Cursed Team: The team would need to draw an opponent with a suspect playoffs history, such as Clippers or Kings, both teams with a losing history and/or have had bad things happen to them.

[therealbig3]

Going through the major American sports that feature 7 game series, NHL is the only league that's had a 3-0 comeback happen multiple times.

The famous 2004 ACLS comeback by the Red Sox was the only time it happened in baseball.

Never happened in basketball.

It's really, really hard to win 4 straight games as the inferior team in a playoff setting where all coaches and players are dialed in and specifically gameplanning against everything you do. I'd say it's very likely it never happens in basketball, barring a major injury. I think there's a lot more variability in baseball (I'm not familiar with hockey at all)...baseball players go through ruts all the time, so there's more room for variance and a fluke 4 game losing streak than in basketball...and it's still only happened once.

And only 3 teams in NBA history have ever even forced a game 7 after trailing 3-0. Winning 3 must wins in a row is hard enough, let alone 4.

[TheLand13]

In a best of 5?

The series would still be a best-of-7 with the exception of a team clinching if they win the first 3.

Then it’s not a best of seven…

The entire point is that one team wins four games. If that hasn’t happened yet then the series isn’t over.

This just sounds like an incredibly pointless rule change. We hadn’t seen a 3-1 comeback in the finals until Cleveland did it in 2016. There’s a first time for everything. I’m not saying it will for sure happen one day, but why should we deny teams the possibility to make history and be the first ones to come back after being down 3-0? Do you have any idea how much it hurts Yankees fans to remind them of the blown 3-0 series lead against the Red Sox back in 2004? That’s what makes those moments so incredible, because they don’t happen very often.

[Liam_Gallagher]

In a best of 5?

The series would still be a best-of-7 with the exception of a team clinching if they win the first 3.

Then it’s not a best of seven…

The entire point is that one team wins four games. If that hasn’t happened yet then the series isn’t over.

This just sounds like an incredibly pointless rule change. We hadn’t seen a 3-1 comeback in the finals until Cleveland did it in 2016. There’s a first time for everything. I’m not saying it will for sure happen one day, but why should we deny teams the possibility to make history and be the first ones to come back after being down 3-0? Do you have any idea how much it hurts Yankees fans to remind them of the blown 3-0 series lead against the Red Sox back in 2004? That’s what makes those moments so incredible, because they don’t happen very often.

What does that have to do with being down 3-0? Coming down from 3-1 is common. Why should it matter what round it's in?

Coming down from 3-0 is next to impossible.

[xdrta+]

What a weird question.

[Parataxis]

Here me out on this one.

One of the worst games to watch in the NBA playoffs is game 4 when a team is up 3-0. The team down 3-0 is discouraged and the team up 3-0 is likely going to play a meh game. It's a game that should be eliminated. Plus, how awesome would the game 3s be if a team is down 2-0? It'd feel like game 7. It would also put more emphasis on the first 2 games, making each game in the series much more enjoyable.

Yes or no?

All you've done is make a 3-0 game 4 into a 2-0 game 3. That makes things worse, not better.

[username_taken]

Believe it or not, as a frequent poster on an NBA forum, I actually am not a fan of the idea of less basketball

[Mavrelous]

Believe it or not, as a frequent poster on an NBA forum, I actually am not a fan of the idea of less basketball

With the play in playoff schedule is becoming condensed, teams should be rewarded for finishing series early by having time to rest, it reduces injury risk and upgrades playing level.
There's a reason no team came back from 0-3 and only 3 took it to game 7.

[Joshyjess]

Hey, why not look at it a different way - If a team goes up 3 - 0, why not give the other team an automatic win in game 4 so the series is a bit closer? Or perhaps instead of an automatic win, they make a rule saying that whatever team is up 3 - 0 can only play end-of-the-bench players! Or maybe even better yet, the team this is up 3 - 0 has to let fans take the player's places in game 4!!!!


Or, they could just leave it the way it is!

[MavfanAus]

no, too much revenue to pass up

Is that you Adam?

[cupcakesnake]

I enjoy the quixotic journey a team down 0-3 goes through. I also enjoy the pressure the team up 3-0 all of a sudden faces sometimes. Remember the Raps/Sixers series this year? That was fun even though we all knew that Phili was likely to win one game at some point in time to save the series.

One day a team will do it and it will be a legendary moment.

[TheLand13]

The series would still be a best-of-7 with the exception of a team clinching if they win the first 3.

Then it’s not a best of seven…

The entire point is that one team wins four games. If that hasn’t happened yet then the series isn’t over.

This just sounds like an incredibly pointless rule change. We hadn’t seen a 3-1 comeback in the finals until Cleveland did it in 2016. There’s a first time for everything. I’m not saying it will for sure happen one day, but why should we deny teams the possibility to make history and be the first ones to come back after being down 3-0? Do you have any idea how much it hurts Yankees fans to remind them of the blown 3-0 series lead against the Red Sox back in 2004? That’s what makes those moments so incredible, because they don’t happen very often.

What does that have to do with being down 3-0? Coming down from 3-1 is common. Why should it matter what round it's in?

Coming down from 3-0 is next to impossible.

And for that reason we should just defy the entire purpose of a 7 game series? Yeah no, that's a terrible idea.

[DonaldSanders]

In a best of 5?

The series would still be a best-of-7 with the exception of a team clinching if they win the first 3.

Then it’s not a best of seven…

The entire point is that one team wins four games. If that hasn’t happened yet then the series isn’t over.

This just sounds like an incredibly pointless rule change. We hadn’t seen a 3-1 comeback in the finals until Cleveland did it in 2016. There’s a first time for everything. I’m not saying it will for sure happen one day, but why should we deny teams the possibility to make history and be the first ones to come back after being down 3-0? Do you have any idea how much it hurts Yankees fans to remind them of the blown 3-0 series lead against the Red Sox back in 2004? That’s what makes those moments so incredible, because they don’t happen very often.

Yeah I agree. In terms of the NBA's 7 game series format, I love it and don't think it needs to be changed. There's also a little too much benefit a team gets in terms of rest if they don't have to play as many games, the playoffs are like a gauntlet I don't like the idea of anyone getting to essentially skip game(s)

[Cavsfansince84]

I'd be more a fan of making the 1st rd best of 5 again. Best of 7 drags it out way too long imo.