Upsets are not unusual in the NBA playoffs. In the later rounds, yes; the last two NBA champions were the No. 1 seed in their respective conferences, and historically speaking only two teams below the No. 3 seed have ever won a title. But the early series often include at least one surprising result. The first round, with the large pool of teams and multitude of things that can go wildly right or wrong for either side, is especially prone to upsets.
In 2024, for example, the No. 5 Dallas Mavericks upset the No. 4 Los Angeles Clippers en route to a surprising NBA Finals appearance. On the other side of the bracket, the No. 5 Indiana Pacers took down the No. 4 Milwaukee Bucks, who were missing Giannis Antetokounmpo. The year prior, the No. 6 Golden State Warriors wiped out the No. 3 Sacramento Kings in seven games, while the No. 8 Miami Heat defeated the top-seeded Bucks to kick off their historic postseason run. The ’22 playoffs were straight chalk, and the ’21 postseason had only one first-round upset.
So, as you can see, it varies year-to-year. This season feels like a good one for upsets, though. Outside of a few obvious championship favorites there are a lot of teams firmly in the middle ground of “good enough to make the playoffs, but with obvious flaws that could prove fatal” territory. The landscape is ripe for an upset. Or two. Or even more!
Here are four low-seed teams who seem most likely to pull off the upset in their first-round matchup.
Matchup: No. 2 Houston Rockets
Season series: Warriors 3, Rockets 2
The Warriors were always going to be a postseason problem as long as Steph Curry, Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler entered the playoffs healthy. They have—and they got an arguably favorable first-round draw to boot. By beating the Memphis Grizzlies in the play-in tournament, GSW solidified its place as the No. 7 seed in the playoff bracket, the reward being an opening-round matchup against the No. 2 Rockets.
The Rockets, to be clear, are very good. They were the surprise of the NBA season, winning 52 games on the back of utterly suffocating defense with everyone chipping in just enough offensively to make it work. Houston, which beat Golden State in the NBA Cup, was also quite effective defending this version of the Dubs. After the Butler trade in early January, the Rockets played the Warriors twice. The April 6 game likely has the most relevance. The Rockets throttled everything Steve Kerr’s offense tried to do, especially Curry. The superstar shooter finished with three points on 1-of-10 shooting, a genuinely shocking stat line.
However, this has the feel of the 2023 Grizzlies-Lakers series. On one side is a young team that just wrapped up a great regular season for the first time and is untested in the fires of playoff basketball. On the other is an older, star-studded group that’s weak around the edges but knows every trick of the trade required to succeed in the postseason. There are some differences but the similarities are there—down to Dillon Brooks being involved in both.
That series ended with the Lakers advancing in six games. The Rockets, as a more disciplined defensive team, could fare better than those young Grizzlies. They could also fare worse given the lack of offensive punch the roster lacks with no Ja Morant–level star on that end. Either way, Houston will have its hands full with a wily and desperate Warriors squad that will do anything to get Curry another ring.
Matchup: No. 3 Los Angeles Lakers
Season series: Lakers 2, Timberwolves 2
Much to the chagrin of Rudy Gobert, the Timberwolves will be Luka Doncic’s first playoff opponent wearing Lakers purple and gold. Gobert was repeatedly picked on by Doncic in isolation during the 2024 Western Conference finals, and history will likely repeat itself when this series tips off Saturday. There’s reason to believe, though, that the Wolves could avoid elimination and instead pull off an upset of the star-studded duo that leads L.A.
It all starts on the defensive end. The Wolves are well built to defend the Lakers, with physical defenders on the frontline and Gobert lurking in the back. They guard the three-point line well, holding opponents to 35.3% shooting from beyond the arc (sixth in the NBA) and 12.7 three-point makes per game (third in the NBA). Their skill in that area should force the Lakers into more two-point tries, something this roster hasn’t proven terribly comfortable with since Doncic arrived. After the All-Star break (when Doncic fully recovered from his calf injury), Los Angeles ranked 27th in two-point makes per game and 28th in two-point attempts. By and large, the Lakers’ playmaking core of Doncic, LeBron James and Austin Reaves are not slicing into the paint to score—they do it to dish it out to the three-point line, where the Lakers rank sixth in three-pointers made and ninth in three-pointers attempted per game since the ASB.
The bigger problem (literally) for the Lakers, though, will be size. They traded away Anthony Davis and were unable to do much to replace him on the frontline. Los Angeles enters the postseason with a center rotation of Jaxson Hayes and Dorian Finney-Smith, a power forward who the Lakers throw in at center for small-ball lineups. The Timberwolves, on the other hand, employ a pair of skilled centers in Gobert and Naz Reid, a cadre of big wings in Anthony Edwards, Jaden McDaniels and Julius Randle, and a large backcourt with Donte DiVincenzo and Nickeil Alexander-Walker harassing opposing ballhandlers. Every player listed is at least 6′ 4″ and plays significant minutes. That differential will be felt over the course of a long playoff series.
At their core playoff series are largely decided by the play of the stars. And through that lens it is rather hard to pick against Doncic and James, two of the great playoff risers of their respective generations. But Minnesota is a tough matchup in the aggregate for how the Lakers’ roster is built right now.
Matchup: No. 4 Indiana Pacers
Season series: Bucks 3, Pacers 1
This year’s rematch of the 2024 first-round series looks a bit different. Last year, the Bucks were missing Antetokounmpo; now they’re missing Damian Lillard, who is dealing with a blood clot issue, for at least one game. Last year, the Bucks had home court as a No. 3 seed; this year, the Pacers do as the No. 4. The result, though, has a chance at ending up the same—in an upset.
The Pacers were wildly inconsistent this season after a strong postseason in 2024. They started the season losing 14 of their first 23 games. Then they steadied a bit heading into the All-Star break and ultimately put forth a great effort to finish the season, winning 13 of their final 15 games. Indiana has plenty of momentum entering postseason play, but the big development was Tyrese Haliburton shaking off his early-season struggles; from the beginning of March to the end of the season the star point guard averaged 19.4 points and 10.9 assists per game and only 1.3 turnovers per contest to match.
It sure seems like the Pacers are peaking at the right time, and coming up against a Bucks squad missing one half of its star nucleus may feel like an easy draw. But that would be incorrect. Because Milwaukee, even with Lillard’s absence, has proven quite dangerous thanks to a healthy and dominating Antetokounmpo.
In the 11 games the Greek superstar has played since Lillard was sidelined indefinitely, Milwaukee went 8–3 with Antetokounmpo averaging 31.2 points, 11.3 rebounds and 8.6 assists per game. The Bucks outscored opponents by 102 points with Antetokounmpo on the court with a 7.2 net rating. And, remarkably, the former MVP did all that in merely 34.5 minutes per game, a handful fewer than what he’ll be playing in the postseason. For their part, the Pacers offered little resistance against him in their matchups this season, with the Bucks star averaging 30.0 points, 12.5 rebounds and 7.5 assists in four games against Indiana.
This is not an unfamiliar story in the NBA postseason—a team coming together as the playoffs arrive against a superstar on a mission. Regardless of how it unfolds, it should be a blast to see those two forces clash.
Matchup: No. 4 Denver Nuggets
Season series: Clippers 2, Nuggets 2
A rematch of a truly epic series in the bubble playoffs, the Clippers have the privilege to go to war against Nikola Jokic following the best season of his already remarkable career. But they have a healthy (as he can ever be) Kawhi Leonard on their side, and there still may yet be consequences to the Nuggets’ sudden firing of Michael Malone days before the regular season ended. Is interim coach David Adelman ready to play a chess match with Clippers coach Ty Lue, renowned as one of the league’s top in-game adjustors?
All in, there’s plenty of intrigue in this series and multiple unknown factors. There’s Adelman as a rookie head coach in the playoffs, put in that position by a tumultuous series of events. Leonard, who spent the second half of the season ramping back up from his latest injury and dominated in March, didn’t play against the Nuggets once this season. James Harden might’ve put forth his most impressive regular season relative to expectations and the limits his aging body puts on him; will it carry over to postseason play, or will he wilt again under the playoff lights?
Here’s what we do know: The Clippers did as good a job as anybody guarding Jokic this season. Ivica Zubac has been tremendous defensively all season long and managed to “limit” the Nuggets’ MVP center to 28.3 points, 10.0 rebounds and 5.7 assists per game in four matchups this season. While still a ludicrous line, all those numbers are below Jokic’s season averages. We also know that Denver really struggled to guard Norman Powell. One of the breakout stars of this campaign, Powell took advantage of Harden’s skill at setting the table to put up career-high numbers for Los Angeles this season and against Denver averaged 27.8 points per game on 53.6% shooting from the floor, including a comical 48.7% from three on nearly 10 attempts per game.
And, of course, there’s Leonard. He played 37 games this season. In his last seven, going pretty much full-speed, the superstar wing averaged 25.9 points and 2.0 steals per game with elite shooting percentages from every area of the court. More importantly, he played 36.1 minutes per game during that stretch, capped off by a 47-minute virtuoso showing against the Warriors in the very last game of the season to ensure the Clippers stayed out of the play-in tournament. There will always be the looming threat of another injury, but when Leonard is out there, he’s one of the best two-way players in the league. Even now.
There are enough factors at play here that it’s a true toss-up series. But the Clippers, with a healthy Leonard, look mighty dangerous.
