I was devastated when that happened and it ruined my enjoyment of a game I was extremely excited to watch.

They won the game, but Artest running into the stands is also on the list. It was surreal when it happened, but 2-3 minutes later you just knew the season was over.

PGs injury during the Olympic scrimmage also was a gut punch.

I will never forget the sight of Haliburton pounding his fist on the court.

It was like when Glenn died in The Walking Dead.

Worst injury and 2nd worst loss in nba history IMO just after the rigged 2002 wcf. Just tragic

And the team you know you could beat wins the championship the following year

I will get hit with waves of sadness narrated by that call for the rest of my life

After the playoffs he was having

Saddest upvote.

We bout to switch places.

This but the Jazz.

Legitimately nothing tops this. It’s like some kind of eternal sin in the NBA.

A’s fan, me too

As a childhood Nets fan, I get it. I’ll never root for them again in my life.

His whole career trajectory changed from that moment. He became both a winner and a loser with that single decision.

The hardest road, KD didn’t have a choice

The Dame Lillard shot was pretty miserable too.

According to him, golden state were “underdogs” at the time because historically they hadn’t had much success except for all the success they were having in the time right before he went there

I still don’t know how that was allowed. Like I do, but I don’t.

Can’t explain it but .4 still stings more than ‘13 or this year.

Manu fouling Dirk is another one

Game 4 is just recency bias. Knicks had our number all season, we were never winning that series. I’m annoyed that’s a record we hold now, but that’s the only thing that really hurts me about it.

The 0.4 game is the one I’m the most upset about still, decades later.

Ray Allen shot for me. I never thought, before or certainly during the series, we were gonna win the title in 26. But that year it was so close; dropping the yellow ropes, fans pouring out of AA arena…and it felt like we were a step ahead a lot of the series though Miami was counterpunching. But that sequence I saw the whole series turn. It was agony. The upside, which was pretty huge, was the revenge season/championship which, admittedly, would not have felt so satisfying without the year before

Watching my favorite player of all time fresh off an MVP get dismantled by Hakeem Olajuwon. They hurt the most because I was a child, but also the Spurs had no championships at the time.

Chris Paul’s hammy

Man that sucks. I’m just glad Houston lost

Everytime we pick second a hof big man is drafted first overall .

1992 mourning and Shaq goes number one

2004 okafor and Dwight goes number one

2012 (can’t convince me this wasn’t rigged) Kidd-gilchrist and ad goes number one

2023 Brandon miller and wemby goes number one

If the hornets get a second overall pick in the early 2030s teams better trade everything to get the first overall pick because it will absolutely be a hof big man

Figures the franchise that needed Wemby the least would get him

Could be worse.

You could’ve lost an actual game that mattered.

Blazers lost it by a single ball, then the spurs were gifted Harper lmao

John Paxson lives in my head rent free from ‘93…

But the worst..? Probably against the Spurs in the WCF where Horry launched Nash into the scorer’s table and everything that ensued after that..

Honorable mention: Getting annihilated by Dallas in the Playoffs a few years back

Game 6 in that series was heartbreaking. Game 7 the next year was demoralizing.

John Paxson

:(

Still hurts remembering it, was so happy that point god might finally get his ring.

The Horry hip check still stings more for me.

Yeah, the lakers loss is it for me too

I have a scar from punching a soda can after the lob to Shaq. I wasn’t the smartest 14yo.

Definitely number 1. Watching Sabonis walk off the court in tears broke my 12 year old heart.

What is the second one of which you speak? The 2000 WCF was famously cancelled after the third quarter of game 7 and we all agreed basketball was stupid and not worth finishing those playoffs.

CJ stepping out was incredibly frustrating, but just the mere thought of Robert Covington in that game gets me pissed off all over again even to this day.

Yep

Came here to say the Lakers game

Entirely different looking back at that era of a Blazers with a championship 

Oh well

Sneaky one is game 4 in 2015 against the Cavs. Blatt tried to call a TO with none left and the refs swallowed their whistles. Should have gone up 3-1 on Cleveland.

Holding onto his knee and down…

That lead to the raptors eventually getting kawhi and lead the franchise to be the first of LeBron’s children to win a championship

OG hit his first big playoffs 3 just before the full court one legged runner off glass. It you watch the replay, he celebrated a made shot. It was the last time he’d ever celebrate a shot in the moment. Changed him.

LeBron’s 15-foot running bank shot to win game three in 2018 is burned into my mind. Half of the reason is what an absolutely absurd and awful shot it was to take. The other half is that I knew even as he was taking it that it was going to be good because that’s just how things always went for us against Toronto.

Without LeBronto you guys wouldn’t win a championship. You’d get to finals, get waxed, and never make again.

For nothing*

I’m not even a Magic fan (albeit I was rooting for them) and that game made me want to quit watching basketball on your guys’ behalf. Absolutely maddening watch

That’s right up there at the top for me too… I may never recover from that game. It’s sitting there right next to Nick Anderson’s free throws and the Courtney Lee layup.

How is it not nick Anderson?

A bit ago there was a thread asking what the worst playoff exit was this year. If you go through it, there were a LOT of really ugly exits. Atlanta getting absolutely reamed by New York (looks better in hindsight), Boston blowing a 3-1 lead. Houston’s first round debacle, Denver solidifying they’re no longer a title team, Philly getting swept, Detroit getting their shit kicked in during game seven at home, Cavs getting swept.

But somehow my answer was the loss by the eight seed to the one seed because of just how winnable that series was and how brutal and incomprehensible game six at home was. I cannot possibly imagine how awful it was to be in the arena for that experience.

I was so fucking disgusted, I thought that was the most disgusting effort I’ve seen in playoffs basketball, then our Game 4 collapsed happened in the Finals…

Honestly this was probably worse than Nick Anderson’s free throws.

My two favorite teams are the Kings and whoever the Lakers are playing.

Kings were screwed by the league so hard in that series. 

The fix was in, everyone outside of LA will admit it

I was a baby and it’s still gut wrenching to think about

This and the Haliburton injury are the two greatest what-if’s of this decade

kill me

One day the Nets will reach the promised land. I will see a banner in Brooklyn one day.

Agreed.

Whenever people say that the bucks didn’t deserve to win in 2021 because the Nets were injured I remind them about what happened in 2022. They win the finals that year if fully healthy.

The coaching fiasco really does seem like one of the main precipitating events leading to our irrelevance and subsequent Giannis trade especially based on Jim O’s article

I don’t see any way that we beat the Lakers or even get more than one game off of them like Philly did.

I feel you but we went 2-0 against LAL in the regular season with Shaq and Kobe both playing - that’s what stung the most to me, that Bucks team was built far better to compete against them than Philly was because we all knew AI didn’t have enough help.

100% agreed about 2019 tho, collapse against Toronto stings just as much.

Kings fans know your pain

It blows my mind that there are Lakers fans that think that Game 7 wasn’t a HOF ref ball performance

Watching Hali go down was probably one of the saddest sports moments I ever witnessed. And I’m not even a Pacers fan, just a Kings fan that still loves Hali.

I messaged my friend right when it happened and his stream was behind so he didn’t see it yet, it was crazy.

That was indiana ⁹⁄₁₁

Just think, the 4 point play series was the only time the Knicks have beaten the Pacers in the playoffs since 1994

That’s 6 eliminations over 4 decades

Oh man that was tough. Could feel a 30 or 40 piece coming from Hali before it happened (and an amazing game 7). Was really rooting for them so that sucked to go out like that

Doink, doink, doink……fuck

And we get to relive it over and over with pretty much every single Finals montage.

I mean the fact that Jordan had THE greatest carry in the history of a clinching game (45 of 87 points), to win only by 1 is a testament to how good you guys were.

Yeah the Eisley 3 is legitimately one of the worst calls ever

Not the most painful but stings me still is game 6 Indy with Carmelo where we took the lead and Melo was cooking. Then he spun on PG on the baseline and hibbert blocked his dunk. Melo era ended right there

8.9 seconds

I know Bias and Lewis were tragic and ultimately affected our cognition for over a decade, but in terms of actual games played it’s hard to beat this one. The only other ones that come close are Curry’s Game 4 in 2022, and Magic’s mini skyhook in 87

Robert Horry

I think we can ALL agree, fuck Robert Horry.

Magic HIV+

Every team had a historic loss to the Knicks this year, especially the Sixers who had to play four road games in a row. 

All the time in the world

That was a regular season game lol

A good argument for game 7 of the 88 finals too, could’ve had a three-pete

All those tattoos

that was not only dirk’s mvp season but the highest win season in mavs history.

For me that wound has healed after this year