NBA Playoffs: Winners and losers of the Conference Finals
By Sean Carroll
The winners and losers of the NBA’s conference finals
Both series in the 2019-20 NBA conference finals reached a point where a team was down 3-1, usually a death knell for teams. We all paused for a second, especially after this Denver Nuggets team had come back from that same deficit twice in the same postseason (NBA record) but it wasn’t to be.
The Miami Heat outlasted the Boston Celtics after a late surge in the fourth quarter sealing them away and the Los Angeles Lakers, namely LeBron James, buried the young Nuggets as they made a push for a Game 6.
The NBA Finals will now host two teams that didn’t make the playoffs the season prior for the first time in NBA history and the Heat will try to win their first LeBron-less title since 2006.
In the meantime, let’s get into who the winners and losers after crowning conference champions.