The 20 Most Evenly Matched NBA Playoff Series in the Last 25 Years

The NBA Playoffs are great because they bring together the league's 16 best teams and pit them against one another over the course of two months. What we get is greatness in the form of intriguing individual matchups and evenly-matched contests.

As close as the games and series tend to be, it's hard to keep track of all the great ones. But, generally, nothing beats a seven-game series -- they come down to one game and could very well be decided by -- if not a single point -- a few points.

In recent history, which ones have been the closest?

The process for finding the most balanced series is quite simple. To find the best of the past 25 years, we start in 1992 with the requirement that the series took all seven games to be decided.

As for the deciding factor, that is the net rating (point minus opponent points per 100 possessions) between the two teams, which we found using Basketball Reference's historic playoff series box scores. Obviously, the closer to zero the better -- whether it's positive or negative for the victorious team.

Average margin of victory does come into play, but only when a tiebreak is needed.

The only other thing you have to know is that each series' most valuable player (MVP) was decided by the player with the highest Game Score on the winning team.

With all that established, which seven-game playoff series most embodied the definition of nail biters?