The 20 Most Lopsided NBA Playoff Series in the Last 25 Years

The NBA Playoffs bring together the league's 16 best teams and pit them against one another over the course of two months. A classic series melds intriguing individual matchups and evenly matched contests. Sometimes, though, games and series are the opposite of competitive. Star players rise to the occasion, or lesser teams are simply overmatched by superior competition.

Of all the lopsided playoff matchups throughout NBA history, a particular few have been notably one-sided. To find the most unbalanced series blowouts of the past 25 years, we looked at the 48 four-game series sweeps since 1992. We then ranked the 20 biggest beatdowns using the net rating (points minus opponent points per 100 possessions) for the series, figures courtesy of Basketball Reference's historic playoff records. The higher the difference in rating, the more lopsided the series. (Average margin of victory was only tallied for possible tiebreaks, but, seeing none, it turned out to be unnecessary. Nonetheless, it's nice to look at the two marks side-by-side.)

In addition, the most valuable player (MVP) for each series is listed, and it was decided by the player with the highest Game Score on the winning team, again according to Basketball Reference.

Starting with 20 and ending with 1, let's take a look at the most uneven series in recent NBA postseason history.