Looking back at the 2012 NBA playoffs

First, let's look back at what was going on in the NBA in 2011-2012.

*A lockout shortened the season to 66 games. The season began on Christmas Day and ended on April 26th, a week or so after the season typically ends.

*Shaquille O'Neal retired before the season began.

*Phil Jackson also retired from coaching, ending one of the most decorated careers in sports.

*It was the final season for the Nets in New Jersey. They would move to Brooklyn the following season.

*Before the season, David Stern famously vetoed a trade that would have sent Chris Paul from the New Orleans Hornets to the Los Angeles Lakers. The league felt it would be a bad look for one of the league's best players to be dealt to one of its glamour franchises right after the lockout ended. Five days later, Paul was dealt to the Los Angeles Clippers.

*The Charlotte Bobcats (now Hornets) finished with a league-worst 7-59 record, setting the NBA record for worst winning percentage in a season.

The 2012 NBA playoffs are best known for being LeBron James' first championship season. James famously left the Cleveland Cavaliers to join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami to form "The Heatles" and go on a run of winning titles ("not one, not two ... "). As the Heat worked out the bugs during the 2010-2011 season, they reached the Finals before losing to the Mavericks in six. Miami would enter the 2012 playoffs as the No. 2 seed in the East and would go on to beat the Knicks (in five games) and Pacers (in six) before coming back from a 3-2 deficit against Boston in the conference finals and reaching the NBA Finals again. There, the Heat defeated the Thunder in five games to win the franchise's second title and LeBron's first. 

There was no way to know at the time but the 2012 postseason was the last time Kobe Bryant would ever play in the playoffs. The Lakers entered the playoffs as the No. 3 seed and nearly blew a 3-1 series lead to the Denver Nuggets in the first round, but would eliminate the Nuggets in seven games. LA would take on the young and talented Oklahoma City Thunder in the second round. The Lakers would lose the series in five games, with Kobe scoring 42 points in what would be his final playoff game ever.

The Lakers would reach the playoffs the following season, but Bryant tore his Achilles in the final week of the regular season and wouldn't play in their first-round loss to the San Antonio Spurs. The Lakers wouldn't reach the playoffs again until 2020 ... four years after Bryant retired.

Kobe Bryant would play in 220 postseason games, averaging 25.6 points, 5.1 rebounds, and 4.7 assists, while winning five NBA championships and two Finals MVP awards.

Another major development of the 2012 playoffs happened right off the bat. The Chicago Bulls were up 12 over the Philadelphia 76ers with over a minute remaining in the game when 2011 league MVP Derrick Rose tore his ACL and would miss the rest of the postseason. Rose led the Bulls to their second consecutive No. 1 seed and was becoming one of the NBA's young superstars but the ACL injury would alter his career and the Bulls' future. The Bulls would win Game 1 against the Sixers but would lose the series in six games.

Rose would miss the following season and then play in just 10 games in 2013-2014. 

Due to Rose's injury, the Philadelphia 76ers would become just the fifth No. 8 seed to defeat a No. 1 seed in the first round by ousting the Bulls in six games. Jrue Holiday led Philly in scoring (18.2 ppg) while Andre Iguodala, Spencer Hawes, and Lou Williams were key contributors.

The Sixers joined the 1994 Nuggets, 1999 Knicks, 2007 Warriors, and 2011 Grizzlies as the only 8-seeds to beat a No. 1 seed in a first-round series. No 8-seed has won a playoff series since. This also would be Philly's last playoff appearance until 2018. In the offseason, the Sixers would trade for Andrew Bynum (who would never play a game for the team) and would go on to miss the playoffs. Doug Collins would be fired in 2013 and the organization would embark on a rebuild that would be known as "The Process". 

The Oklahoma City Thunder had been building through the draft and finally reached their first NBA Finals (well, the first in OKC since their move from Seattle). The core of the franchise was Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden -- all of who would eventually win NBA MVP awards -- as well as Serge Ibaka. Durant led the NBA in scoring for the third straight season and Ibaka led the league in blocked shots.

The Thunder swept the Mavericks in the first round (more on that in a bit), ousted the 2010 champion Lakers in five in the second round, then rebounded from an 0-2 deficit to eliminate the top-seeded Spurs in six to reach the Finals. Oklahoma City would win Game 1 of the Finals but would lose the next four games and the series.

The following October, the Thunder would trade Harden, Cole Aldrich, Daequan Cook, and Lazar Hayward to the Houston Rockets for Kevin Martin, Jeremy Lamb and two first-round draft picks. Durant would leave Oklahoma City for Golden State in 2016 and Westbrook would be traded to Houston in 2019. The Thunder haven't been back to the Finals.

As previously mentioned, the Dallas Mavericks were swept in the first round of the playoffs by the Oklahoma City Thunder. That's notable because the Mavs were just the third defending champion to be swept in next season's playoffs in NBA history.

In 1957, the Philadelphia Warriors were swept by the Syracuse Nationals, 2-0.

In 2007, the Miami Heat were swept by the Chicago Bulls, 4-0.

So what happened? Well, the Mavs made some changes during the offseason (most notably losing Tyson Chandler, DeShawn Stevenson, and J.J. Barea) and never really got going in the strike-shortened season and new addition Lamar Odom was so ineffective that he didn't play the final weeks of the season. Dallas finished 36-30, and as the 7th seed was swept out of the playoff by OKC. 

The 2011-2012 went on a wild ride. There was Jeremy Lin's "Linsanity" stretch that came out of nowhere, Mike D'Antoni's abrupt resignation in March, and Amare Stoudemire cut his hand punching a fire extinguisher during the playoffs, requiring surgery.

Stoudemire punched that glass case after the Knicks' Game 2 loss to the Miami Heat ... New York's 12th straight loss in the playoffs. They would lose Game 3 as well, setting the NBA record for most consecutive playoff losses in history. New York would beat Miami, 89-87, in Game 4 ... ending the record streak. The Heat would win Game 5, eliminating the Knicks.

That was a tough series for the Knicks, as Iman Shumpert tore his ACL in Game 1, Stoudemire cut his hand in Game 2 and Baron Davis tore his ACL in Game 4.

The streak began in 2001 when the Knicks lost Games 4 and 5 against the Raptors; they would get swept by the Nets in 2004 and then the Celtics in 2011.  

The Utah Jazz went 36-30 in 2011-2012 -- good enough to be the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference. Their first-round series loss to the Spurs was the first time the Jazz reached the postseason without Jerry Sloan since 1988.

Utah was led by another legendary coach in '88 -- Frank Layden -- as well as Hall of Famers John Stockton and Karl Malone. The 2012 squad, with Tyrone Corbin as head coach, was led by Al Jefferson, Paul Millsap, and Gordon Hayward. Corbin took over the team the previous season after Sloan abruptly retired with 28 games left in the season. 

The Spurs ended the regular season on a 10-game winning streak and earned the top seed in the West. They swept the Utah Jazz in the first round, then swept the Los Angeles Clippers in the conference semifinals. San Antonio would win Games 1 and 2 of the Western Conference Finals against the Thunder, setting an NBA record for combined consecutive regular-season and postseason wins. Their 20-win streak ended with a 103-83 loss to the Thunder in Game 3 of the Western Conference ... which began a four-game losing streak and the Spurs' elimination from the playoffs.

San Antonio would end up reaching the NBA Finals in 2013 and 2014, winning their fifth ever championship in 2014. 

The 2012 playoffs were featured in the 2019 film Uncut Gems. Celtics forward Kevin Garnett co-stars in the movie as a fictionalized version of himself and Adam Sandler plays a gambling addict who makes a huge bet on Garnett and Game 7 of the Celtics-Sixers 2012 playoff series. Boston would win the series in seven games, with KG scoring 18 points and grabbing 13 rebounds in Game 7. 

Lil' Wayne attempted to go to Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals in Oklahoma City but it didn't happen. According to Lil' Wayne, Kevin Durant and James Harden reached out to offer tickets to him to the game against the Spurs but he was denied by the team to be in the arena. The team said that Wayne wanted front-row seats that weren't available as all the Thunder's regular season and playoff home games were sold out. He would eventually get to see Durant and Harden play in person at the NBA Finals in Miami. 

The Memphis Grizzlies had their best season to date in 2011-2012, setting a franchise mark for winning percentage in a season (since broken) and the first time the team had home-court advantage in the playoffs. They had built off a stunning upset of the top-seeded Spurs in the first round in 2011 (the organization's first postseason win -- game and series), were on a run of seven consecutive playoff appearances, and the best era of Grizzlies basketball. The front line of Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol was formidable, while guard Mike Conley was one of the top young guards in the game.

They would face another struggling franchise in the first round -- the Los Angeles Clippers. The Clippers acquired Chris Paul in the offseason which unlocked LA's potential and set them on their greatest run in franchise history (which continues ten years later). Along with second-year forward Blake Griffin, youngsters DeAndre Jordan and Eric Bledsoe, and experienced vets Chauncey Billups and Kenyon Martin, the Clips finally felt they had playoff staying power.

The series would go the full seven games. In Game 1, the Clippers outscored the Grizz 35-13 in the fourth quarter to steal a 99-98 win in Memphis. The Grizzlies would tie the series as it headed back to LA, where the Clippers won both games and took a 3-1 series lead. Memphis would again have a huge lead in Game 5 but were able to hold off the Clippers for a 12-point win. In Game 6 at the Staples Center, it was the Grizzlies who made a valiant fourth-quarter comeback to stun the home crowd, winning 90-88 and sending the series back to FedEx Forum. In a low-scoring slugfest, the Clippers bench came up huge and gave LA the win ... just their second playoff series win for the franchise since moving west from Buffalo in 1978. 

In the summer of 2007, the Celtics traded for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to join with Paul Pierce to form "the Big Three" in Boston. Those Celtics would have a 42-game improvement and go on to win the 2008 championship over the Lakers. They would reach the 2010 Finals as well (losing to the Lakers), before losing in the Eastern Conference semifinals to LeBron James and the Miami Heat. The two met again in the 2012 Eastern Conference Finals where each team held serve on their home floors through the first four games. In Game 5, Pierce hit a huge three late to hold off Miami and give the Celtics a 3-2 series lead heading back to Boston. Miami would blow out the C's in Game 6 and then run away with a Game 7 win, effectively ending the Big Three era in Boston.

Ray Allen signed as a free agent with Miami in the offseason, setting off bad blood between him, Garnett, and Pierce. Miami would win another championship in 2013 (thanks in large part to a huge three by Allen at the end of Game 6) while Boston was beaten by the Knicks in the first round. Doc Rivers left to coach the Los Angeles Clippers, while Garnett and Pierce were traded to the Brooklyn Nets.