The first time

Seattle had won 63 games, the best record in the league.

The team was built on George Karl's full-court pressure, Gary Payton's defense and Shawn Kemp's power. It had dominated the regular season by nine points a game, and nobody disputed that it was the Western favourite.

Denver were eighth, barely qualified, with a twenty-seven-year-old Congolese centre who blocked everything that came near.

The first round was best of five. Seattle won the first two. The series looked finished.

Denver won both games at home, then came back to Seattle for Game 5.

The game does not turn all at once. Seattle lead at the break, hold the advantage through the third, and it is only in the fourth that Denver put up 28 to force overtime.

In overtime, the best team in the league scores six points.

Mutombo finishes with 15 rebounds and 8 blocks, after recording 31 across the series. It is a record that still stands for a five-game series.

At the buzzer he falls on his back in the middle of the paint and raises the ball above him, shouting. Everyone has seen that image, often without knowing who it was against.

It is the first time an eighth seed eliminated a first, and it took twenty-five years for that to become ordinary.

For Denver it is the summit of a team that won nothing else.

For Seattle it is the beginning of a reputation it never shed. It won 57 games the following year and went out in the first round again, then 64 in 1996 and reached the Finals, without the label ever coming off.

That is unfair and it is understandable. A team that wins 63 games and loses to an eighth seed gives a handle nothing removes, not even a Finals appearance two years later.

The first round became best of seven in 2003. Nobody ever said it was because of this.