The most and least competitive playoff series sweeps
And where Wolves-Suns checks in
The Minnesota Timberwolves polished off their sweep of the Phoenix Suns on Sunday night, closing out the closest game of the series by outscoring the Suns by 11 points in the second half and 8 in the fourth quarter, with Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns leading the way. Phoenix was not particularly competitive all series long, even if Game 4 wound up being a close one and coming down to the end.
The Wolves won the first three games by 25, 12, and 17 points, meaning they outscored the Suns by 60 points overall. On a per-100-possessions basis, Minnesota was 14.7 points better than Phoenix. That’s… not a close series.
Given those figures, I wanted to see where this sweep ranked among the closest (or not) series sweeps in recent memory. Using play-by-play data to gauge the 59 seven-game series sweeps since 2000, I was able to do exactly that.
