The Greatest Championship Comebacks Ever

Eight-one down in a first-to-nine, and worse than that: an international jury found Oracle Team USA guilty of cheating at a warm-up event and docked them a point for each of the first two races, so they needed eleven wins to keep the trophy rather than nine. Every remaining race had to go their way. Team New Zealand reached eight and never scored again.

Three games to none down in a best-of-seven for the trophy itself, Toronto coach Hap Day pulled Gordie Drillon and Bucko McDonald and put Don Metz and Hank Goldup in instead. The Maple Leafs won the next four and beat Detroit. Turk Broda kept the only clean sheet of the series along the way, and the seventh game finished 3-1 in front of 16,218.

Nobody in professional basketball had won a series from 3-0 down until San Miguel did it to Alaska in the 2015-16 Philippine Cup, taking four in a row for a sixth title in the competition. Same hole the Red Sox climbed out of, with a trophy at the end of it rather than a place in the next round. The reason you haven't seen it is that it happened in Manila.

Three outs from a sweep, a run down in the ninth to Mariano Rivera, and Boston sent Dave Roberts out to steal second base. Bill Mueller singled him in, David Ortiz ended it in extra innings, and the Red Sox took the next three games as well. Still the only side in MLB history to win a best-of-seven from 3-0 down. What it settled was a pennant rather than a trophy, and that is the only thing holding it here.

Cleveland led it 3-1. Chicago won three straight and then had to do the whole thing over again inside Game 7: level at six after nine innings, a seventeen-minute cloudburst, extra innings. What ended that night was the longest championship drought in North American professional sports history, with no title since 1908 and no World Series appearance at all between 1945 and 2016.

Golden State finished the regular season 73-9, which broke an NBA record, and led this series 3-1. Cleveland won three in a row, two of them on the road, and took the seventh game 93-89. LeBron James blocked Andre Iguodala's layup with the score tied at 89 and 1:50 left. First team to come back from 3-1 in a Finals.

Ten-six down after two days at Medinah, a hole dug across separate sessions rather than inside a single afternoon, which is what puts it above the one-game comebacks below. Europe needed eight of the twelve singles points to retain the cup and eight and a half to win it outright. They took eight and halved a ninth: 14½-13½.

Twenty-eight to three, midway through the third quarter, in a match with no second leg and no next round. Atlanta were still nineteen points ahead at the start of the fourth, 28-9. New England won it 34-28 in overtime, the first time the game had ever needed any. Twenty-five points, erased, in the one match that decides an entire season.

Three-nil at half-time, Maldini having scored inside the opening minute and Crespo adding two more before the break. Then Gerrard headed one back, Šmicer hit one from long range, and Alonso scored off his own saved penalty. Extra time settled nothing. Dudek blocked Shevchenko's kick with his left hand and Liverpool took the shoot-out 3-2, in the first European final held in Turkey.

Bayern led from the sixth minute through Mario Basler's free kick and were still ahead when the board went up for three minutes of injury time at Camp Nou. Teddy Sheringham scored at 90+1, Ole Gunnar Solskjær at 90+3. One goal is the shallowest hole among the titles here, which is why it closes them out, and it handed Manchester United a treble, the league and FA Cup having come in the ten days before.

Thirty-five to three in a playoff game on 3 January 1993, with Frank Reich on the field in place of the starter. Reich threw four touchdown passes and Buffalo beat Houston 41-38 in overtime. Thirty-two points is the largest comeback in NFL postseason history. What it won was a divisional-round tie, which is not a trophy, and that is the tier it belongs in.

Derek Ufton dislocated a shoulder early on, no substitutes were permitted in 1957, and ten men played the last seventy-three minutes. By the time twenty-seven minutes were left they were 5-1 down. Johnny Summers scored four in one spell, having already scored earlier in the half, then crossed for Ryan with barely seconds to go. Seven-six, in the Second Division, with nothing whatsoever at stake.