There’s no NBA version of the NHL’s Conn Smythe Trophy, the award handed out at the end of the hockey season to the most valuable player of the playoffs.
The closest thing is the Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP award. But that solely captures a players’ performance in the championship series, not taking into account the run to get there.
It’s worth taking a look back at a roller coaster of a postseason — filled with 50-point masterpieces and clutch shots, each more impressive than the last — to create a top-10 ranking of its best overall performances.
Here’s the formula: I added a player’s Game Score (GS) metric (per Basketball Reference) for each game he played in the playoffs, divided that overall sum by the number of games they played to get an average GS and then multiplied the sum GS and the average.
In layman’s terms, I’m taking into account both the quality of a player’s performance and their team’s longevity in the playoffs. So while the fact that, say, P.J. Tucker played 23 games this postseason boosts his sum score, his average GS wasn’t high enough to get him considered. Also, I only took into account players that appeared in more than 10 games, so Damian Lillard, Jayson Tatum, LeBron James and more were left off the list despite strong numbers.
Deep breaths. Let’s hop into it.