NBA

The 20 Best Individual Postseason Performances in NBA History

Brett Oswalt  —  @bRo14thekid Apr 20th, 2017
According to advanced analytics, which player has enjoyed the best run through the playoffs?

NBA Finals MVP -- that's the only true individual award a player can get from the NBA Playoffs.

From time to time, that can be a problem because the award only concerns the Finals. It has nothing to do with the entirety of the postseason. So, great playoff performances tend to go under-appreciated in the shadow of great and notable Finals MVPs.

Well, we're here to do those postseason MVPs proper justice.

Conveniently, Basketball Reference has a page devoted to playoff leaders and record holders in terms of win shares. For those of you less familiar with this term, win shares are exactly what they sound like -- an estimate of the number of wins contributed by a player over a period of time. You can find more information in the Basketball Reference glossary.

Using the all-time playoff win shares list, we see that -- dating all the way back to 1948 -- a player has accounted for 4.3 win shares or more in a single playoff run 20 times. Here are those players and years, ranked from 20 to 1 and ending with the most dominant individual showing in playoff history.

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