The NBA provides a window into the rise and fall of superstars. More so than the brief schedule of the NFL or the unathletic hiding places of baseball, basketball and its 82-game seasons provide us a picture of players growing from rookie to star, and then on the back end of their career going from star to something less.
“Father Time is undefeated”, as they say, and every NBA star feels the effects of aging. Even LeBron James is experiencing that with the Los Angeles Lakers after ignoring its effects for so long. Throughout NBA history stars have had to deal with the decline of their careers on the most public of stages.
Before the end NBA stars have shown in One Final Game that they can still be amazing
The stars of NBA history have summoned some tremendous performances near the end of their careers. Some players get to do so in their literal last games, while others have to point further back as injuries or age resulted in less stellar ends. Whenever it occurred, every star has One Final Game to point to.
What are those games for some of the league’s best players? We took a look at 30 of the league’s stars, ranked in order of our recent Top 75 ranking of every NBA player in league history. No active players are included on the list, as their final game has yet to be written. Therefore we start with Air Jordan, who kept us on our toes in tracking his final great game by retiring three different times.
Here is “One Final Game” for 30 of the all-time greats.