The 10 greatest NBA Playoffs performances of all time

2. LeBron James, Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals, June 19, 2016

The 2016 Golden State Warriors accumulated a regular-season record of 73 wins and nine losses. In doing so, they broke the 20-year-old record set by the 1996 Chicago Bulls. Interestingly enough, their head coach, Steve Kerr, was a member of that all-time great Bulls team. Many young NBA fans in 2016 were not old enough to remember the Bulls of the ’90s, but that did not stop them from crowning the Warriors the greatest team of all time.

Not only were the Warriors the defending champions in 2016, they were also undoubtedly better than they were the year before. Their franchise player, Stephen Curry, had just become the first unanimous MVP in NBA history. His backcourt mate, Klay Thompson, had put on a shooting display for the ages in the Western Conference Finals that earned him the moniker “Game 6 Klay.”

Draymond Green, the second-round pick out of Michigan State, had become one of the best defenders in the league while also being the best playmaking power forward in basketball.
Through the first four games of the NBA Finals, the Eastern Conference champion Cleveland Cavaliers, who featured LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love, only managed to win Game 3. Staring at a three-games-to-one deficit, the Cavaliers refused to give up. They won a classic Game 5 on the road at Oracle Arena, then dominated Game 6 back in Cleveland to set the stage for Game 7 in Oakland.

The game was a seesaw battle the entire evening, with neither team able to establish control or take a commanding lead at any point of the game. With the score at 89 for an extended period of time, the Warriors finally got a chance to get out in transition. Stephen Curry made a well-timed bounce pass to Andre Iguodala for what would have been the go-ahead basket, but LeBron James made an incredible chase-down block to prevent the bucket.

After a Kyrie Irving 3-pointer gave the Cavaliers the lead, James was fouled with under 11 seconds remaining in the game. He would make one out of two free throws and give his team a commanding four-point lead. Cleveland would get a stop on the next possession and win the game by a score of 93 to 89. They had done the impossible—erased a three-game deficit to become NBA champions!

LeBron James totaled 27 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists, 3 blocks, and 2 steals for the game. It was only the third time in NBA history that a player earned a triple-double in Game 7 of the Finals. More importantly, James had fulfilled his promise to make the Cleveland Cavaliers a championship franchise. It was truly one of the greatest playoff performances in NBA history.