Forgotten NBA Finals Performances

[VBM]

That Lakers Celtics game 7, Ron Artest gets a ton of glory but I feel like people don’t talk enough about Pau

He had 19 points and 18 rebounds, including 9 offensive rebounds against guys like KG

There's a reason he has that MVPau nickname. But that statline couldn't compare to the importance of Kobe's 15 rebounds

 

[MJ Truth]

It being a short series and also it being LeBron’s first championship overshadowed that the clinching game was the “Mike Miller game” where he went 7/8 for threes

The games before this he hardly played and had 2 points, 2 points, 4 points, and 0 points

In Game 7 the next year came the Shane Battier game where he kinda did the same thing, which was overshadowed by Game 6 and Ray Allen’s theatrics and Bron hitting the last shots in Game 7.

 

[ISO]

 

[Primetime]

Harden's performance for OKC against the Heat in the 2012 Finals gets misremembered as him having some sort of all time bad performance.

With OKC leading 1-0 in the series, in a crucial game 2 Harden was 7-11 from the field in 34 minutes and was +13 for the game (the bench were all in the plus). OKC's starters all had a negative plus/minus with KD being -9 and Westbrook -11. The starters lost them that game and the 2-0 lead which changed the momentum.

Harden had two inefficient shooting nights in games 3 and 4 (2-10 both times) but basically all three guys were off from three (0-4 for Harden, 1-4 for both KD and Russ) but Russ and KD ate up all the extra shots while Harden facilitated and rebounded. He led the team in rebounding with 10 in one of those games and led the team in assists and was tied for 2nd in rebounds the other game.

He contributed but as Bosh has stated the Heat's game plan was to limit Harden which explains why he couldn't get the easy twos to ramp up his shooting efficiency and overall points. One of those losses KD had 5 TOs in a game decided by six points compared to Harden's 2 TOs.

Beard was reasonably efficient in the elimination game too but Russ was chucking/bricking and KD had 7 TOs to Harden's 3. They got thoroughly outplayed and all had poor plus/minus stats obviously but KD and Russ were the worst of the three (though Harden played fewer minutes).

Because Harden couldn't be the hero third guy he was against the Spurs due to the Heat's game plan, people spun a narrative of him choking when in reality he contributed enough to make some of those losses winnable. The Heat just were the better team with a solid game plan.

Yea, although Harden didn't really start shooting well in the playoffs (consistently) until the past 2 seasons, he's always had a solid PER (player efficiency rating) despite that because of all the other things he does as a workhorse.

• Harden's career playoff PER: 22.9 --> best year 27.5
  
• Curry's career playoff PER: 23.0 --> best year 27.1
  
• Durant's career playoff PER: 24.6 --> best year 27.5

Omit his OKC years and it goes up to 23.12, and he was gonna shatter his best year this playoff run before the hamstring injury. Entering the MIL series he was at a 34.7 PER with how he was operating with all the weapons and spacing on BK. If they actually have health next year, it'll be really interesting to see what he does in a full season and Finals run with them.

 

[ISO]

 

[Erratic415]

Magic’s famous game 6 in his rookie year overshadowed a great performance by Jamaal Wilkes, who put up 37, and a great series by Kareem.

Kareem’s stat line for the series: 33.4/13.6/3.2/0.6/4.6 on 55% FG. In game 5 when he turned his ankle, he came back and finished with 40 and 15, and had the game winning dunk over Dr. J with about 30 seconds left.

Austin Croshere giving Shaq and Kobe a run for their money. I think he technically outscored Kobe in the series but thats cuz Kobe missed a game...

I remember that, Austin got a big contract out of that series.

 

[Erratic415]

Did anyone see the documentary Basketball: A Love Story? One of the episodes goes over the 1975 Finals between the Warriors and Bullets. That a$$hole Rick Barry was having a great series, putting up 30 a game.

One of the former Bullets, it may have been Wes Unseld, was talking about how they decided in the huddle that they needed to take Barry out of the game. So they had a Bullet named Mike Riordan come in from behind and punch Barry in the back of the head.