1. 2017 Kawhi (alternate 2019)
This is an excellent regular season with a monster playoffs where he showed that his playoff resilience didn't even care about facing the greatest roster ever, only to be taken out on one of the more famous cheap shots in recent memory. A full WCF would make people like this season more and I can't blame him for a cheap shot injury. 2017 Kawhi wins on lots of teams that had guys who will be listed above him here:
Kawhi's 31.5 PER is 13th all time based on 100 MP and 8th all time for multi-series playoffs. His WS/48 of .314 is 9th all time based on 100 MP and 6th all time for multi-series playoffs. And that's with 1954 mikan included above him. Even with very generous 100 MP and 20 PPG limits, his TS% of 67.2% is 24th all-time. For 200 MP and 24 PPG, it jumps to 6th, and one of the people ahead of him is himself.
If this was a one year phenomenom, I might understand the hesitancy. But "Kawhi puts up huge playoff performance" is not a one year phenomenom. If we are truly talking about peaks, there aren't many higher than 2017 playoffs Kawhi.
2. 1983 Moses Malone (alternate 1982)
Moses may not be this board's cup of tea. He doesn't play an aesthetically pleasing type of basketball. He doesn't always find the open man or protect the rim. He doesn't do the things impact metrics love. Just give him the ball and get out of the way. Get out of his way even more if a rebound was to be had. I tend to think of the NBA as much simpler and more primitive the further back you go. You guard your guy, he guards you. Possessions weren't valued like now. People weren't breaking down film and doing analytics on their team strategy. Sometimes an ass-kicker like Moses was what you needed (and sometimes you still do).
I just watched a highlight from Game 2 in 1981 against the Lakers, which the Lakers actually won. Kareem played well but he never looked like he wanted to guard Moses. Malone would get the ball against whoever in the post and, even if a double came, he just got to the basket. They didn't show a lot of rebounds, but Moses did get a few impressive blocks. There's nothing pretty about his game except the result. Anyway, back to the regularly scheduled copy and paste...
Fo' Fo' Fo'. Led the league in regular season PER and WS48 while putting up 24.5 ppg and 15.3 rpg and winning MVP. Then led the playoffs in PER (25.7) and WS48 (0.260) while putting up 26 ppg and 15.8 rpg on 58.7 TS%. In the Finals, he demolished (35 year old) Kareem with 25.8 ppg and 18.0 rpg in a sweep. I was actually just looking at this season to see where I might put it and then convinced myself when I looked at the rest of the Sixers in the playoffs. After Moses at 25.7 PER and 0.260 WS48, the next highest was Maurice Cheeks at 17.3 PER and Bobby Jones at 0.164 WS48 (Dr J really fell off in the playoffs). That puts Moses as far and away the best player in arguably the most dominant playoff run ever. One that he called before it happened just to make it more impressive. This isn't Shaq with Kobe or KD/Steph all having each other's backs in dominant 1-loss runs (and as far as I know, Moses didn't have Dr. J injure anybody to keep his team from losing more than once in the playoffs). Here are 6 dominant title runs I could think of off the top of my head and the separation between the #1 and #2 player on those teams, sorted by WS48 differential:
We can see that for the 2001 Lakers, 2017 Warriors, and 1999 Spurs, the #1 and #2 were practically identical. Except for BPM, Moses ends up there with MJ as being easily the best player on his team. And for what it's worth, BPM had Moses as the 4th best Sixer in the regular season, almost 3 behind the team leader, so that shows how much more it liked him in the postseason that he led the team. This may have been a guy who joined a stacked team, but it ended up a one man wrecking crew.
Also, 1982 Moses averaged 31.1/14.7 playing on the second slowest paced team in the league, with only a 97 pace.
Moses gets disrespected enough on all-time lists, a 3-time MVP with a side hustle of smacking Kareem around in the playoffs shouldn't get the same on peak lists.
3. 2006 Dwyane Wade (alternate 2009)
I'm a floor raising kind of guy I guess, which doesn't seem typical on this board. People who have everything put on them and come up big in the biggest moments with little to no margin of error impress me more than ceiling raisers putting the finishing touches on an already great team. It just seems like a more common problem to solve throughout NBA history than what to do with all this extra talent. Wade had a very good 27/7/6 regular season as a 3rd year player but obviously this is about the playoffs. On one of the jankiest looking title rosters you'll ever see, on a team where Antoine Walker played the 2nd most playoff minutes and White Chocolate played the 4th most, and Shaq was often getting outplayed by Zo, Wade saved his best moments for the biggest series.
Shot 61.7% in the ECF (68.4 TS%!!) against a still very good Detroit team that had just held Lebron to 81 ppg in the previous series. 26.7/5.5/5.2 looks even better when you realize the pace was 83.8. And then of course there are the Finals. Did he shoot 2 to 3 to 40 more free throws than he should have? Sure, but free throw totals were pretty elevated that year so his totals are only sort of absurd. Put up 34.7 ppg, 7.8 rpg, and 2.7 spg on 57.2 TS% while maybe leading the best overall Finals comeback ever. Weirdly, the only team that has probably come closer to losing the Finals before winning is also a team with Wade in the 2013 Finals (with 3rd probably also including Wade in the 2011 Finals). The Heat were down 2-0 and down 13 in the 4th quarter of Game 3. That's dangerously close to "1, 2, 3 Cancun!" time and instead Wade just went crazy and put up 42, 36, 43, and 36 in the next 4 games. In a series with a pace of 90! With 3 of the games decided by 1, 2, and 3. In other words, turn those 42/43 games into just 39 point games and the Mavs are celebrating. Efficiency may not be crazy but on that volume with such a weird, offensively limited roster around him against a very solid defense, this is perhaps the best Finals performance ever by anybody not named Lebron or Jordan. It's a title snatched out of thin air that very few players can say they would have been able to pull off. This is a peaks project and it's hard to peak much higher.
