Best individual series ever

[FuShengTHEGreat]

Let's get hyped up for the game 3 tonight

Which are the best idividual series ever that you've ever watched? By "best", I mean they both look that way from objective standpoint, but also throw in your subjective feelings about them. To make the pool smaller, let's use my completely arbitrary criteria:

- minimum 6 games played (to make sample of size bigger),
- you have to watch at least two of these games (this is more for oldschool choices),
- the bigger the stage, the better - but you can even pick the first rounders,
- you can pick a loser from the series.

Let's do it

1. 1995 WCF vs SA by Olajuwon is imho the greatest individual series (and overall playoff run to a title) ever.

2. Jerry West in the 1969 NBA Finals.

3. Kareem Abdul Jabbar in the 1974 Finals.

Honorable mention:

1992 Finals Michael Jordan and 2016 Finals by LBJ

All great mentions. Especially the Hakeem one considering who was guarding him.

Yes it's virtually unheard of in history to have 2 HOF guys of comparable talents where one won the league MVP and ended up getting utterly outplayed in every imaginable facet.

What happened in the 95 WCF would be like if LBJ vs Durant managed to thoroughly destroy one another the 3 times they met in their playoff careers. Instead they kinda cancelled one another out.

Only Jordan vs Drexler in 92 was comparable but to be honest it was a bit more media hyping that up imho as Clyde wasn't ever on Jordan's level.

I know both West and Kareem both ended up on the losing end but I really felt they both left it out there and 100% maxed out what they could've done individually in those series.

West was a 26ppg regular season scorer in 68-69 and he increased that to 37ppg on very good efficiency. He tried to offset both Elgin/WIlts offensive struggles. Not sure how many guys in history increased their regular season scoring by 11ppg average in a Finals. That's very difficult to do. And he played hurt in game 7 and still had a 42/12/13 performance.

Kareem was a 27ppg regular season scorer and he moved up to 32ppg in the Finals. He tried to pick up the slack for the loss of Lucious Allen and Oscar being at the end of the road. He saved them in game 6 to force game 7 with one of the greatest game winners in Finals history.

[ShotCreator]

Gonna almost certainly be someone with a high capacity for truly elite defense.

Jordan out of the question IMO. Just never even near the kind of defender needed.


Joel Embiid crushed the Raptors and Nets offenses so much in the 19 playoffs he was tilting games toward blowouts in just a few minutes at a time.

Defense can scale up astronomically.

LeBron was amazing in the back end of the 16 finals. Magic level offense, Russell level defense, t minimum for 3 games.

However on the whole, one of those absolute max motor Duncan series from 01-03 could be overall as good if not better.

Even KG had a 19 Embiid type playoff run at like 35 in 2012. In/out splits showed he wa a pretty much shutting LeBron down drastically in that series, and LeBron erupted outrageously in the non-KG mins.

Only god knows the kind of destruction two-at guys would put on pre-1997.

One thing about Jordan in these is, is his offense even better than a hot….like Lillard or somebody? Lillard when hot, and he’s been piping hot in the playoffs although a generally bad playoff player, his offense is likely better and more floor shifting than Jordan’s.

Shaq has some really dominant overall series where his foul rate ruined rotations, and on top of an efficient 30/13, he made teams less aggressive on both ends with his presence, and it’s a visible thing only +/- can pick up. And could even affect the game with him off court.

17 Kawhi likely peaked higher than any wing in the era though. His series against Memphis he tamed a piping hot Conley, and had a cyborg Kobe kind of shot creation series. Superhuman stuff that I just haven’t seen since. 22 Butler was not a regular kind of great either but Kawhi was more resilient.

09 LeBron is a different era. Confident he peaked higher than any Jordan series or run of any kind.

Oh brother the myth of 17 Kawhi series against Memphis. Danny Green was who cooled Conley down not Kawhi and there was no Tony Allen that series. Kawhi went off against 40yo Vc, James Ennis and Wayne Seldon relax. He was good but not spectacular against Houston. They had their best defensive performance without him where they forced elimination game James to one of his worst bed **** meltdowns. There were excuses for Kawhis defense that season and defensive metrics not aligning when while opponent 3pt shooting was a factor a lot of it was the Jonathan Simmons minutes and him playing better wing defense than Kawhi that season and we saw that when Kawhi was out. I know Bpm, Vorp, Raptor etc are the foundation for a lot of your analysis but there's more to it than that

Jimmy's defense this playoff run was def better than Kawhis 17 playoff defense or any of his defensive playoff runs besides 16. His defense on Trae, Maxey, Harden and Jaylen was real not like Kawhis fake defense on Conley which again Conley was mostly on fire when Danny was on the bench.

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And that was Jimmy's 41/9/5 game 1 with 4 steals and 3 blocks. Tucker was def the biggest issue for Jayson by far and Dipos ball pressure made Jaylens live dribble tougher but Jimmy's overall defense this run was tremendous and higher level than any non 16 Kawhi playoff run

Dunno how to properly gauge Kawhis overrated 19 playoff defense with how loaded that roster was and Nurse turning out to be a defensive mastermind too

Well, I don’t believe you.

And I like having impact stats as a foundation for my opinions, as opposed to other peoples opinions as one, whether to stan someone or be a hater. Which would make me some over emotional and predictable take maker with little self awareness.


As far as Kawhi and Jimmy’s defense, I don’t really care enough to make a distinction.

Though Kawhi was clearly on another level in the Memphis series, just getting through screens and general help D. I think his shot making and creation just blows Jimmy away and would force a defense to overextend much more to even try to stop him. Which was seen in that Memphis series. Gasol was essentially unplayable defensively.



This is a thread about series after all, not random games across random runs, and random shot defended against splits.

[uberhikari]

Surprised no one has mentioned Giannis in the 2021 Finals.