MJ had a 24.8 average Game Score, while the victorious Detroit Pistons were led by Isiah Thomas’s 16.2. But where did he “win” his seventh? That’s from his seven-game loss in the 1990 Eastern Conference finals.
No surprises that MJ has at least six, as it’s a given that he was the Chicago Bulls’ best player each year he went to the NBA Finals (where he also won a record six MVPs).
#Nba eastern finals series#
His 29.3 average Game Score in the 2009 Eastern Conference finals would have garnered serious consideration had the series gone seven games and if Dwight Howard hadn’t been so excellent for the winning Orlando Magic. Incredibly, James’s best conference finals performance was in a loss. His 24.1 average Game Score in the Lakers’ 2020 Western Conference bubble win over the Nuggets was just a hair (or a brow, perhaps?) behind Anthony Davis’s 24.4. Perhaps the most surprising thing about LeBron’s count is that it’s not 10. The Senate Is Losing One Of Its Few Remaining Moderate Republicans So then, who are the leaders in our retroactive conference finals MVPs? Here are the players with at least four trophies missing from their mantels: Lakers’ Western Conference finals clincher.) (This may have cost Wilt Chamberlain in 1972 since he reportedly blocked 10 shots, unofficially, in the L.A. Same for blocked shots and steals before 1974. For seasons before 1978, turnovers were completely removed from the equation since they were not tracked at all. For earlier seasons, some estimates were needed for things like the split of offensive/defensive rebounds, 4 blocked shots, steals and turnovers. The NBA was split into divisions instead of conferences until 1970-71, but those earlier division finals served the same function as the current conference finals, with the two last teams standing from the East and the West, respectively, facing off for the right to represent their division in the NBA Finals.ī has complete data on average Game Score for every playoff series back to 1984, which was the first season of the “modern” playoff format (though the first round was best-of-five, rather than best-of-seven, at the time). From 1958 on, though, every team has needed to win a best-of-seven semifinals series to reach the NBA Finals. I left some wiggle room for losing players to win MVP only if the series went seven games, they played excellent in their Game 7 defeat and the winning team didn’t have a player whose performance was as impressive.Īnd how far back can we award our retroactive MVPs? The first NBA postseason was in 1947, 3 but from 1947 through 1957, the path to the NBA Finals was inconsistent in terms of formatting. This means the best player on the Knicks in that series (Willis Reed) was my winner. 2 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar may have dominated the 1970 Eastern Division finals statistically, but his Bucks lost to the Knicks in five games.
While average Game Score told me who had the best series, I also wanted to be realistic: Series MVPs are almost always awarded to a player on the winning team.
#Nba eastern finals full#
Across a series, an average Game Score north of 20 is very good and 25 is great, while over 30 for a full series is nearly unheard of. One important thing to note about Game Score is that a score of 10 is indicative of an average, run-of-the-mill game, while 40 is legendary. After some experimentation, John Hollinger’s Game Score seemed like the best fit in terms of matching voter intuition (by rewarding players who dominate the box score) and availability (it can be applied to any complete box score since player turnovers were first tracked in 1977-78 and can still provide useful direction when some less essential statistics are missing). To award retroactive conference finals MVPs, I first needed to settle on a consistent metric. Yet the first question that popped into my mind when the league announced the awards was: “If the NBA had been awarding this honor all along, would Magic and Bird have racked up the most of the trophies now named for them?” Thankfully, 1 has cumulative box scores (and individual game boxes) for every playoff series in NBA history, so I set out to answer my own question. Bird and Johnson are fitting namesakes for these awards given that their struggle for supremacy from opposite coasts is often credited with reviving the NBA in the 1980s. When the NBA conference finals each wrap up, the league will award two new trophies: the Larry Bird Trophy for the Eastern Conference finals MVP and the Earvin “Magic” Johnson Trophy for the Western Conference finals MVP. PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY EMILY SCHERER / NBA
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