Curry at 1 feels right or nah?

Gerald Green went over two Cavaliers at once, Matthew Dellavedova and Timofey Mozgov, on December 5, 2015, a night Miami led by 18 at the half and won 99-84. Green had won the 2007 dunk contest, then spent a season in Russia because no NBA team wanted him, proof a dunk contest title bought him far less job security than it should have.

Eight points in 8.9 seconds at Madison Square Garden on May 7, 1995, from six down, and Indiana won it 107 to 105. Miller played 1,389 games for one club, made five All-Star teams, and never once made an All-NBA First or Second Team.

King averaged 42.6 points across five games against Detroit in the 1984 playoffs, with two dislocated fingers, and New York took it 3-2. Dantley had the more durable and more efficient career. Peak against peak, King is the one you take.

True on skill and only on skill. Vucevic has made 998 threes and can pass out of the elbow, and Howard's offensive repertoire never really got past a right shoulder hook. Howard also won three Defensive Player of the Year awards and dragged Orlando to a Finals.

The 2013 Miami Heat won 27 games in a row. The longest streak anyone has put together inside one season besides the 1972 Lakers, and they still finished 6 games behind the 72-10 record. LeBron averaged 27 on 57 percent shooting during the streak and Miami went 66-16 for the season. They won the title in seven games over San Antonio, which needed Ray Allen's corner three to happen at all. The 27 straight was the best two months of basketball LeBron ever played and the Heat still needed a miracle. The 2013 Spurs were that good.

Marcus Smart won Defensive Player of the Year in 2022, the first guard to take it since Gary Payton in 1996, a gap of 26 years. He is the only name here whose best season was about stopping people rather than scoring on them.

Klay Thompson lost two entire seasons, one to a knee and one to an Achilles, and still came out of it with 158 playoff games and 3,032 points scored in them. Reggie Miller played 144 and averaged 20.6. Availability decides this, and the man who lost two years wins it.

Kyrie Irving built his reputation on the handle before anything else got noticed, then backed it up in 2021 by joining the 50-40-90 club at .506, .402 and .922. He made nine All-Star teams and hit the title clinching three over Golden State in Game 7 of 2016, a resume that argues he deserves to be remembered first as a shooter, not a mixtape act.

Kevin Durant was 6 foot 9 and shot 50-40-90 while averaging 28 points in 2012-13. Only nine players have ever hit 50-40-90. He did it at 24. He also led the league in free throw percentage at 90.5 that year, which had never been done by a forward averaging that many points. Durant was 24. The Thunder won 60 games and lost in the second round because Westbrook tore his meniscus in Game 2 against Houston. That's the season that team should have won it all.

Moses has three MVPs. So does Bird. So does Magic. The man who gets cut first is level with the two nobody would dream of cutting, and he won the 1983 title with a 12-1 playoff run after saying out loud that it would happen.

Shaquille O'Neal took 2,317 playoff free throws, second only to LeBron, and missed 1,149. That is more misses than Dirk Nowitzki has makes at the bottom of this. He shot 50.4 percent in the postseason across 216 games and won four titles anyway.

Luka Doncic scored 73 points on 25 of 33 shooting in a 148-143 win at Atlanta on January 26, 2024, adding eight threes and going 15 of 16 from the line. It was the fourth highest single game total in league history, reached on just 33 shots, an efficiency that argues Doncic's night belongs above some of the higher point totals on that list, not just alongside them.

Deron Williams had 42 points and the last shot as Utah beat Oklahoma City 140-139 in overtime on April 6, 2010, hitting from the top of the key with a second left. It stood as his career high until he scored 57 on Charlotte two years later, a bigger number remembered far less, proof a buzzer beater outlasts a box score in memory.

T-Mac won back-to-back scoring titles in 2003 and 2004 and did not win a playoff series in his entire career until 2013, when he was a spare part on the San Antonio bench. The scoring was never the problem. That is about as cruel as a career gets.

Elgin Baylor retired nine games into the 1971-72 season. The Lakers immediately won 33 straight and then the championship, and his name is not on that banner. He averaged 27.4 for a career and once scored 61 in a Finals game.

Charles Barkley isolated on David Robinson with a season on the line and hit the jumper as Phoenix won Game 6 102-100 to eliminate San Antonio, with Barkley finishing 28 and 21 that May 1993 night. The MVP trophy at home didn't buy an easier road, since the Suns still needed seven games to beat Seattle before Chicago beat them in June.

In 1986-87 McHale shot 60.4 percent from the floor and 83.6 from the line, the first man ever to clear both marks in a season. He also broke the navicular bone in his right foot that March, was told it could end him, and played the whole postseason on it.

Kareem sprained his ankle in Game 5 and could not travel, so a twenty-year-old rookie jumped center in Game 6 of the 1980 Finals. Magic Johnson put up 42 points, 15 rebounds and 7 assists in Philadelphia, went 14 for 14 from the line, and won it.

Orlando held the first pick in 1993, took Chris Webber and traded him inside the hour for Penny Hardaway and three future firsts. Hardaway had talked his way into a second look, a pickup run with Magic players two days out. Was any workout ever worth more?

Tim Duncan finished two blocks short of a quadruple double with 21 points, 20 rebounds, 10 assists and 8 blocks on June 15, 2003, as San Antonio ran down a 72-63 fourth quarter deficit on a 19-0 run to take Game 6 88-77 for its second title. David Robinson closed with a modest 13 and 17 in his last game, and that contrast in one box score, not years of gradual fade, is what actually finished the handoff.