The NBA Finals. The ultimate destination.
It's where so many players have yearned to get to, yet not many have actually reached. And while most have made it only to taste defeat, others have tasted gold in the form of the Larry O'Brien Trophy. A select few have stood out among the crowd as Finals MVPs.
By select few, I really mean 48 -- that's the number of Finals MVPs that have been handed out since 1968. But, in comparison to all the players vying to be the best, that isn't much.
Still, series MVP or not, how do we decide which Finals performance has been the best?
The answer to that question is Basketball Reference's Game Score. Basically, Game Score is a rough measure of a player's productivity for a single game or beyond. On a similar scale to points, a score of 10 is average and a score of 40 is outstanding.
Here, we look at the Game Score for single players over the course of an NBA Finals so that we may rank the top-10 player performances since 1984 -- the year Game Score was first tracked.
Who tops the list of top 10? Check it!