UPDATED 5/23/2023

A quick blog post, just to save this table as a reference and for posterity...

A few years ago, we ran a blog post which featured a comparison of various players when facing elimination from the playoffs. At the time, LeBron James appeared to be objectively the best of the elite group we looked at. Since that time, he's played 11 more games facing elimination, winning seven of them. For his career, LeBron is now 14-112when facing elimination, with averages of 33.7 PPG, 10.7 RPG and 7.5 APG with an average Game Score of 27.1. For comparison's sake, Michael Jordan's average Game Score when facing elimination was 23.3. Furthermore, LeBron's 33.7 PPG is the highest in NBA history by a player facing elimination with more than ten such games (Jordan averaged 31.3 and Wilt Chamberlain averaged 31.1). Some point to the 2011 NBA Finals as a case of LeBron going out meekly (and they'd be right). But since then, he's faced elimination 18 times, winning 12 times and putting up these insane numbers: 35.5 PPG, 11.3 RPG and 7.6 APG, with an average Game Score of 30.1! Here are his lines for his 26 career games when facing playoff elimination, with links to each of the box scores if you'd like further details. And remember to bookmark this page the next time someone argues LeBron hasn't been a clutch performer.

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We're happy to announce that we have added box scores for every Stanley Cup Playoff game in NHL history (back to 1918) to Hockey Reference. With this addition, we've also been able to build game logs to player pages covering their entire postseason career. This has also allowed us to create cumulative box scores for every playoff series in history (for example, the 1975 Stanley Cup Final)

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With playoffs season upon us, we wanted to point out our 2017 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs section. While it's mostly a shell right now, it will be a good bookmark for info as the playoffs get going. You can find a schedule & results for every game, stats for every skater, goalie & team, as well as leaderboards.

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With tonight's World Series Game 7, we thought we'd post quick links to Play Index searches showing every championship round Game 7 in MLB, NBA and NHL history. The lists are searches for home teams in Game 7s, sorted by date. If you click the date, you can see the box score for the game (when available). Enjoy!

World Series Game 7s (please note that this list is Winner Take All games, rather than Game 7s due to some World Series being longer than 7 games or having 7th games that weren't decisive in the early years)

NBA Finals Game 7s

Stanley Cup Final Game 7s

As Deadspin reminded us this week, there's only one October. In that spirit, let's jump right into a breakdown of the most exciting month of the year: the MLB Postseason. Read the rest of this entry

Game 2 of the 2016 NBA Finals will be a big occasion. Of course, they'll all be big occasions, since they will determine who the NBA Champion is. But Game 2 will be especially momentous, because -- barring injury, suspension, or an abrupt announcement from Adam Silver that this year's Finals will last one game -- it will be the 35th of LeBron James' Finals' career, matching Michael Jordan's total.

As a human being on the Internet, you are no doubt aware of the fact that LeBron and MJ experienced different degrees of success in their time in the NBA Finals. MJ went 24-11 in his 35 games, winning all 6 titles that he played for. LeBron, on the other hand, is 13-20 in Finals games and 2-4 in series.

Their records speak for themselves, but that's also a pretty surface-level way of looking at it. LeBron was swept in 2007, but that team's second best player, by Win Shares, was Zydrunas Ilgauskas, a far cry from the Jordan's Hall-of-Fame sidekick Scottie Pippen. Should he get extra credit for that? Or what about last season, when the LeBron's Cleveland Cavaliers won two games against the Golden State Warriors with Timofey Mozgov as their second best player due to injuries to Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving?

In other words, despite the record, can one build a case that LeBron actually has been more accomplished, on an individual level, than MJ in the Finals? Let's dig a little deeper into the numbers. Read the rest of this entry

As you may have noticed, Cleveland's Channing Frye has been on fire in the 2016 NBA Playoffs. Go ahead and check out his postseason shot-chart and date here.

He's a ridiculous 26-45 on 3-pointers, thus far. His Effective FG% is a sizzling 81.8%. That puts him on pace to break Birdman's record for eFG% in a single postseason. (Apparently, it's nice to be a back-up big playing with LeBron James).

Obviously, Frye is taking far different types of shots than Chris Andersen was, though. With our play-by-play statistics, which are available back to 2000-01, we are able to see shooting performance on specific shot types, as well. And thus far, Frye is shooting jump shots more effectively than we've seen in any of the last 16 postseasons. Here's the best eFG%s on jumpers in single playoffs since 2001 (minimum 50 jump shots attempted).

We hope everyone had a pleasant Memorial Day weekend. We just wanted to quickly mention something before it gets lost in the shuffle with the NBA Finals starting in two days. In the Cavaliers' Game 6 win over Toronto, LeBron James passed Michael Jordan to become the all-time leader in career postseason Win Shares. LeBron has, however, played more career postseason games and minutes than Jordan, so His Airness remains the all-time postseason leader in Win Shares Per 48 minutes.

Earlier this season, James passed Jordan to become the NBA's All-Time VORP leader (calculated since 1973-74).

Here's how the advanced statistics stack up for James and Jordan in their postseason careers (through the 2016 Eastern Conference Finals):

It was just a couple of weeks ago that we were all admiring the Golden State Warriors' latest feat in a season full of them: keeping up their winning ways without the help of the NBA MVP. While Stephen Curry has returned, the winning has come to a sudden halt.

After spending Sunday and Tuesday night getting obliterated by the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Bay Area's most popular export since 99% Invisible is just one loss away from an early start to their summer. In their last six games, the Warriors went 3-3 with a point differential of -20. During their disastrous excursion to Oklahoma City, they were outscored by 52 points and out-rebounded by 30 boards.

The Warriors are on the brink of a very dark abyss, but they have some historical precedent to look to. There have been nine times in the history of the NBA Playoffs where a team was down 3-1 in a series and came back to win. Looking back at those examples, we can see if any patterns emerge that give the Warriors a roadmap for digging themselves out or show the Thunder what mistakes they need to avoid. Read the rest of this entry

The Oklahoma City Thunder shouldn't be here. It's weird to think of a team that won 55 games and boasts 2 of the 5 best players in the league (at least, according to the NBA MVP voting) as an underdog, but the Thunder spent the year in the same conference as two historically dominant teams. There was the San Antonio Spurs, who posted the 7th best point differential of all-time. At the same time, there was the Golden State Warriors who, in case you didn't hear, won a lot of games this season.

Yet the Thunder tore through the Spurs, winning the series in 6, clinching it in a blowout, and perhaps ending then nearly 20-year career of Tim Duncan. Then they followed it up by going to one of the toughest arenas for road teams in the NBA and stealing Game 1 from the 73-win defending champs. Read the rest of this entry