LeBron James and the All-time Great Playoff Performances

By Terry Shropshire
Jun 10, 2012
4:36 pm

As a fellow Akron, Ohio native and long-suffering LeBron James fan, I have been waiting for “King James” to actually hoist the crown atop his dome. Most Miami Heat fans and Lebron James disciples had been dying to see that look he had in Game 5 that they’d never seen before, the look of a man who appeared that he might actually kill someone, the look of a man possessed.

With his back against the wall in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals against Boston — and an absolute hellish summer of being dissected like a med school frog if he didn’t at least get to the NBA Finals — he unloaded an historic performance in a career filled with all-time great performances with 45 points, 15 rebounds and five assists on 73.1 percent shooting, numbers that had not been posted in exactly 50 years, since Hall of Famer Wilt Chamberlain did something similar in 1962. Not even Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson nor Larry Bird can boast those stats.

Ahead you’ll find where LeBron’s 45-point explosion ranks with the all-time best individual NBA playoff performances.