The Biggest Playoff Risers in NBA History

For every playoff game a player appeared in, we ask one question: did he score more or less than his own regular season average from that same year? Each dot is one of the 637 players in NBA history with at least 50 playoff games. The horizontal axis is his expected scoring, each season's regular season average weighted by how many playoff games he actually played in it; the vertical axis is what he really averaged in the playoffs. A missed postseason never counts against anyone, and a bench year counts only as much as the playoff games he played in that role. The dashed line is break-even: land above it and you beat your own regular seasons when the games mattered most, land below it and you shrank. Hover any dot for the player and the split.

Ranked by how far each player's playoff scoring beat his own same-season regular season level. Measured honestly, the list reads like a roll call of every playoff reputation the league ever argued about: Playoff Murray at the top, Reggie Miller, Big Game James, Kawhi, Jordan. Six of the fifteen have won a Finals MVP, and ten own a ring.

Here is the part most playoff-riser lists skip. Playoff basketball is harder to score in: possessions slow down, weak defenders leave the floor, and every night is a scheme built against you. Across the qualified field, scoring efficiency falls by 1.6 points of TS% in the postseason, per-36 scoring drops by 1.3 points, and 85% of players see their scoring rate decline.

So where do the big playoff jumps come from? Minutes. The stars on the list above play three to six more minutes a night in the postseason, and that expansion hides the fact that almost everyone, LeBron and Kobe included, scores slightly less per minute against playoff defenses. Even Playoff Murray, the biggest raw riser ever, holds his rate exactly flat: his entire rise is six extra minutes a night. The list below is the rarer club that actually raised its rate: more points per 36 in the playoffs, minimum 15 playoff minutes a game.

Four names sit on both lists, raising volume and rate together: Reggie Miller, Baron Davis, Maurice Cheeks, and Brunson. Baron is the standout profile, since his efficiency jumps more than four points of TS% on top of the rate gain, and Goran Dragic at the top is the classic bench-fire case, a career playoff overperformer whose 2020 bubble run to the Finals with Miami was the loudest version.

The other side of the diagonal. This table takes the ten biggest playoff scoring drops among players with a regular season average of at least 15.

Measured this carefully, the fair reading of Wilt Chamberlain is milder than his reputation but still the biggest superstar drop ever: game for game, season for season, he scored 4.2 below his own regular season level once Bill Russell's Celtics could single-cover him with the best defender alive and pack the paint with the rest. His 44.8-point 1963 season, when his Warriors missed the playoffs entirely, does not count against him at all.

The modern headline is Joel Embiid: an MVP who gives back 3.8 a game against his own season baselines, the exact discourse the Philadelphia springs keep relitigating, with Tyler Herro telling a smaller version of the same story. And Karl-Anthony Towns remains the most interesting case on the table: he drops 3.4 in the playoffs and won the 2026 title anyway, because the man he shares the locker room with beats his own baseline by three. Falling is not failing. You can compare the champions' two halves side by side.

The names people actually search for, all-time greats and today's stars together, sorted by how much their playoff scoring beat their own same-season baselines. Read the per-36 column before crowning anyone: nearly every raw average here climbs while the scoring rate slips, because star minutes surge in the playoffs. Only Brunson and Hakeem actually raise their rate, and Jordan holds his essentially flat, which at a 33.4 playoff average is its own kind of flex. At the other end, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the table's surprise: the 2025 champion scores 1.9 below his own regular season level in the playoffs so far.

The all-time leader is active: Playoff Murray is still adding to the biggest rise ever measured, with the champion Brunson and Jokic right behind him, the only trio of active players in the all-time top six. Kawhi's two-way playoff legend survives the honest math, Draymond, Caruso, and Marcus Smart carry the champion-role-player profile, and LeBron James is still beating his own baselines by 1.3 a game across a record 302 playoff appearances.

Every number in this article comes from our own stats database, covering every regular season and playoff box score since the league's first season in 1946-47, current through the 2026 Finals. The ground rules:

• Every playoff run is compared to its own season, weighted by playoff games. For each season a player reached the postseason, we take the gap between his playoff scoring and his regular season scoring in that same year, then average those gaps weighted by how many playoff games he played in each. Equivalently: his playoff PPG here is his true career playoff average (it matches his player page exactly), and his baseline is what he would have averaged had he scored at each season's regular season level in every playoff game he actually played. A star who missed the playoffs through his prime is never punished for it, a bench season counts only as much as its playoff games, and era and pace cancel out because both halves of every comparison come from the same year.
• Qualification is 50 or more career playoff games, 150 or more regular season games in playoff seasons, and at least 5 regular season games for a season to set a baseline, which yields 637 players. Fifty playoff games is roughly three deep runs, enough to separate a real pattern from one hot series.
• Per-36 and efficiency numbers use the same per-season scheme, weighted by playoff minutes and playoff shot attempts instead of games. Game logs before 1971 recorded minutes and shot attempts for only a fraction of games, so per-36, minutes, and TS% figures use 1971 and later seasons only, and show as a dash for careers played mostly before then, like Wilt and Cliff Hagan. Points and games are complete for every era, so the scoring splits themselves have no such cutoff. The per-36 leaderboard adds a 15 playoff minutes per game floor so garbage-time small samples do not sneak in.
• True shooting is points divided by 2 times (field goal attempts plus 0.44 times free throw attempts), the standard formula.
• ABA statistics are not included, so players who split eras, like Rick Barry, appear with their NBA numbers only.

If you want to interrogate any of it, the tools are here: every player's season-by-season regular season and playoff tables live on their player pages, any two careers can go head to head, and if this article started an argument about teammates, our greatest duos ranking and duo tracker are the natural next stop. Disagree with the order? The community Top 100 is where votes settle things.