As this year's NBA conference finals take place with the Boston Celtics facing the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference and the Denver Nuggets facing the Los Angeles Lakers in the West, we take a look back at the most impressive outings in this round, going back to the days of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar up through last year's performances from Jimmy Butler and Luka Doncic, with the help of Basketball-Reference.com's game score archive.
Game score, pioneered by John Hollinger, is a measure of a player's single-game value, factoring in all elements of the box score from scoring efficiency and playmaking to rebounding and defensive impact.
Although imperfect, it quickly captures a player's baseline performance and allows us to compare conference finals games back to 1978 — the first year the NBA tracked individual turnovers.
Over that span of 45 years of conference finals, we've highlighted the top 25 individual performances, 20 of which came in victories for their team.