NBA Finals All-Game 5 team: LeBron, Kyrie and Jordan’s flu game

• Co-author, Pro Basketball Prospectus series
• Formerly a consultant with the Indiana Pacers
• Developed WARP rating and SCHOENE system

Players from the Boston Celtics and Golden State Warriors will try to add their names to the list of great performances in NBA Finals history. And as the NBA concludes its 75th anniversary season, it’s an ideal time to look back on the best individual efforts we’ve ever seen in the league’s championship round.

We’ll be doing so on a game-by-game basis throughout the 2022 Finals, choosing a six-player team — all five positions plus a sixth man — from each game during the series (Game 1s, Game 2s and so on).

There’s no specific formula for what constitutes Finals greatness, though I will be leaning on the game score metric developed by John Hollinger for games for which it’s available from Basketball-Reference.com since player turnovers were first tracked in the 1977-78 season.

The all-time great Game 5s feature Kyrie Irving kickstarting a historic comeback from a 3-1 Finals deficit, one of Michael Jordan’s signature games and the highest-scoring performance in Finals history.

Let’s take a look back.

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