Best Playoff Run: 2017 Durant vs 2019 Kawhi vs 2020 Lebron

[8Ball]

2018 Bron still better than all dat.


2020 Bron tho

[StrongLurk]

2020 Lebron easily. KD was on the most stacked team of all time, Kawhi faced that "stacked" team without KD and Klay.

Lebron went through the most mentally straining playoff gauntlet of all time and showed he is still the best in the world.

[ELITEpower23]

1. Bran
2. Kawhi







3. KD

Co-signed

LeBron's 2020 playoffs run was another 30.0 PER run. KD and Kawhi have never done that.

[kuniva_dAMiGhTy]

19 Kawhi > 20 Bron > 17 KD

Had Davis not arguably been LA's best player, Bron gets the nod for #1. Obviously Durant is last with one of the easiest title's in history.

[1987_Lakers]

Stfu

AD led the Lakers in scoring during the 20' Playoffs

By a measly 2 points. We all know LeBron was the one running the offense. KD played with the greatest team of all time, & Kawhi's supporting cast made the semifinals without him. (Sound familiar? * Cough '94 Bulls)

Both AD and Kareem needed super-point guards like Oscar, Magic, and now Lebron to find synergies and have a great team.

Without these guys bird-feeding them, they're losers.

I mentioned last year that AD's teams are only as good as the guys getting him the ball, which explains his weak teams in previous years (I like Jrue Holiday, but there's a lot of teams with ballhandlers that compare or exceed him, hence AD's underwhelming teams in previous years)

[dankok8]

2020 Lebron was comfortably the worst defensive player of the three of them. This somehow gets ignored. Still he has a case for #1 here due to his playmaking.

Honestly I think 2017 Durant can be argued as the best too. His team had the most dominant run so he was never really pushed to go to that fifth gear through the whole West playoffs. And in the Finals he was absolutely legendary putting up 35/8/5 on 70 %TS and outplaying Lebron. For all the hate on Durant and rightfully so you still have to praise the way he played.

[1987_Lakers]

I dont think it's fair to say LeBron was worse defensively of the 3, going by the eye test to me he was better defensively than Durant. He showed the ability to defend explosive guards and provided some rim protection, before the Finals it wasnt crazy to say LeBron was better defensively throughout the playoffs than AD.

In the end, the reason 2020 LeBron is ranked ahead of those guys is because he simply is a better basketball player, as good as KD and Kwahi were, when LeBron is playing his game he simply brings more to the table, his playmaking is what separates him.

[red1]

if we're ranking the ability of the players:

1. lebron 2020
2. kawhi 2019
3. durant 2017

[red1]

Serious thread. How would you rank the three runs? I might be biased as a Raptor fan but I'd say Kawhi's run was the most impressive. My Raps would have never tasted a sweet sweet championship without his heroics. But seriously he had by far the least help of the three.

2020 lebron would have destroyed every single team we would have gone up against.


2020 lebron would've shit on the sixers, giannis and the warriors without kd in kawhi's place.

[red1]

2018 Bron still better than all dat.


2020 Bron tho

2018 lebron >> 2019 kawhi

[dankok8]

I dont think it's fair to say LeBron was worse defensively of the 3, going by the eye test to me he was better defensively than Durant. He showed the ability to defend explosive guards and provided some rim protection, before the Finals it wasnt crazy to say LeBron was better defensively throughout the playoffs than AD.

In the end, the reason 2020 LeBron is ranked ahead of those guys is because he simply is a better basketball player, as good as KD and Kwahi were, when LeBron is playing his game he simply brings more to the table, his playmaking is what separates him.

Sorry no offense but it's downright crazy to say Lebron was better than AD defensively. It just isn't true. Lakers put AD on Butler. Lebron got torched on a few possessions that he defended him. For the entire playoffs:

Davis: 41.9 dFG%, -4.5 differential
Lebron: 43.7 dFG%, -2.0 differential

Davis held his matchups to much lower FG%. In terms of help defense he protected the paint and blocked more shots than Lebron. There is just no argument there for Lebron being better defensively.

Defensively Kawhi actually wasn't as good as I thought in those playoffs. The metrics don't support him being an elite defender and I don't remember him locking people up either. It's actually probably 2017 Durant > 2019 Kawhi > 2020 Lebron on defense.

Lebron is definitely the best basketball player of the three but 2020 Lebron isn't prime Lebron. If we're just gonna compare raw stats and give Lebron the edge because of 30 PER like some people on here are doing than we might as well look at the average DRtg of teams they faced. Kawhi faced the toughest competition in terms of defense and it isn't close.

This Lakers title erased people's memories in a way. Tons of people have been arguing for years that Durant and Kawhi have surpassed Lebron and now that Lebron won a title suddenly Lebron was the best all along? I never thought they surpassed Lebron but I'm not gonna go back and suddenly pretend that KD wasn't about as good as Lebron in 2017 and 2018 or that Kawhi wasn't better in 2019. Even when I think Lebron is better.

[SouBeachTalents]

This Lakers title erased people's memories in a way. Tons of people have been arguing for years that Durant and Kawhi have surpassed Lebron and now that Lebron won a title suddenly Lebron was the best all along? I never thought they surpassed Lebron but I'm not gonna go back and suddenly pretend that KD wasn't about as good as Lebron in 2017 and 2018 or that Kawhi wasn't better in 2019. Even when I think Lebron is better.

Tons of people? Nah. The majority of people still had LeBron over Durant when he was winning with Golden State, I do agree though that Kawhi had probably surpassed LeBron as the consensus after his title run & LeBron missing the playoffs last year. LeBron loses pretty much any BITW rights in 2019, but Durant, while obv a top 2-3 superstar in the league, definitely wasn't about as good as LeBron was. Swap them in 2018 and Durant loses in the first round

[1987_Lakers]

Sorry no offense but it's downright crazy to say Lebron was better than AD defensively. It just isn't true. Lakers put AD on Butler. Lebron got torched on a few possessions that he defended him.

Of course AD is better defensively, but before the Finals many people thought LeBron was playing better defensively in the playoffs, the Houston series is a great example, he outplayed AD defensively in that series.

[Phoenix]

Durant's performance should come with a caveat that he could afford to not have his A game, or even his B game, and still very likely win because of the potency of his team around him. Few superstars who are that historically great have that luxury. This is the same guy who choked the 3-1 lead the prior year. He may have improved a bit from 2016 to 2017 but the biggest leap was his team circumstances. The odds are incredibly long that if KD was off one game, that Steph/Klay/Dray wouldn't pick up the slack.

[dankok8]

Tons of people? Nah. The majority of people still had LeBron over Durant when he was winning with Golden State, I do agree though that Kawhi had probably surpassed LeBron as the consensus after his title run & LeBron missing the playoffs last year. LeBron loses pretty much any BITW rights in 2019, but Durant, while obv a top 2-3 superstar in the league, definitely wasn't about as good as LeBron was. Swap them in 2018 and Durant loses in the first round

Lebron's stranglehold on BITW was shaky in 2017 and 2018. I remember Stephen A. saying KD is the best in the world. I didn't agree with it but there were lots of people saying it. We don't know what would happen if you swap players plus that way of thinking ignores team fit. I think you can make a case that Lebron wouldn't mesh as well with the Warriors as Durant did.