The NBA playoffs are not for everyone.
The lights are bright. The pressure is intense. The best players are on the floor for the vast majority of every game, leaving no opening for reprieve. Coaching staffs will pour over hours of film to find tiny cracks in the opponent’s game, and hammer and pound at that crack until it becomes a canyon. There is no hiding in the postseason; every player’s greatest strengths and crushing weaknesses are on full display for the world to see.
Some players shrink away from that stark reality. They come up small in the biggest moments and wind up a footnote in the history books. A certain type of basketball player, though, is drawn to that harsh landscape. They relish that there’s no way to escape the spotlight and thrive, rather than collapse, under the great weight of expectations. Such players are rare and the performances they put on become Homeric tales to be shared with those not fortunate enough to witness it with their own eyes.
As Jaylen Brown once said, the postseason is about the survival of the fittest. And there can only be so many kings of the jungle.
As the 2024–25 NBA playoffs approach, here are five playoff risers—the players described above, stars who will rise to the moment regardless of circumstances, the players who will make this postseason one to remember, no matter what.
LeBron James, Los Angeles Lakers
James is easily the greatest playoff riser of the modern NBA and will be looked at as a prime example of how the best players get even better when the playoffs tip off. He effectively perfected the concept during his second stint with the Cleveland Cavaliers. In those seasons, James would put up his typically excellent regular-season stats but clearly wasn’t going full-throttle most nights. Then the playoffs started and James put the pedal to the metal, upping his game to dominant levels on both ends of the court in every respect.
His 2017–18 season is a tremendous example of the playoff riser concept in practice. In 82 regular-season games, James averaged 27.5 points, 8.6 rebounds and 9.1 assists per game while shooting 54% from the floor. Great numbers. MVP-caliber, even. Then, in 22 playoff games, he scored 34 points per game on 53% shooting while adding 9.1 rebounds and 9.0 assists per contest.
After many, many years of this, the spectre of Playoff LeBron haunts half the franchises in the NBA. Especially in the East. At his height, he was basically the basketball Boogeyman, a story coaches told their players to inspire them to play for a higher seed to avoid James for as long as possible. He inspired a sense of hopelessness among fans, an overwhelming feeling of forlorn loss before the games were even played in a way reminiscent of Michael Jordan. Even opposing teams seemed to play with a sense of foreboding against James; it always felt like it was only a matter of time before The King slammed the door shut.
James is not that guy anymore. But he can still put on a show come playoff time. It was only a year ago, after all, that we watched the superstar increase his points and assists per game on better shooting numbers in L.A.’s first-round loss to the Denver Nuggets. It obviously wasn’t enough as the Lakers suffered a gentlemen’s sweep, but James proved capable of keeping to his career-long trend of playoff excellence. It stands to reason we can expect another show this postseason, with the Lakers looking as dangerous as ever.
Jimmy Butler, Golden State Warriors
While James is quite famous for his postseason play, Butler is probably the most notorious playoff riser of the last few years. What makes him unique relative to others of his ilk, however, is that he does not make it look easy. Butler’s best postseason performances have never once looked effortless. He does not casually splash ridiculous off-balance shots like Luka Doncic or stay five steps ahead of the defense to find the perfect angle to attack like James.
Instead, Butler beats down his opponents. At his best it’s not so much a battle of wills as it is a matter of erosion. Butler is akin to the tide, relentlessly smashing against the rocks until eventually there’s nothing but water left. He will lock up the opposing team’s best player, lurk in the passing lanes and force offenses to operate around him. He’ll jog down to the other end of the court and batter opposing defenses until he gets to the line or his spot for a jumper. Then he’ll do it again—over and over and over.
His Herculean effort in taking the No. 8 Miami Heat all the way to the 2023 NBA Finals exemplified this perfectly and will go down in history as one of the most impressive playoff runs ever from a singular talent. Butler jumped from a season average of 20.8 points, 5.3 rebounds, 5.0 assists and 1.3 steals per game to 26.9 points, 6.5 rebounds, 5.9 assists and 1.8 steals per game. The Heat were lifted by ungodly shooting numbers across the board, to be sure, but Butler’s unwavering confidence and capability led them to greater heights than most No. 8 seeds in NBA history.
The 35-year-old may not have another run quite like that in him, but at full strength, his game is still tailor-made for playoff basketball. He shouldn’t have to pick up the slack scoring-wise now that he’s playing alongside Steph Curry, but the way Butler elevates his game across the board should prove quite entertaining to watch as the Dubs aim for another deep playoff run.
Donovan Mitchell, Cleveland Cavaliers
Mitchell is an explosive scorer in regular-season play who has a tendency to go nuclear in the postseason. He has recorded three 50-point outings and two 40-point outings in his playoff career. Perhaps more impressively, Mitchell has scored at least 30 points in nearly half (25) of his career postseason appearances (54).
Many fair critiques can be made about the star guard’s game and how it translates to championship basketball, but no one can claim the spotlight makes Mitchell sweat. He obviously savors those moments; the opportunities he’s given to pull up off the bounce with his pogo stick–like vertical to launch an arcing shot that finds net and silences opposing fans. The infectious grin that splits his face after such moments indicates as such, anyway. Few players are more visibly joyful as they torture opposing defenders.
That version of Mitchell isn’t seen all the time, though. He is not immutable or a force of nature but instead a lightning strike waiting to happen—and sometimes, lightning doesn’t strike. Of Mitchell’s 15 playoff games with the Cavaliers, he has shot above 50% from the floor in only five of them and hit that 30-point mark on six occasions.
In other words, Mitchell doesn’t put on a big show every time he’s on the court like his compatriots here. But when he steps on the court and it’s one of those nights? There aren’t many players in the league who can match those heights.
Luka Doncic, Los Angeles Lakers
Doncic has been playing basketball since he was supposed to be in high school geometry class, and one of his best attributes is that he has a sixth sense for when to elevate his game. He’s a killer out there on the court in big moments; when Doncic’s blood gets hot, he’s as dangerous as any superstar the league has seen. The downside, which the Dallas Mavericks eventually grew sick of, is that he doesn’t keep that intensity for the less-important games. Doncic is so obscenely talented he can put up triple double stat lines while sleepwalking, but there’s a pretty clear difference in his intensity level in a February showcase versus playoff basketball.
But man, when his intensity level is high? When he’s locked in? Doncic is dangerous. His career playoff averages—not his numbers from his NBA Finals run last year, but for his career—are 30.9 points, 9.4 rebounds and 8.0 assists per game. It’s no small sample size, either. Those numbers come over the course of 50 career playoff games.
Like everyone else on this list, those postseason numbers represent an uptick from his regular-season production. But it’s not just Doncic’s game that changes when the games become important. His entire demeanor changes. He becomes almost cruel in the way he finds the weak link in the defense and picks at it. What he did to Rudy Gobert in the 2024 Western Conference finals was borderline sadistic.
Some players burn hot with the fire of playoff competition. Doncic burns cold. When the playoffs start, he transforms into a single-minded entity whose only focus is annihilation of his opponent. Setting statistics aside, that makes Doncic one of the most fun players to watch in the postseason every year—and now he has extra motivation in the form of reminding the Mavericks just what they’re missing. His first playoff run with the Lakers will be appointment viewing.
Nikola Jokic, Denver Nuggets
Here’s the fact of the matter with Jokic, a truism the NBA has been forced to learn in the last five years: He is better than anyone else on the floor at any given moment. When he’s out there, points, rebounds and assists are produced in bunches. That doesn’t ebb and flow depending on the night, how he’s feeling, or the opponent. Not every game is perfect, but when Jokic is out there he is going to get his and all defenses can hope to do is bend at the moments they choose, rather than the moments Jokic forces them to.
Which then results in a fairly simple math equation for the Nuggets once the regular season is over and concerns about the 82-game marathon can be thrown out. The more Jokic is on the floor, the more ridiculous his stats grow. That may seem obvious, but it shouldn't be taken for granted. Not every team enjoys such a linear reality when it comes to the production-per-minute of their best players.
As a result, Jokic has become one of the most dominant playoff performers of his generation. In three regular seasons from 2021 to ’24, Jokic averaged 26.0 points, 12.7 rebounds and 8.9 assists per game. His postseason average from that same span? A line of 29.7 points, 13.0 rebounds and 7.9 assists per game. And what stands out the most is not the silly numbers but instead Jokic’s absurd durability, the way he just refuses to wear down over the course of a game or series.
That is what makes Jokic stand apart. His excellence is unwavering. Most players, understandably, see a drop in efficiency or effectiveness once they start playing regular 40-minute games in the playoffs. Tired arms and legs get the best of even the most elite athletes. Not Jokic. He’ll plod up the court, back down into the paint, flip an easy hook shot into the bucket and plod back down the court. Then he’ll do it exactly that way for 40 straight minutes, every other night, for months.
Jokic doesn’t necessarily rise to the moment, nor does he shy away. He just … is. He delivers every single game in the way fans expect a three-time MVP to deliver. There’s no separation anymore between the idea of Jokic and reality. The walking triple double with seemingly endless endurance? He’s the same in the playoffs as he is in the regular season, just at a higher dosage. The consistency is utterly remarkable and embodies what Jokic’s basketball game is all about—making the right play and succeeding at every opportunity.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as NBA Playoff Risers: LeBron James Highlights Players Who Meet the Moment.
