Every season in the NBA, new stars emerge. Over the last five seasons, there have been 29 first-time All-Stars. It’s all good and well performing from October-April; however, the NBA Playoffs are where stars are truly born.
The standard and physicality of basketball reach new levels in the postseason. Stars must deal with full game plans built around stopping them. We examine the biggest NBA failures by stars and assess their impact on their legacies.
For more context on how the postseason works, read our guide to the NBA Playoffs format.
NBA Playoffs: The Biggest Star Failures
3. Joel Embiid: 2019 Second Round vs Toronto Raptors
If the process was going to deliver a championship, 2019 was the year. Philadelphia had survived the Markelle Fultz drama and built a titan of a squad, including Joel Embiid, Jimmy Butler, Tobias Harris, All-Star Ben Simmons, and JJ Redick. Then Kawhi Leonard and the Toronto Raptors arrived and, as they did to all their 2019 NBA Playoff opponents, threw the script straight out the window.
Embiid battled illness in the middle of this series, which is still no excuse for his near 10 ppg drop in scoring average and 37% shooting from the field. The numbers from that 2019 Raptors vs 76ers series show how much his scoring efficiency fell under pressure.
Even with such underperformance from their main star, the 76ers’ super team still took seven games from Toronto. It took Leonard’s now iconic four-bounce buzzer-beating dagger to end Philadelphia’s run. However, co-star Jimmy Butler left that summer, and Embiid still hasn’t reached the Conference Finals.
However, co-star Jimmy Butler left that summer, and Embiid still has not reached the Conference Finals. For a player often judged against the league’s modern greats, that gap still matters in wider NBA legacy debates.
2. Damian Lillard: 2018 First Round vs New Orleans Pelicans
Jrue Holiday has won two championships since this series, but his most impressive NBA playoff accomplishment was arguably the way he and his New Orleans team nullified Damian Lillard in the first round in 2018. The Portland star was coming off a regular season where he averaged 26.9 ppg and made All-NBA. He was a shell of himself this series.
Lillard averaged just 18.5 ppg and 35.2% shooting. The top pick-and-roll offence in the regular season, Portland averaged just 0.4 points per possession when their point guard shot out of a pick-and-roll or passed immediately to a shooter. The Pelicans blitzed Dame high with Holiday and Anthony Davis, and the Trailblazers didn’t have enough offence outside of Lillard to punish New Orleans.
The Pelicans, as the 6th seed, swept the 3rd-seeded Trail Blazers in a stunning upset. Lillard did eventually lead his team to the conference finals in 2019, but in this instance, New Orleans built the perfect cage, and Portland had no locksmith.
For UK fans following the league, games like this are why postseason viewing matters so much. Our guide to watching the NBA in the UK explains the main ways to follow these moments live.
1. LeBron James: 2011 NBA Finals vs Dallas Mavericks
This is the final boss of NBA Playoff collapses. Prime LeBron James with his new super team as a title favourite playing like he’d been unplugged in the biggest series of his career to date. The now four-time NBA champion only averaged 17.8 points and suddenly became very passive as his first NBA Championship slipped through his fingers.
Prime LeBron James had joined a new super team. The Miami Heat were title favourites. Yet James played like he had been unplugged in the biggest series of his career to that point.
The now four-time NBA champion averaged only 17.8 points in the series, as shown in the 2011 NBA Finals stats. Even worse, he became passive as his first NBA Championship slipped through his fingers.
Game 4 was James’ worst game of the series and probably his career. Up 2-1 in the series, he could only muster 8 points on 3-11 shooting with zero points in the fourth quarter. In future greatest of all time debates, this will be the game Michael Jordan fans use to deliver a right hook to LeBron’s case. The Heat lost by just three points. Any contribution from their star in the fourth quarter probably wins them the game.
Between games 2-5, James only managed those 6 points in the fourth quarter. That’s a shocking drop off for someone who became one of the most clutch players in NBA history. LeBron would eventually figure out how to win, but a collapse of this magnitude will damage his legacy forever.