The Seven Commandments of Scoring in the NBA Playoffs

With 1:04 left in Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals, Kyrie Irving was on the brink of immortality.

Over 42 minutes, he had slashed, skipped, and shot through the Golden State Warriors’ vaunted defense, bringing the Cleveland Cavaliers within reach of the unthinkable. A week prior, Irving and Co. had been down 3-1 in their NBA Finals rematch against the defending champion Warriors, who were coming off of a record-breaking 73-9 regular season. But with the series on the line, Irving dropped 41 points in Game 5 and 23 in Game 6 to, along with LeBron James, propel the Cavs to a Game 7 in Oakland.

Now, Irving had the ball in a tie game with the seconds ticking away. J.R. Smith set a ball screen, forcing Steph Curry to switch onto Irving at the top of the key, which Kyrie knew the Warriors didn’t want to do. He took one dribble backward to reset. Curry stepped up to follow him.

“[Kyrie] was doing the little size-up, like half in-and-out steps,” Curry remembers.

“He was trying to pressure me,” Irving says, “trying to make me make a move or drive to the basket.”

In the year since their first Finals matchup, Curry had studied Irving’s game and prepared for moments just like this. “I thought I was close enough that I could take away the pull-up, and then your whole goal is to just keep a body on him and [make him] drive into traffic,” Curry tells me. But what Curry didn’t realize was that Irving had something else up his sleeve, a move he’d been cultivating since his sophomore year at Montclair Kimberley Academy in New Jersey.

“One thing that he didn’t know was that I had a right stepback,” Irving says. “So when I dribbled and I hesi’d and I kind of got him off and I stepped right, he didn’t expect me to step right because he wasn’t close enough to my body to get a great contest.”

“There was one half step that, in retrospect, that little side step gave him enough of a distance,” Curry says. “Because a contest was there, but he was just over the top of it. I did everything, I thought. … It’s a game of inches.”

The shot dropped, delivering the NBA title to Cleveland and cementing Irving as an all-time great playoff shot maker. But talking with Irving about that moment now, what stands out is just how much went into it. It’s not just the stepback, or even hunting Curry on the switch. It’s everything that came before—earlier in that game, earlier in that series, earlier in Irving’s career, and even earlier than that. “I like to say that this billion-dollar dream of being in the NBA started in my backyard,” he says.

To understand what it takes to flourish on the grandest stage, I talked to some of the best and brightest figures in recent NBA playoff history. They outlined the key ways the postseason differs from the regular season, as well as how to level up your game to thrive in the crucible that is playoff basketball. Here are their seven commandments of playoff scoring.

Gilbert Arenas shoots over Kirk Hinrich and Tyson Chandler the 2005 playoffs.

Photo by Jesse Garrabant/NBAE via Getty Images

1. Stay Ahead of the Defense

On the eve of the 2005 Eastern Conference playoffs, Gilbert Arenas figured he’d make light work of the Chicago Bulls. “I considered them lunch meat,” he told me by phone on an early April morning.

Arenas’s arrogance had merit. During the 2004-05 season, he had averaged 30 points in three games against Chicago. Most of his buckets had come on second-year guard Kirk Hinrich, who had struggled to contain Arenas one-on-one. “I would just blow past him,” Arenas says.

But for their playoff series, the Bulls had devised a new game plan that was tailor-made to stop Washington’s star guard. Hinrich once again got the primary assignment, but Chicago used 7-footers Eddy Curry and Tyson Chandler to clog up the paint, take away driving lanes, and keep Arenas away from the basket. The Wizards offense sputtered. “We didn’t play inside out,” Arenas says. “It was more guard play, perimeter play.” Chicago held Arenas to just nine points on 3-of-19 shooting in Game 1, Arenas’s playoff debut, and then jumped out to a 2-0 series lead. “Those first two games, I struggled really bad because I didn’t adjust,” Arenas says.

The Wizards went on to win the series, but those outings taught Arenas one of the fundamental truths of the NBA postseason: “Playoff basketball is a lot different than [the] regular season,” he says. From October to April, teams may get a day or two to scout and prepare for a given matchup. If they’re lucky, they may go over some offensive sets or defensive schematics at a morning shootaround or during an afternoon walk-through at the team hotel. But the playoffs breed familiarity, and teams have several days, and at least four consecutive games, to get to know their opponents. “We get a big playbook that has all your flaws,” Arenas says. “Strengths, your go-to move, your second move, all your out-of-bounds plays, your success rate on those out-of-bounds plays.”

Steve Kerr says that sort of attention to detail is the biggest difference between the regular season and the playoffs. “The defense is way more in tune with what you’re going to do,” says Kerr, who played in 128 playoff games and has coached 140 more. “They’ve scouted you out. They know every call. They know what’s coming. They have their game plan in place. In the regular season, a team prepares for about 10 minutes because that’s all you have. … But in the playoffs, you’ve got multiple days to build your game plan, decide on your matchups, get your substitution pattern.”

As a coach, one of Kerr’s playoff opponents was Tony Allen, who forged a 14-year NBA career making life difficult for opposing scorers through a combination of defensive tenacity and that sort of close study. In six playoff runs with the Grizzlies, Allen learned to read his opponents and exploit their tendencies. When Allen heard Kobe and Pau Gasol speaking Spanish, for example, he knew to be on alert for certain plays. “However you say ‘backdoor’ in Spanish, [Kobe] would say that.”

Over three playoff matchups with the Thunder in the 2010s, Allen tried to use Russell Westbrook’s and Kevin Durant’s habits against them. “Westbrook was so predictable,” Allen says. “When the play was for somebody else, he wouldn’t give it his all. When the play was for him, you could tell, he was going 100 miles per hour on the cut, he going 100 miles per hour and pushing the ball.”

Allen, who often matched up with Durant, would use that to his advantage. “Like, OK, now this is time for me to be physical. I know they coming to Durant. … [Westbrook] would float a ball in the air to try to throw it to him while KD got his hand in the post. I’m getting a steal on that every time.” Allen says he learned to recognize certain Thunder sets and would try to jump the passing lanes for easy steals. He also knew Durant had a “wide dribble,” so when he found himself on an island at the top of the key, he would try to get underneath him to take it away. Ultimately, Allen’s preparation proved insufficient. The best playoff scorers find ways to stay ahead of even the savviest defenses, and Allen’s Grizzlies beat the Thunder in just one series, the 2013 Western Conference semifinals, which Westbrook missed due to a knee injury.

Allen also got a taste of his own medicine. During the 2015 Western Conference semifinals against the Warriors, Kerr put Andrew Bogut on Allen and instructed the 7-foot center to essentially ignore him. During Golden State’s defensive possessions, Bogut would stay near the basket to help seal off the paint, clogging up Memphis’s offense and daring Allen to beat him with his jump shot. The Warriors, who were down 2-1 at the time of the adjustment, went on to win three straight games to take the series, sending the Grizzlies home early and leaving Allen on the opposite end of a lesson he already knew: Putting up points in the regular season is one thing, but scoring against locked-in playoff defenses is an entirely different beast.

“It made Coach Kerr look brilliant,” said Allen, through gritted teeth, “which he is.”

Luka Doncic steps back over Rudy Gobert.

Photo by David Berding/Getty Images

2. Diversify Your Bag

How do you stay ahead of a defense that knows what you want to do? According to Arenas, the key is having multiple ways to score. “If they take away your first option and your second option, how can you be effective offensively?” he says. “You gotta [cut] backdoor, you gotta come off down screens. Do you know how to post up?”

That offensive versatility is one of the reasons the Luka Doncic–Irving backcourt has been so successful in these playoffs. Kyrie might have the deepest bag of offensive tricks in NBA history, and Luka has carved up all kinds of defensive strategies with a smorgasbord of drives, stepbacks, turnarounds, and fakes. Perhaps the greatest differentiator in Dallas’s (mostly) close West finals matchup with Minnesota was the clutch play of the Mavericks’ two stars. When the games bogged down in crunch time, the Wolves had no answers for Luka and Kyrie.

Luka may have even taken a page out of his costar’s book for his backbreaking game-winner over Rudy Gobert in Game 2 of that series. Defenses are terrified of Doncic’s signature left-leaning stepback, and you could see Gobert shading him on that side to force Luka to beat him another way. Doncic obliged. Just like Irving eight years ago, Luka stepped back to his right and canned the 3-pointer in Gobert’s face.

The ability to score in various ways has become even more important in recent years, as switch-heavy defenses have come into vogue. A decade ago, the Warriors built their dynastic defense by switching almost all pick-and-rolls, which allowed them to guard both the ball handler and the screener without helping off shooters. As that strategy has caught on around the league, scorers have turned to hunting favorable matchups and going to work one-on-one. “When you watch the playoffs now,” Kerr says, “there’s more iso possessions than ever before because you’re seeing teams switch. … Down the stretch of games, you just see Luka or Kyrie, Steph or LeBron, you’re seeing these guys having to go one-on-one.” To capitalize in those situations, you have to be able to rely on your bread and butter. But also, Kyrie says, “You got to do things that the defense probably isn’t expecting.”

Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum in the 2022 NBA Finals.

Photo by Elsa/Getty Images

3. Learn From Failure

About an hour after a regular-season win over the Kings, the NBA’s preeminent ball handler makes a revealing admission.

“When I was younger, I was dribbling a lot,” Kyrie Irving tells me, chuckling. “It was just a combination of nerves and then also confidence. When you’re going in that environment, you don’t know what to expect.”

Throughout this year’s postseason run, Irving has made an effort to correct that mistake. Alongside the deliberate Doncic, Irving has unlocked a new level to Dallas’s offense by making quick moves and playing more decisively than ever. There’s a lot less dancing with the ball while his teammates stand around, and a lot more quick-hitting drives or swing passes to the weak side. Now he’s the wily veteran playing within himself, instead of the young gun attempting to prove he belongs.

Learning from failure has been the primary theme of Irving’s 2024 postseason in a broader sense as well. Irving failed in Boston, where he promised he’d re-sign and then left in free agency after two disappointing seasons. He failed in Brooklyn, where he had teamed up with Durant to build a contender before missing 142 out of 298 possible games due to injuries, suspensions, and his refusal to get vaccinated for COVID-19. And he failed last season in Dallas, where he landed after a midseason trade that couldn’t prevent the Mavs from sliding out of the playoffs. Now, with a title within reach, Irving is trying to prove that all of those experiences have helped him become a better teammate and player.

“Once you win, you think you know it all,” Irving says. “You think you can recreate it. You think you’re going back to the Finals every single year, so you kind of take the process for granted. … I think what’s worked for me 1717593221 is allowing others to shine their light in their own capacity and then trying to encourage them to do so. And then also when it’s my turn, just flourishing in that role.”

The NBA playoffs are hard on young players. It’s why experience often wins out, and why the best scorers often have to go through their paces before everything clicks on the biggest stage. “You judge greatness on year-by-year,” Arenas says. “You want to see if they learned their lesson from the previous years.”

Michael Jordan suffered multiple playoff defeats before he made his first Finals—and while he repeatedly came up short against the Celtics and Pistons in the late ’80s, he forged his playoff bona fides against the best of the best. When Anthony Edwards stormed through the first two rounds of the 2024 playoffs—inspiring comparisons to Mike—it seemed like he might skip over failure on his way to capturing the NBA’s ultimate trophy. But his inexperience caught up to him against the Mavericks. “It’s a lot of our guys’ first time being in this light, especially me,” Edwards said after the Wolves were eliminated. “It’s my first time. But we’ll be ready, man. We’ll be all right. First time. Took a loss. Congratulations to the Mavericks. But we’ll be back.”

It’s a lesson Curry has had to learn as well. After failing, you become “more polished,” he says. “You’ve had the reps, you’ve had the experience, you’ve had the lumps.” In the 2022 Finals, Curry carried the Warriors to the title over the younger and more talented Celtics. The physicality and traps that had stymied Curry in previous postseasons didn’t bother him in the slightest against Boston.

On the other side of Curry’s masterful performance in the 2022 Finals were Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, the Celtics’ dynamic wing duo who have spent the better part of a decade trying to get over the hump. Boston has made the conference finals six times in the past eight years, with each promising season ending somewhere short of a championship. Injuries and curious performances in the biggest moments undermined Tatum’s efforts to lead Boston to its 18th banner, while Brown’s propensity for costly turnovers prevented him from picking up the slack. This year is the Celtics’ best chance at a title yet—not just because of their easy path, but because their best players know what it’s like to get close to the top but fall short.

“Obviously, we’ve been there before,” Tatum told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “You don’t always get a second chance, so really just looking at it as a second chance and trying to simplify things as much as we can.”

Tony Allen defends Kevin Durant in the 2014 NBA playoffs.

Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images

4. Embrace Physicality

Tony Allen appeared in 112 NBA playoff games, and he made a point of politicking the officials before every one of them. “I used to always walk up to the referees and introduce myself, and let them know, ‘How you doing? I’m Tony Allen, Mr. first-team All-Defense, a.k.a. the Grind Father.’”

The list of Allen’s postseason matchups is a who’s who of Hall of Famers—Kobe Bryant, Reggie Miller, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Durant. Allen realized he couldn’t stop those players entirely on his own; it helped to have the whistle on his side, and Allen made it his job to live on the margins of the rule book, blurring the line between a foul and marginal physical contact.

Allen’s teams missed the playoffs just once in his 14-year career, and he relished the way the terms of engagement shifted in the postseason. “I’m as physical as a defensive back,” he says. “I’m jamming you up, the first three or four jogs up the court, I’m in your face. I’m trying to smell your cologne. I’m making it an uncomfortable conversation.”

In the postseason, fouls are called less, jerseys are tugged more, and every possession tests your resolve. “Almost all the bullshit is eliminated,” says Kerr. “You got the best officials, but you also have a different set of standards, and there’s nothing controversial about that. People probably want to have some set of rules or some mantra that says ‘a foul is a foul,’ but it’s not the case. … A bump that happens in the playoffs is different from a bump that happens in the regular season.”

Curry remembers learning this lesson during his introduction to playoff basketball, against the Nuggets in 2013. “I remember the physicality of the playoffs and the clear change in how games were called,” Curry recalls. In that series, Ty Lawson and future Warrior Andre Iguodala made a point of roughing up the young guard, knowing the refs would have a more discerning whistle on the playoff stage. Golden State won that series in six games, but the Nuggets’ defensive approach set a blueprint for guarding Curry that would be deployed by nearly every playoff opponent the Warriors faced over the next decade.

It also forced Curry to adapt in turn. “I think if you looked at a picture of [Curry] in the ‘15 playoffs to the ‘22 playoffs, I’ll bet he’s 15 pounds heavier and stronger 1717593221,” Kerr says. “And so his finishing and his ability to get to space that he wants is very, very different.”

Physicality has remained a theme in nearly every series of the 2024 playoffs. The Timberwolves knocked off the Nuggets by hounding Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray wherever they went. And the player who has had the most success against Doncic, Lu Dort, did so by getting into his space and making him uncomfortable—a tactic the Celtics will try to replicate with their stable of strong perimeter defenders in Jrue Holiday, Brown, and Tatum. And when the game is on the line, the officials become spectators like everyone else. “In the fourth quarter, they let you be physical,” Allen says. “It ain’t no ticky-tacky foul. They ready to see some basketball.”

Michael Jordan shoots a jumper during Game 4 of the 1997 Eastern Conference finals.

5. Be Fearless

Certain changes from the regular season to the playoffs are self-evident. The spotlight is brighter. The decibels are higher. The pressure is weightier. The surrounding noise is louder. And it takes a particular mindset to tune everything out and focus on the task at hand.

“You can kind of psych yourself out a little bit, thinking you got to do something different or outrageous every time you get the ball,” Curry says. “That’s what the playoff atmosphere will do to you.”

Early in his career, Curry quietly struggled to adjust his mentality to the playoff crucible. He couldn’t help but compare his postseason performance to his regular season. “It’s human nature,” he says. “You average what, 23, 20, maybe 22 that season, and you’re like, ‘All right, am I above that? At it? Below it?’”

Over time, Curry learned to worry less about stats and focus more on doing whatever it takes to win. For him, that often means accepting traps and double-teams from the defense, getting off the ball, and making the game as easy for his teammates as possible. It also means having a sense for when to seize the moment. “There’s times you have to force the issue,” Curry says. “So you kind of just settle into accepting that and not being afraid to fail.”

Kerr remembers one moment from the 2016 West semifinals that exemplified Curry’s burgeoning playoff fearlessness. Curry had just returned from a knee injury that had cost him six playoff games, and he came out cold, missing his first nine attempts from 3. When he finally did make one, midway through the fourth quarter with his team trailing, he hit a shimmy. “And I told him,” Kerr remembers, “You’re not allowed to shimmy when you’re 1-for-11.” Curry smiled, then responded by ringing off 17 points in overtime, including a game-sealing 3-pointer with 1:05 to go.

For Kerr, Curry’s outburst surfaced a memory of Michael Jordan, with whom Kerr played four seasons in Chicago and won three titles.

On the day before Game 4 of the 1997 Eastern Conference finals, with the Bulls up 3-0 against the Heat, Kerr, Jordan, and some other teammates went golfing. According to Kerr, everyone stopped playing after 18 holes, except Jordan, who played 65 holes (or 48, according to other accounts) and called it quits only once it got dark. The following afternoon, Jordan missed his first 14 shots, including a couple of ghastly airballs. But Jordan never stopped shooting, and once he got one look to go, the floodgates opened: Jordan scored 20 points in the fourth to lead a Bulls comeback that ultimately fell just short. Still, Jordan’s self-assuredness left a lasting impression on his teammate.

“It was the most incredible display of confidence that I had ever seen,” Kerr says. He sees elements of that in Curry as well.

“They’re similar in their self-confidence, self-belief,” Kerr says. “Different in that I think Michael’s much more calculating. I don’t think Steph’s so calculating, I just think his ability to get into the rhythm, into the flow, into the zone, psychologically, emotionally, however you want to say it, was so unique. … Whereas with Michael, it’s more of an announced dominance. It’s like, ‘I’m here and I’m going to own the space and the arena.’”

Regardless of how it manifests, Kerr says that self-belief is essential to scoring on the biggest stage. “You obviously have to be skilled, but more than anything I think you have to be fearless.”

Chess-master LeBron James in the 2007 playoffs.

Photo by Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images

6. Have a Plan

Gilbert Arenas had every reason to stick his chest out before the 2006 postseason. After a rigorous workout plan the previous summer, in which he made 1,000 jumpers a day, Arenas had averaged 29 points, made his second All-Star team, and led the Wizards to 42 wins and a first-round date with LeBron and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

“I’m having an amazing year,” Arenas remembers. “We’re one of the hottest teams in the NBA before the All-Star break. I’m an All-Star. … I got to show you, LeBron James. I got a new bag. I hope we see y’all in the playoffs, I’m prepared now.”

Turns out, LeBron was more prepared. Arenas spent off days during the series at LeBron’s house, where he and James’s crew played cards, talked shit, and gambled. Meanwhile, LeBron was nearby, watching game film. “[It] was like watching a machine absorb information,” Arenas remembers.

James’s studiousness paid off on the floor. He knew exactly how he wanted to attack the Wizards defense depending on who they had in the game, and manipulated the matchups accordingly. At the right moment, “He would signal to coach [Mike Brown] to sub out [Zydrunas] Ilgauskas,” Arenas says. “When Ilgauskas got subbed out, obviously, we will sub out Brendan [Haywood].” That opened the floor for LeBron to score at will. “Now LeBron is the biggest dude on the court besides Jared Jeffries. … No one was stopping the freight train from getting to the rim.”

That sort of tactical cat-and-mouse game is common in the postseason, which makes it imperative that scorers enter each game with an idea of what their opponent will do and how they want to attack. After Arenas was shut down in the first two games of the 2005 first-round series against the Bulls, he went back to the drawing board. “I sat home watching those games,” he says, “to see what they were doing.” He and Drew Cleary, a Wizards assistant, came up with a new approach. “The only way you’re going to beat them is if you decoy,” Arenas recalls Cleary telling him. By focusing so much attention on Arenas, Chicago made itself vulnerable along the back line. “Now I’m looking at all the open people, all the open plays, players I should be passing to,” he says. “And then Game 3 and 4, that’s what I had to do.”

Arenas learned something counterintuitive in the final four games of that series, all Wizards wins. “One thing that all the elite stars start to understand: you have to turn down shots so you can save that for the end,” he says. “So let’s say I’m on fire, or this is a game that I can get my 3 on because he’s backing up too much, well, instead of giving it to him in the first, second quarter, I do more driving and more pulling up, do more posting up, knowing that in the fourth quarter, he’s so used to me attacking that he’s always on his heels. So when I want to pull up, he doesn’t see it coming.”

Kobe Bryant described a similar approach in Doin’ Work, a documentary he produced in 2009 with Spike Lee. It’s also a strategy Irving utilized in the Mavs’ second-round matchup against the Thunder this year, when he averaged just 16 points per game, opting to focus on getting his teammates involved more than hunting his own shot. “You don’t want to show your opponent your move,” Irving says. “But if you can lure your opponent in, make them think that, ‘OK, I’m not interested in tonight’s game,’ but then you score 12 in a row in two minutes, that’s the separation in the game.”

One thing about plans, though, is that they often change. Any given seven-game series will feature initial schemes, adjustments, counter-adjustments, and subsequent further adjustments. For Curry, that chess match is one of the best parts about the playoffs. “Teams try different things, and you have to be able to adapt, and it’s just mad fun being in that environment because [there’s] nothing like it,” he says. For him, somewhat paradoxically, being more prepared translated to feeling more free. “That might be the biggest evolution, of just being a little bit more in command of what spots you’re trying to get to, what matchups you’re trying to go at. And then you’re not afraid of the consequences.”

Kyrie Irving sinks the defining shot of the 2016 Finals.

Photo by MediaNews Group/Bay Area News via Getty Images

7. Meet the Moment

The final rule for scoring in the postseason is perhaps the most important. Legends aren’t minted on the practice court or in the film room. They’re forged when someone seizes the opportunity when it matters most. “A lot of plays down the stretch are not run plays or set plays,” Irving says. “They’re really just people wanting to get baskets and willing their teams to win.” These NBA Finals may well come down to which scorers can rise to the occasion—who has the better plan, who is more physical, or who has learned most from past failures.

The most intriguing player in the Finals is Kyrie, nearly a decade after the shot that etched his name into postseason lore. On the court, he’ll face stiff opposition in the Celtics’ pair of All-Defensive Team guards, Derrick White and Jrue Holiday. Off the court, he’ll be at the series’ narrative epicenter, squaring off against his former team in a city that has yet to forgive the past. “As a hooper, you kind of are taught to take other external opinions in,” he says. “But when you want to be great, you can’t pay attention to any of that.”

When he was a 20-something guard routinely playing into June alongside the greatest player of his generation, Irving assumed he’d be back often. Now, after a long hiatus filled with every low imaginable, he’s eager for another chance. “It’s an honor. I don’t take it for granted,” he says. “When you’re young, you think you’ll be playing until you’re 45,” he says. “And that’s not the realization.”

On Thursday, he’ll take another step into a spotlight he knows all too well, one which promises to reveal how far he’s come.

“You’re kind of in the prime gladiator arena that everyone’s watching,” Irving says. “Everything that you’ve worked on your whole entire life, now you could bring out at the biggest stage.”