Ranking the Top Game 7 Moments in NBA History

Following the Indiana Pacers' Game 6 blowout win over the Oklahoma City Thunder, the 2025 NBA Finals are on the way to a Game 7 on Sunday.

It's the first Game 7 in the Finals since the legendary 2016 contest between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors.

And as we wait to see if this year's edition can measure up to that one, Bleacher Report combed through the annals of league history to uncover the greatest Game 7 moments the NBA has ever given us.

Stakes of the moments or the games in which they happened, how memorable they are to multiple generations of NBA fans and how just plain cool those moments played out were all considered.

And that criteria, with a steady helping of subjectivity, gave us the list below.

14. Jayson Tatum's Poster Arrival

This moment came in a conference finals game his Boston Celtics ultimately lost, but there's enough here for Jayson Tatum's posterizing dunk on LeBron James to make the list.

Tatum, a rookie at the time, drove left down the middle of the paint, saw LeBron in front of him and switched hands to detonate with the right.

The game was still in the balance at that moment, and the Celtics' home crowd appropriately went nuts.

The other factor that pushes this moment into this list is what it said (or forecast) about Tatum.

This was his "I'm here" moment. It was the exclamation point on the 19.6 points he averaged over the last five games of the series. And it was a preview of the superstardom that was to come.

Seven years later, Tatum has an NBA title to his name. And he's been to the conference finals in five of his eight seasons.

13. Luka Doncic Obliterates the Suns

We're already cheating just a bit, as this "moment" lasted for at least an entire half. Having it happen in the second round pushes it down the list a bit, too.

But Luka Dončić so thoroughly annihilated Devin Booker at the Phoenix Suns, at the height of what felt like a brewing rivalry at the time, that it has to be included.

After plenty of hype for a Game 7 matchup between two of the league's rising stars, Luka and the Dallas Mavericks ended the contest by halftime.

The score was 57-27, Luka had 27 on 12 field-goal attempts and his swagger effectively ended the rivalry between himself and Booker.

12. Kevin Durant's Sliding Doors Moment

This moment will go down as one of the biggest sliding doors in NBA history.

In 2021, the year Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks won the NBA Finals, they were literally inches away from being sent home in the second round.

Down two with six seconds to play, Jeff Green looped an inbound pass to the opposite sideline for Durant, who took three dribbles to the three-point line before firing a fadeaway jumper that appeared to end the game.

Video boards in the arena even lit up with red circles encasing white threes.

For a brief moment, it felt like Durant, who finished with 48 points that night, had moved the Brooklyn Nets into the conference finals.

But replay quickly revealed that Durant's toe (or even just the end of his shoe) clipped the line. The apparent three was actually a two. The game went to overtime. And the Bucks came out on top.

11. Chris Paul Sends the Spurs Home

The 2014-15 San Antonio Spurs were fresh off winning the 2014 NBA Finals. They still boasted Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili. And they had a 23-year-old Kawhi Leonard, who won his first Defensive Player of the Year that season.

But in the first round against the Los Angeles Clippers, despite taking a 3-2 series lead, San Antonio couldn't take down Chris Paul.

Over the last four games of the series, CP3 averaged 24.8 points and 9.5 assists. And after a wild final two minutes and change of Game 7, he drove right, lofted a floater over Danny Green and Tim Duncan and watched it softly drop through the net.

10. Sam Jones Sends Wilt Home

To this day, the line from Wilt Chamberlain's 1961-62 campaign is hard to believe. He averaged 50.4 points, 25.7 rebounds and 2.4 assists. On March 2 of that regular season, he dropped 100 points in a single game.

But as he often did during his career, Wilt found himself up against the Boston Celtics in the playoffs. And though he pushed the reigning (and future) champions to a Game 7 in the conference finals, Sam Jones ended the legendary campaign early.

With time winding down at the Boston Garden, Jones drove the right sideline, cut in to the elbow and drilled an open jumper that gave the Celtics their fifth championship.

9. Bill Russell Goes Off, and Bob Cousy Dribbles Out the Season

It feels like we have to mention Bill Russell's career 10-0 record in Game 7s at some point during this exercise, and the 1962 Finals give us a good reason to do it.

Though he didn't have the most iconic individual moment from the game, Russell absolutely stuffed the stat sheet to the tune of 30 points, 40 rebounds and four assists against Jerry West, Elgin Baylor and the Los Angeles Lakers.

The lasting image or memory from the game, though, likely belongs to Russell's point guard, Bob Cousy.

With the Lakers down three and the clock winding toward zero, Cousy put on a dribbling exhibition around halfcourt to avoid contact and steal attempts that's found its way onto countless highlight reels over the years.

8. Ron Artest Ices the 2010 NBA Finals

In the late 2010s, the Lakers and Celtics resurrected their classic rivalry with two Finals matchups in the much deeper modern NBA.

In 2008, Boston took the first matchup in six games, in a series in which Kobe Bryant was held to 40.5 percent shooting.

Two years later, Kobe got his shot at revenge. And in Game 7 of the 2010 Finals, a rock fight of a matchup, Kobe was once again struggling to connect from the field.

He finished 6-of-24 from the field and needed a little help from his friends to finish off the Celtics. Ron Artest (now Metta World Peace) provided it.

With just over a minute left, Kobe dribbled away from a double-team, launched a two-handed overhead pass to the wing for Artest, who calmly drilled a three that pushed L.A.'s lead to six and essentially iced the game.

7. The Bird and Nique Duel

Another moment that stretches the definition of the word, we're spotlighting an entire game for this one.

In the 1987-88 season, Dominique Wilkins averaged 30.7 points and finished sixth in MVP voting. Larry Bird averaged 29.9 points, 9.3 rebonds and 6.1 assists. He finished second in MVP voting to Michael Jordan.

And in the second round of the playoffs, two of the best scorers of all time, both at or near the peak of their powers, faced off.

In Game 7, they had a scoring duel that won't soon be forgotten.

Bird led his team to the next round with 34 points on 15-of-24 shooting. Wilkins had 47 on 19-of-33 shooting in the losing effort.

And in the fourth quarter, specifically, they traded buckets and shotmaking displays in a way we rarely ever see, even in today's game.

"It was like two gunfighters waiting to blink,” Bird's teammate Kevin McHale later said. “There was one stretch that was as pure a form of basketball as you’re ever going to see.”

6. Mario Elie's 'Kiss of Death'

Kobe is far from the only superstar who's needed a little help during a title run. In 1995, a couple rounds before they ultimately won the Finals, the Houston Rockets were forced to seven games by the Phoenix Suns.

And in the series decider, Hakeem Olajuwon made fewer than half his shot attempts and had more turnovers (five) than assists (four).

He was good enough to keep his Rockets, who were on the road, in the game all the way to the final buzzer, though. And once they were there, Mario Elie, who made just two field goals all game, drilled a catch-and-shoot three-pointer that ended the series and sent the Suns home.

And just for good measure, Elie couldn't help but blow a goodbye kiss to the devastated Phoenix crowd.

5. Willis Reed's Walkout

This is one of those moments that will truly live forever. It's a staple of NBA retrospectives, despite the fact that its subject finished with four points on five shots.

Over his first 16 games of the playoffs, Willis Reed, the 1969-70 league MVP, averaged 25.9 points and 15.3 rebounds, but a muscle tear in his thigh knocked him out of Game 6 of the 1970 Finals early.

Despite his absence, the New York Knicks staved off elimination to force a deciding Game 7. There was question about whether Reed would be able to play at all, but he managed to give his team 27 minutes after iconically walking out of the tunnel for warmups.

4. Kobe to Shaq

In Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference Finals, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille authored perhaps the single-most memorable alley-oop in league history.

Against a loaded Portland Trail Blazers squad with Scottie Pippen, Steve Smith, Rasheed Wallace, Arvydas Sabonis, Damon Stoudamire and Detlef Schrempf, L.A. overcame a double-digit deficit and were nursing a four-point lead with less than a minute to play.

With momentum already seized and on their side, Kobe crossed Pippen up at the three-point line, dribbled down the lane and lofted a perfect alley for Shaq's monster oop.

Given the flow of the game to that point, the dunk felt certain to ice it. And Shaq's arms pointed to the heavens in celebration confirmed what everyone already knew.

3. Kawhi Leonard Wills It In

In 2019, on the way to his title with the Toronto Raptors, Kawhi had to take down Joel Embiid and the 51-31 Philadelphia 76ers in the second round.

Philly got a classic Playoff Jimmy performance from Jimmy Butler, who averaged 22.0 points, 6.9 rebounds and 5.6 assists. Embiid, Tobias Harris, JJ Redick and Ben Simmons all averaged double-figures in the series, too.

But Leonard had Terminator mode fully engaged that postseason. He averaged an absurd 34.7 points, 9.9 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 1.3 steals.

And in Game 7, with the score tied at 90, Kawhi caught an inbound pass just above the top of the key. He took Simmons off the dribble to his right. Embiid picked him up at the wing and wound up being on the wrong end of one of the most memorable images in NBA history.

Leonard shot a fadeaway jumper over Embiid from the baseline that bounced off the front of the rim and hung in the air for a seemingly impossible amount of time. While it was up there, everyone in the building was laser-focused on the ball, including a crouched Leonard who was seemingly willing it forward.

When the ball fell through the night, it was instantly clear that the shot would go down as an all-timer.

2. 'Havlicek Stole the Ball!"

Long before streaming, high-definition video and the countless cameras that are all over every arena in the NBA, moments were often made by the broadcasters who called the games.

And in Game 7 of the 1965 Eastern Finals, Johnny Most may have given us the single-most famous line in NBA broadcasting history.

Despite 30 points and 32 rebounds from Wilt, Boston was up one on the Sixers, with just five seconds to play. But Philly had the ball under its own basket, with a chance to win the contest, knock out the juggernaut Celtics and advance to the Finals.

But John Havlicek tipped the inbound pass, sealed the victory for Boston and inspired Most to unload one of the most iconic calls in the history of sports: "Havlicek steals it! Over to Sam Jones! Havlicek stole the ball! It's all over! It's all over! Johnny Havlicek is being mobbed by the fans!"

1. LeBron's Chasedown and Kyrie's Shot

We're going with a two-for-one to close the exercise, courtesy of LeBron and Kyrie Irving in the 2016 NBA Finals.

Following that regular season, the reigning champion Warriors looked unbeatable. They'd just broken the all-time record for wins in a season by going 73-9. Stephen Curry won the first and only unanimous MVP selection in league history.

And in the Finals against Cleveland, Golden State went up 3-1.

But the Cavs won Games 5 and 6 to give themselves a chance at history in Game 7, where back-to-back jaw-dropping moments delivered it.

With just under two minutes left and the game tied at 89, Andre Iguodala appeared to have an open layup in transition that would've given his team the lead, but LeBron erased the attempt with the most famous block of his legendary career.

Then, about a minute later, with the teams still deadlocked at 89, Kyrie hit a leaning triple over Curry that proved to be the deciding shot in the game.

Together, LeBron and Irving ended a 52-year title drought for the city of Cleveland, overcame a 3-1 deficit and toppled the best regular-season team ever.