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NBA Finals 2022: Michael Jordan, LeBron James and Allen Iverson lead the Finals' All-Game 1 team

Mike Blake/Reuters

Players from the Boston Celtics and Golden State Warriors will try to add their names to the list of great performances in NBA Finals history.

And as the NBA concludes its 75th anniversary season, it's an ideal time to look back on the best individual efforts we've ever seen in the league's championship round.

We'll be doing so on a game-by-game basis throughout the 2022 Finals, choosing a six-player team -- all five positions plus a sixth man -- from each game during the series (Game 1s, Game 2s and so on).

There's no specific formula for what constitutes Finals greatness, though we will lean heavily on the game score metric developed by John Hollinger for games where it's available from Basketball-Reference.com since player turnovers were first tracked in the 1977-78 season.

The all-time great Game 1s are highlighted by a performance that invented the shrug emoji years before smartphones became a thing, a famous step-over move in a historic upset and a record-setting game that resulted in a punched whiteboard and an injury.

Let's take a look back.