There is no better company to keep in the NBA than Michael Jordan and LeBron James. They are, by almost any estimation, the two greatest players in the history of the sport. They each hold a wide array of NBA records, and when any statistical milestone has been achieved by only the two of them in all of NBA history, you know it must be impressive.
Until recently, that was the case for the 30-10-5 club. Entering the 2025 postseason, the only two players ever to reach 30 points and five assists in 10 different games in a single playoff run were, you guessed it, Michael Jordan and LeBron James. This should come as little surprise. Scoring gets harder in the playoffs. By extension, assists are rarer as well, and more than half of all playoff teams are eliminated before they’ve even played 10 games. It takes a special player on a special team to reach that milestone, and 2025 has given us two of them.
On Wednesday, as the Oklahoma City Thunder decimated the Minnesota Timberwolves to clinch their first NBA Finals berth since 2012, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander racked up 34 points and eight assists on his way to the Western Conference finals MVP trophy. In doing so, he notched his 10th game this postseason with at least 30 points and five assists. Welcome to the Jordan and James club, Shai, but spoiler alert, you won’t have much time to bask in the presence of the GOATs because, less than 24 hours later, a new member has earned admission.
Jalen Brunson kept the New York Knicks alive on Thursday with a 111-94 Game 5 victory over the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference finals. To earn that victory, he scored 32 points and dished out exactly five assists. Like Gilgeous-Alexander, that took him to 10 such games this postseason. In two days, the size of the club doubled from two members to four.
Now, if Brunson or Gilgeous-Alexander want to catch up to James or Jordan, they still have a bit of work to do. The two of them each reached this milestone three times. Jordan did so in 1989, 1990 and 1992, while James did it in 2015, 2017 and 2018.
However, it’s entirely possible that either Brunson or Gilgeous-Alexander holds the new record for 30-point, five-assist games in a single postseason when these playoffs are over. Both James and Jordan topped out at 11. That means they both need just two more to set the new record. Brunson may be eliminated in Games 6 or 7 of the Eastern Conference finals, but Gilgeous-Alexander still has the entire NBA finals ahead of him to add to his total.
While the two of them would certainly love to break the record, they’d probably prefer to break a far more important trend even more. Of those James and Jordan seasons, only one of the six, Jordan in 1992, resulted in a championship. Gilgeous-Alexander is four wins away from the Larry O’Brien Trophy. Brunson needs six. Individual milestones are nice, but if you want to measure up to James and Jordan, it starts with championship rings.
