Who Has the Most Game-Winning Shots in NBA History?

The question of who has the most game-winning shots in NBA history depends entirely on how you define "game-winner." If you count only made buzzer-beaters that erase a deficit or break a tie when the horn sounds, the all-time leader is Michael Jordan with nine. If you count any shot that put a team ahead with under fifteen seconds remaining, the leaderboard shifts. If you go strictly by made shots at the buzzer of regulation or overtime — the ball still in the air when the clock hits zero — the top tier is consensus. What follows uses that strictest standard, cross-checked against Basketball-Reference and contemporary reporting, while making room for the broader "game-winners" conversation that surrounds it. The result is a portrait of the most clutch players in NBA history, told through the moments that made them.

What Counts as a Game-Winner?

The term covers real ground between casual conversation and official record-keeping. The NBA officially tracks "clutch" performance as the final five minutes of regulation or overtime with the margin at five points or fewer. Basketball-Reference maintains a dedicated buzzer-beaters page that counts made shots at the exact moment the horn sounds. Analysts and broadcasters often use a broader "game-winning shot" window — any go-ahead basket in the final ten or fifteen seconds of a game the team ultimately wins.

The strictest and most widely cited leaderboard counts game-winning buzzer-beaters only: shots made at or after the buzzer, with the team tied or trailing, that win the game. Under this definition the all-time totals are small numbers — single digits even for the greatest players — because the scenario is genuinely rare. Even elite closers manufacture fewer than ten such moments across two-decade careers. That scarcity is what makes each one legendary.

Michael Jordan — 9 Career Game-Winning Buzzer-Beaters

The all-time leader. Jordan's nine career game-winning buzzer-beaters are the most by any player in NBA history, combining regular season and playoffs. Six came in the regular season; three in the postseason. Two of his three playoff buzzer-beaters ended series outright — a statistic only Jordan and Damian Lillard share.

The most famous is "The Last Shot": Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals, Utah Jazz leading 86–85 with 18.9 seconds left. Jordan stole the ball from Karl Malone in the post, then — after Scottie Pippen pushed ahead on the fast break and gave the ball back — Jordan drove to the right of the key, crossed back hard left off a dribble at the elbow, and rose over Jazz forward Bryon Russell for a 20-foot jumper that dropped with 5.2 seconds on the clock. Bulls 87, Jazz 86. Jordan's sixth championship. The image of the follow-through is one of the most reproduced frames in sports photography.

The first of his series-ending postseason buzzer-beaters came against those same Cavaliers in 1989 — "The Shot," a foul-line jumper over Craig Ehlo with the series tied at 2-2 in a best-of-five. Cavaliers 100, Bulls 99 before the final possession. Jordan caught the inbound, dribbled once toward the key, rose and hung until Ehlo descended, then released over the top of him. The Bulls won 101–100. Jordan finished with 44 points. He came back and ended Cleveland in a Game 4 sweep-closer in 1993, hitting an 18-foot fadeaway over Gerald Wilkins to win 103–101 with the series deadlocked at two. The Cavaliers served as Jordan's two-act narrative foil in the most dramatic buzzer-beater performances of his career.

Jordan also averaged 34.4 points per game across the nine games he won at the horn — the highest scoring average among any player with five or more career buzzer-beaters.

LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Joe Johnson — 8 Each

Three players are tied at eight career game-winning buzzer-beaters, all trailing Jordan. LeBron James reached that total as an active player; Kobe Bryant and Joe Johnson are retired.

LeBron James owns the playoff portion of the record. Five of his eight career buzzer-beaters have come in postseason games — more playoff buzzer-beaters than any other player in NBA history. His most technically demanding was Game 3 of the 2018 Eastern Conference semifinals against the Toronto Raptors. With OG Anunoby tying the game with a three-pointer and eight seconds left, James took the inbound, dribbled the length of the floor, and floated a left-side banker from just inside the paint as time expired. Cavaliers 105, Raptors 103. He finished with 38 points on 14-of-26 shooting.

His 2007 Game 5 performance against the Detroit Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals wasn't a buzzer-beater by the strict definition, but it belongs in this conversation: James scored 29 of Cleveland's final 30 points, including a go-ahead driving layup with two seconds left in double overtime, finishing with 48 points on 11-of-13 shooting from the field in the fourth quarter and overtime.

Kobe Bryant was the most prolific buzzer-beater producer of his generation before LeBron caught him. His most iconic came in Game 4 of the 2006 first-round playoff series against the Phoenix Suns — a fadeaway jumper at the elbow as overtime expired to give the Lakers a 99–98 win and a 3-1 series lead, his most fun shot by his own description. Between December 4, 2009, and January 1, 2010, Kobe hit three buzzer-beaters in fewer than 30 days with the Lakers trailing each time, including a three-pointer over Dwyane Wade on December 4 to win 108–107 — a run of clutch shotmaking that no player in NBA history has matched in such a compressed window.

Joe Johnson is the least heralded member of the eight-club and one of the most statistically efficient clutch players in the game's history. Five of his eight buzzer-beaters came as a Brooklyn Net; two more came in Atlanta. He hit the majority of his late-game winners off isolation pulls with no assist — seven of his eight buzzer-beaters were unassisted, tied with Jordan for the most ever. Johnson was never a top-10 player in the league during his peak, but the record books don't distinguish by reputation. A buzzer-beater counts once whether it comes from the greatest player of all time or a No. 2 option on a 49-win team.

Editorial illustration: long-range buzzer-beater arc across a basketball court

Damian Lillard — The King of the Series-Ending Shot

No player has made a cultural mark on the game-winner conversation in recent memory the way Damian Lillard has, and it starts with a category Jordan pioneered: the playoff series-ending buzzer-beater. Lillard has two, tying him with Jordan for the most in NBA history.

The first was Game 6 of the 2014 first-round series against the Houston Rockets, May 2, 2014. Portland trailed 98–96 with 0.9 seconds left after Chandler Parsons converted an offensive-rebound layup. Lillard took the inbound at the top of the key, caught, and fired a three-pointer over the Houston defense. Blazers 99, Rockets 98. Portland advanced for the first time in 14 years.

The second was louder. Game 5 of the 2019 first-round series against the Oklahoma City Thunder, April 23, 2019. Trail Blazers 118, Thunder 115. Lillard's series-clinching three came from 37 feet out, well past half-court, with Paul George — a 6-foot-9 All-NBA defender — fully contesting the shot. Lillard had scored a career playoff-high 50 points in the game. After the shot dropped, he waved goodbye to the Thunder bench, a gesture that became one of the defining images of his career. His shot was so far beyond the arc that Second Spectrum tracking had him converting 9-of-15 attempts from 30-plus feet in that single playoff run.

Lillard's regular-season buzzer-beater count doesn't land him near the top of the all-time list, but the weight of the two shots he's made with a series on the line puts him in the company of Jordan in the category that matters most.

Derek Fisher — The Impossible 0.4

Some game-winners earn their place in history less through the player who made them and more through the physics of the moment. Derek Fisher's Game 5 buzzer-beater against the San Antonio Spurs on May 13, 2004 — the "0.4 shot" — is the most scrutinized single game-winner in NBA history.

The setup: the Western Conference semifinals, Lakers trailing in the series 2-2, the Spurs ahead 73–72 with four-tenths of a second on the clock after Tim Duncan's fadeaway over Shaquille O'Neal. The conventional wisdom held that 0.4 seconds was not enough time to catch an inbound pass and get a shot off. The Spurs' Tim Duncan said afterward he wasn't worried. Gary Payton inbounded to Fisher at the left elbow. Fisher caught, turned, and released a fadeaway — all in four-tenths of a second — and the shot went in. Lakers 74, Spurs 73.

The Spurs filed an official dispute. The officials reviewed the play. The shot stood. NBA rules were subsequently clarified around "0.4-second plays" — catches and releases — to codify what was and wasn't physically achievable, and Fisher's shot became the specific event the league used to define the boundary. The Lakers eliminated the Spurs in Game 6 and advanced to the Finals. Fisher's career buzzer-beater total doesn't rank him in the elite tier, but no player in the data has made a shot under more specific scrutiny.

Reggie Miller and Paul Pierce — Clutch Without the Leaderboard

Two players whose late-game reputations far exceed their formal buzzer-beater counts: Reggie Miller and Paul Pierce. Miller's most cited moment — "Eight Points in Nine Seconds" in Game 1 of the 1995 Eastern Conference semifinals against the Knicks — didn't produce a single buzzer-beater. He scored eight points with 18.7 seconds remaining without needing the horn. His one genuinely iconic buzzer-beater came in the 2002 playoffs against the New Jersey Nets, banking in a 40-footer in overtime after Richard Jefferson missed two free throws. Indiana Pacers coaching staffs built entire fourth-quarter systems around getting Miller an open look at the end. He rarely wasted it.

Pierce earned "The Truth" nickname from Shaquille O'Neal after a 2001 preseason performance and spent 18 seasons validating it — game-winners in the 2006 and 2010 playoffs, a step-back bank shot as a 38-year-old Washington Wizard in Game 3 of the 2015 first round against Atlanta, dropping to win 103–101. Neither player's formal count ranks near Jordan or LeBron. Both produced clutch moments substantial enough to define careers.

Peak vs. Career: Two Ways to Measure Clutch

Jordan's career total of nine buzzer-beaters required 15 regular seasons and six postseason runs. Kobe logged three in a single month — from December 4 to January 1 of the 2009–10 season, he hit three buzzer-beaters in 28 days, all with the Lakers trailing, including a three over Dwyane Wade on December 4 to win 108–107. No player in NBA history has matched that frequency of game-winning buzzer-beaters in any comparable window.

LeBron's 2018 postseason illustrated the opposite model. In the first round against Indiana, he hit a buzzer-beating three over Thaddeus Young in Game 5 — 44 points, 15-of-15 from the line, Cavaliers 98, Pacers 95. Rounds later, he hit the Game 3 floater against Toronto that became his fifth career postseason buzzer-beater, moving him past Jordan in the all-time playoff category. He finished the 2018 playoffs scoring more than 34 points per game across 22 games — the buzzer-beaters were footnotes to a run of sustained dominance that no other player in his era could have managed.

The distinction matters because the career leaderboard rewards longevity and opportunity. Peak concentration of clutch performance — Kobe's December streak, Lillard's 37-footer, Jordan's consecutive series-enders in 1989 and 1993 — lives in a different register. The greatest game-winners occupy both simultaneously.

The Pre-Modern Gap

Every name on this leaderboard played in an era of comprehensive play-by-play tracking. The "all-time" leaders in game-winning buzzer-beaters are really "all-modern-era" leaders, because pre-1990 play-by-play data is inconsistent and the official buzzer-beater database at Basketball-Reference reflects that.

Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Jerry West all made shots that would qualify under any modern definition, but pre-1990 play-by-play is inconsistent and incomplete. West was nicknamed "Mr. Clutch" not for a statistical record but for the collective impression of an era that didn't count the way the modern era does. The leaderboard reflects what was tracked. It represents the modern era more completely than the full history of the game.

What the Numbers Miss

Every game-winning buzzer-beater earns exactly one tally in the official count. Jordan's push-off on Bryon Russell in 1998 and a January regular-season buzzer-beater in a meaningless game are equal in the column. The leaderboard doesn't weight stakes, doesn't discount desperation heaves, and doesn't distinguish the playoffs from December 15.

What the count actually measures is opportunity plus execution. Players who stay in close games late, who get the ball when the score is tied or trailing in the final seconds, and who convert the attempt — those are the players who accumulate. The fact that Jordan leads with nine is partly a function of how many times his teams were in those scenarios, partly a function of how reliably he converted, and partly a function of how consistently his coaches trusted him with the final possession when those scenarios arrived. Over 15 regular seasons and six championship runs, he earned nine shots and made nine shots. The accuracy rate alone is staggering — nine-for-nine buzzer-beaters by the strict definition is a 100% conversion rate on a category every shooter misses more than they make.

LeBron's playoff-focused total — five of his eight coming in the postseason — reflects a different distribution: more high-leverage moments, higher stakes per shot. Kobe's December 2009 streak reflects peak intensity. Joe Johnson's quiet accumulation reflects longevity and consistency in a role most casual fans never fully appreciated. And Damian Lillard's two series-enders reflect pure theater — the most memorable single moments of his generation, produced on the game's biggest stage.

Closing illustration for Who Has the Most Game-Winning Shots in NBA History?