If the playoffs are the mechanism we use to define players, then it stands to reason that they should also be the stage upon which players display their essences: where Lance Stephenson is at his chippiest, John Wall at his slipperiest, Rajon Rondo problematically range-deficient, and Kevin Durant fathomlessly unguardable. It doesn’t always work out this way, which is dreadfully or delightfully surprising depending on where you’re standing, but sometimes the postseason give us moments that reify our feelings about a player in satisfying ways.

As LeBron James squared his shoulders from twenty-four feet on Wednesday night, I said yup to myself, not at all loudly, and then started laughing right before the ball splashed through the hoop. Because it’s LeBron and you expect this sort of thing. He had missed a trio of three-pointers before his buzzer-beater and in general has tended to operate from the wing or the high post against Indiana, not fully trusting his jumper and much more frequently diving to the rim than pulling up from distance, but he was, nigh-metaphysically, never not going to make that shot.

The chasedown block on Victor Oladipo was actually a goaltend, but everything else was real. LeBron was a perfect 15-for-15 from the free throw line, 14-for-24 from the field, and put up 44 points, 10 rebounds, and eight assists. He’s carrying the Cavs through a closely fought series against the Pacers with very little help from his teammates—Kyle Korver suddenly becoming an important offensive player is a bone-chilling notion for Cleveland fans—and doing it in his typical style: bravely, spectacularly, and without complaint. LeBron was elated, hopping up on the scorer’s table after his game-winner, but he must know that facing a grind of a first-round series his squad still has yet to escape isn’t a good sign, and that the Sixers are now the Eastern Conference’s strongest Finals candidates. Regardless, LeBron is doing what he has done for a decade-plus, if in a gloomier context than usual: being brilliant right up until the end, however it shakes out.

Russell Westbrook didn’t assemble a complete game for the ages in Game 5 in Oklahoma City. In fact, he was uneven at best through the first half, playing too fast, chucking heedless jumpers, trying to smash passes through windows the size of a bocce ball. It was everything frustrating and predictable about Russ. He believes the solution to every problem is to go harder, so facing elimination against the Jazz, he cranked the dials until they popped off the machine, and the Thunder fell behind by 15 through two quarters.

And then the baskets came in bunches. Russ probably shouldn’t shoot nearly as many threes as he does, given that over his career, he has converted them at merely 31.1 percent, but at about the eight-minute mark of the third period, he drained a pair off of two Steven Adams screens that at least gave him some breathing room and a clean look at the rim. Following those buckets, Russ mixed in some drives, which he’s genuinely great at, a couple pull-ups, which he can make when he’s feeling it, and a fully harebrained off-the-dribble three over Donovan Mitchell that, obviously, went in, tying the game at 78, capping a 32-to-7 Thunder run.

From there, he was out of his head. Everything worked: lay-ins, kick-outs, lobs, mid-rangers. 45 points, 15 rebounds, seven assists on 39(!) shots. There’s a downhillness, a rumbling inevitably to Russ when he’s playing well. You know the percentages on the shots he’s taking and also know they don’t matter at this particular moment. In a series in which Bad Russ has prominently and primarily featured, Good Russ finally showed up to rescue the Thunder from an opening round exit for at least one more game.

Both LeBron and Westbrook are currently in less-than-ideal situations. The Big Three experiment in Oklahoma City hasn’t totally flopped but hasn’t worked out the way Thunder optimists would have hoped either. (While we’re here, Paul George is getting short shrift due to the Russ-gaze in this column. He was also quite good in Game 5.) The Cavs came up well short of beating the Warriors in the Finals last season, so perhaps Kyrie Irving’s presence wouldn’t save them, but without him, there’s nobody to take the wheel in Cleveland when LeBron needs a breather, and because of that, he sometimes looks spent just trying to overcome the Pacers, which doesn’t bode well for the Cavs going forward.

All of this is worth considering, and we undoubtedly will if and (very likely) when these teams crash out of the playoffs. But for now, we’re getting what we came for, which is to say the best player of his generation having to do it all and somehow pulling it off, and the league’s streakiest, seethingest firecracker angering the ball through the hoop, flipping over furniture and catching bullets between his fingers. Pressure and desperation can distort and disrupt, but occasionally they create the clearest lens through which to view players we’re already so familiar with. There’s LeBron calmly launching the final shot; there’s Russ roadrunnering through the defense. This is who they are and what they do. This is the time of year when they are at their most put-upon, and beneath that strain, they retreat into their minds and emerge with an old friend. They find themselves.