Before we get to the actual 15, a few names and numbers emerged from the preliminary research that simply have to be mentioned.
Stephon Marbury left the league after his age-31 season, but he’s still in the top 100 of non-title-winning players in career win shares. Among that group, he had the biggest drop from regular season to postseason win shares per 48 minutes (from 0.117 to minus-0.021).
Andre Drummond, Clifford Robinson and Nikola Vučević all had big drops too, but they were nowhere near B/R’s top 100 NBA players.
Some who did make that list but didn’t have a big enough statistical slide from the regular season to the postseason to make this one include Russell Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony, Steve Nash, Chris Paul, Charles Barkley, Reggie Miller and Dwight Howard, to name a few.
Finally, Shareef Abdur-Rahim is notable on a couple of fronts. First, his drop-off in win shares per 48 was bigger than Marbury’s. And the mere fact that a 12-year vet with career averages of 18.1 points and 7.5 rebounds only played 129 minutes in six playoff games seems almost impossible.
There may be others who fit your own definition of an “82-game player,” and you’re certainly encouraged to share their names in the comment section. But now that we have all the explanations and caveats out of the way here, it’s time to dive into the actual list.