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Now that the NBA season is over it’s time to re-evaluate who the game’s most clutch player is. It’s not who you think. Unless you read the title. Then it is.
Who do you think is the most clutch shooter in the NBA today? Maybe it’s a stud on your favorite team. A guy you can count on in the final moments of a big game. The centerpiece of the team that settles your nerves when he holds the ball in his hands on the final possession of a tight game. Reflect on this player – this hero – for their valiant efforts your memory selectively recalls.
Guess what. That player sucks.
That’s right. I don’t care who you picked. You’ll soon see that your hero in clutch moments is a fraud. But before going into specifics, a proper explanation for what constitutes as “clutch” is required. There’s no universal definition so allow me a few moments to properly codify one for the sake of humanity:
Clutch Shooter Defined
A clutch shooter is one who performs better than replacement level players in shooting situations in which the outcome of the shot drastically changes the strategy for either team. Specifically, at the time of the shot, the score must be either tied or the shooter’s team must be down by three or less in the final 30 seconds of a game for a shot to truly qualify as clutch.
The reason three is the cutoff for points down is that if down by four or more, a single shot at the end of the game is potentially meaningless. So while some shots outside of a three-point deficit we might all agree are clutch were not included in this research, all shots that ARE included definitely were clutch. And for this research, I’m upping the ante on this definition by only looking at playoff data. Only the clutch of the clutch matters here. Oh, your favorite player made a game winning shot in the regular season when their record was already 57-12? Who cares? The playoffs are different. They’re purer. Each and every playoff game matters.
So let’s get to this. Who are the clutch shooters today and just how bad do they all suck?
To determine who today’s most relevant “clutch” stars are, I took the last 6 years of playoff data (2014 – 2019) to see which players in today’s game attempted the most clutch qualifying shots in that span. The top five current players include Stephen Curry, Damian Lillard, James Harden, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. While LeBron and Kawhi didn’t have as many in this span, a proper analysis is incomplete without them. Next, I used NBA Advanced Stats to compute each of these player’s career FG percentage while tied or down three or less in the playoffs at the following time in game remaining intervals (30 seconds, 1,2,3,4, and 5 minutes). This includes any OT period as well.
Results:
A few things you should notice here. First and foremost, Russell Westbrook flat sucks. His 6.6 percent in the final 30 seconds of a clutch situation makes me wonder if he opted for the Bird Box challenge during these situations. He’s so bad, coach Michael Scott would bench him in a Dunder Mifflin pick-up game.
You’ll also notice at the top of the ranks for the final 30 seconds are the best of what we got. In that pack is LeBron, Kawhi and a mysterious illegible name in pink. We’ll get to this mysterious name soon.
The drawback to using the final 30 seconds as the true clutch-qualifying parameter is that even across a player’s career, sample size is limited. Even old man LeBron, who leads the league in such attempts across a career, only has 31. This makes the individual results for each player pretty unreliable. There is one exception to this sample size issue though. The mysterious name in pink. During the past six years, this mysterious name has attempted a total of 156 qualifying shots. Who could this possibly be? Who IS this mysterious name in pink?
Answer: bums.
Alas, adjusting the name placement on the graph reveals the mysterious name in pink below:
But who exactly are these bums? They are not a single player, but literally every player you would not want having the last shot on your team. The following table provides all players I excluded from being considered a “bum” on the left column. So no matter who your team is and who your hero is, he does not inflate the numbers for the rest of the bums.
Basically, if you own a jersey of an NBA player, it’s not a “bum”.
Let’s talk a little bit more about who these bums are. After running a name query to make sure all the legitimate stars were excluded from the bum list, I couldn’t help but take notice to the magnitude of their relevancy in NBA lore. Names such as “N. Calathes”, “Q. Pondexter”, or “A. Crabbe” likely have as many combined jersey sales as I do. And I know my calculus because “N. Hilario” + us = hilarious. Would you count on “R. Hood”? Maybe in an archery tournament, but basketball? “D. Waiters”? I’d rather order to go.
Seriously though, some of these names were destined for bummness. How would you like the final shot for your team to come down to “P. Millsap”, or “S. Dinwiddie”? I could go on. The point is, these are the types of players we are talking about here and these are the players owning your stupid “clutch” hero.
Let’s look back at this graph once more:
At first glance, you might determine Kawhi and LeBron seem to be at least as good as these replacement level bums. There’s some praise… But Kawhi only has seven total attempts. And while I have researched that historically speaking, he is technically more clutch than Kobe Bryant, this sample size of seven is not nearly as reliable as the pink line’s 156 attempts. A simple t-test concludes no statistical significance between Kawhi and the bums, so the data does not support Kawhi as a legitimate “clutch” candidate.
As for LeBron, while close, he trails the bums in the final 30 seconds by .01 percent. Close but no cigar. That’s right. King LeBron has a lower shooting percentage than the combination of “T. Mozgov”, “O. Anunoby”, “B. Beal” and company. Way to go almighty King. You battled well and out bested almost all of your worthy foes as shown from the graph above. Lillard (in black), Kevin Durant (in yellow), a blindfolded Russell Westbrook (in blue) and even Stephen Curry (in curry). All except… the almighty bums (in pink). #IAmAWitness.
OK, so the stars of today basically suck. But what about the stars of yesteryear? Who was the last clutch player anyway? I ran the same analysis on stars who were around in the past six years to see how they stacked up against the bums. As done with current stars, I computed the career FG percentage in the same manner for the following “closers” of the past:
Things to note:
- In a drastic attempt to prevent a mental breakdown, Kobe Bryant fans upon viewing this graph are feverishly coming up with every excuse in the book for why he chocked harder and harder in the waning moments
- While Tony Parker had much success from 1 – 5 minutes, extremely low sample size gives a misleadingly bad figure for his final 30 seconds
- Most notably, Dirk Nowitzki looks like our unicorn but much like Kawhi, sample size is still too weak (19 attempts) inside 30 seconds to know for sure
Seeing that none of these top-tier players of today and yesterday were able to show definitively that they are better than the bums makes one wonder if the idea of a “clutch” shooter is even a real thing. To find out, I pooled the perceived best of the “stars” of the past 6 years (Curry, LeBron, Harden, Leonard, Durant, Duncan, Nowitzki and some scrub named Kobe Bryant) so that sample size would no longer be an issue if we assume all these “stars” are any better than our replacement level bums. Here’s how such “stars” stacked up:
There you have it. With all the Superstar “closers” grouped in green, you can clearly see how they continually decline in FG percentage as time inches towards double zeros in a playoff game. Fancy statistical testing confirms that the reported differences in each groups performance at 30 seconds is statistically significant. This means that – literally – these “bums” defined as anyone not in the table of 34 “stars” are scientifically more successful than the combination of all of the “great closers” in the past six years. Literally. This is science.
Here’s a further look at how both groups performed in each second of the final minute of a playoff game:
As you can see bums FG percentage is consistently higher than worthless “stars”. You’ll notice the bums really distance themselves starting near the point the shot clock turns off and especially within the last five to zero seconds remaining. There is simply no denying that the NBA’s “clutch” shooters are unable to compete with the “E. Ilyasova’s”, and “P. Connaughton’s” of the world.
How on earth can this be? How in the world are players like “P. Antic” and “N. Batum” raising their game in the final moments? The answer is pretty simple. For some reason, offensive game plan goes straight to hell in favor of hero shots at the end of games. These hero shots are, statistically speaking, flaming garbage. Looking at 4th quarters and OT’s, this graph again compares the stars or “closers” and the bums. The bars with the green tops show the difference in FG percentage in favor of the “closers” and pink shows in favor of the bums:
To start the 4th quarter, you can see that the “closers” are significantly more accurate than the bums in the first minute (11) and especially the second minute (10) of the quarter. But life changes fast under three minutes and especially within the last minute when it’s “hero” time.
So what does all this mean? Should LeBron, Curry and the rest of these star “closers” really be getting out of the way of “M. Plumlee” and “J. Ingles” (featured in title image)? Is it time for players like “S. Mejri” or “W. Barton” to take charge and remind players like LeBron as he’s dribbling the ball: “Hey Bron, an independent samples t-test with a t-value of -2.27586 and a p-value of .023435 proved that I’m statistically more likely to make this clutch shot than you at a .05 alpha level, so how about it buddy?”
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, statistics and intuition are a yin and yang. It’s time now to use intuition to explain exactly what the hell is going on here.
No, the takeaway from all this is not that teams should be doing everything they possibly can to make sure “L. Stephenson” or “Z. Collins” or even “M. Teletovic” get the game deciding toss. The takeaway here is that the idea of funneling all play calling to one single “closer” on a team is stupid and your team is stupid if they do this. All too often I see such a “closer” dribble the ball for 15 seconds near half court while every player is out of the way so he can either shoot a jump shot while double teamed or drive to the hoop triple teamed and fail miserably.
If you’re still befuddled on exactly how any of this could make sense, the final graph will finally light the bulb inside your dome. Here is a simple histogram showing the amount of shots taken by all 34 “stars” who were considered “not bums”, and bums for each recorded shot attempt length in the final two minutes of a clutch qualifying playoff game in the last six years. The glaring finding here is that the bums have a much higher amount of 0 – 3 foot shot attempts than the “stars”.
I looked back at the data to make sure the bums weren’t just benefiting from easy tip-ins. Sure enough, that wasn’t a real contributor. These buckets were earned.
Is the moral of this story clear to you yet? The point of all is pretty freaking simple. Instead of depending on only designing a play in the final moments of a game for a single player, no matter how good, teams are better off running their offense and either feeding the big men inside or creating an open look for literally anyone.
This brings us to a Stathole Sabermetric Rule:
The open shooter > the “clutch” shooter.
By more than ten percentage points too. Listen, I’m not the first person to declare the idea of a “clutch” shooter a myth. It’s been done here, and here. But this research intends to explain why this is. That being, stupid game planning by coaches and stupid game playing by players at the ends of games. The true closers are the ones willing to give up the last shot in favor of an open shooter.
Think about it. The first graph of this report shows LeBron and Kawhi are the closest thing to clutch we have today. Kawhi just won a ring with a healthy balance of shooting and passing to the open man when needed. And LeBron has a history of giving up the last shot and being what basketball “experts” call too passive. And what about players of old like Dirk? He was no shooting guard so when he got the ball it was from good offensive ball movement.
It is with deep regret I can’t compare how Michael Jordan stacks up in all this statistically. But truth be told, the play-by-play data at my disposal only goes back to 1997 so I could not accurately compile MJ’s data. But it’s almost fitting that the legend of the GOAT remains a statistical mystery.
What I can say is this. MJ got it. MJ understood damn well the Stathole Sabermetric Rule. And while we all remember his clutch jumper over Russell to seal the championship in 1998, he balanced his clutch shots with clutch passes. Case in point: 1995. Bulls at Knicks. Game 5. On the final possession of a tied game, Jordan took advantage of the double team and instead of being the hero, he found a wide open “B. Wennington” for the easy dunk. In his press conference after the game, “B. Wennington” boasted about how he and MJ combined for 57 points that night. Well, he wasn’t wrong. After that game winning dunk, “B. Wennington” finished the game with a grand total of 2 points leaving MJ with the other 55.
So, to sum up, even on a hot night for MICHAEL JORDAN, the GOAT knew the open shooter was better than the “clutch” shooter.
OK, so maybe you think MJ might pass up a clutch shot in a non-clinching playoff game but surely not a championship sealing finals game. If that’s what you’re thinking then you don’t remember “S. Kerr’s” jumper with 5 seconds left to win the 1997 championship.
It is with that play that I rest my case. Everything about a true clutch shooter is on display in this moment. This play encapsulates exactly why bums shoot more than 10 percent better than “closers” and why the open shooter will also be greater than your stupid favorite player in the NBA today.
Uncredited random Bums:
“N. Vecevic”
“R. Gobert”
“T. Craig”
“S. Ojeleye”
“W. Iwundu”
“R. O”
“C. Kaman”
“I. Canaan”
“J. Dudley”
“L. Shamet”
“A. Aminu”
-El Jefe
