Bums™ in the NBA get no respect. When the game is on the line, and your favorite NBA team has a chance to win on a final shot, who would you rather have hurling the rock? DeMar DeRozen, or Jakob Poeltl? Kyrie Irving, or Rodions Kurucs? While your brain tells you the household name is where your trust should lie, the two rando alternatives are part of an underappreciated and underrepresented group: The Bums™.
I’ll define Bums™ loosely as basically anyone who would never have a play drawn for them in the waning moments of a close game. The only time they ever go “iso” is on the bench while the rest of the team is huddled up watching coach draw up the play. They are the untouchables. Complete afterthoughts. Their only chance to be the hero is on a tip in after the star misses. And it’s a shame, because when it comes down to shooting in clutch moments, the Bums™ are practically just as good as the super stars, and I’m here to uncover the truth. Bet your bottom Benjamin.
Facts:
Data
I have 20 years’ worth of play-by-play data crunched from 1999-2019 including regular season and playoffs. Each and every play. All 13.5 million in the past two decades.
Metric
I’ll be using the most validated measure of player shooting success: True Shooting Percentage (TS%). This is the holy grail of player shooting efficiency in NBA Analytics as it accounts for three pointers and free throws in addition to any two-point shot.
While NBA average TS% is around 54% in all game situations during the past 20 years, it understandably drops to 40% for clutch qualifying situations when teams desperately need a bucket. This 40% TS average will act as the baseline for comparing star “closers” to the back-end Bums™ in the clutch.
Clutch Situation Defined
If a team is down 0-3 points with, let’s say, 30 seconds left in the game (4th or any OT), that’s going to be qualifying as clutch. Fair enough? Fair enough.
OK, let’s get to this. Below is a Rotated Tornado Graph (patent pending) placing every player in the last twenty years with how many clutch qualifying shots they’ve attempted (x-axis) and their TS% (y-axis):
As you can see, a majority of players are swallowed up in this sideways twister and the more prolific stars stand mostly unobscured towards the right. But even these prominent clutch-shooting stars are not impervious to the power of increasing sample size. The more clutch shots stars attempt, the closer to league average TS% (dashed line) they end up.
This gives support that any individual star isn’t any more clutch as anyone else and any deviation from NBA average can be attributed to chance. But an even better way to approach this is forget about individuals and bin (or group) all players by how many clutch qualifying attempts they’ve taken and then find the TS% of each group.
Example: if 100 players in the last 20 years shot a combined 15 total 2-point NBA shots and every one of those 100 players made all of their 15 shots, the group’s TS% would be 100%. If 50 made theirs and the other 50 missed, TS = 50% and the dot will be plotted as such (x=15, y=50%). You get the gist.
Before running this on clutch attempts, let’s check out what the baseline is for all shots at any point in a game using this method. Below is a graph grouping all players by how many shots they’ve attempted in this 20-year span along with a very… well, excited linear trend line:
The above trend line would seem to indicate a continuous increase in TS accuracy as a function of shot attempt groups, but the linear increase isn’t nearly as impressive as the graph would claim to it’s friends. This is a bad model. After throwing some cold water on this boastful trend line using a local regression, the real relationship between TS% and true shots attempted is revealed:
Now we see what’s really going on here. The Bums™ with very few shot attempts are indeed much worse than stars in all game situations combined, but only up to a certain point (around 2000 true shots attempted). That’s where any linear relationship between shots attempted and TS ends. We can zoom in on the graph to see the flattening around 2000 shots in the second weather themed graph of this article: the Snow Globe Graph:
Above Graph Zoomed in:
Attempting 2000 shots in a career isn’t really exclusive territory in the NBA either. This puts you in the likes of Bryan Roberts and Hollis Thompson (both playing from ’13-’17), and Ian Clark (’13-’19), and a handful of other names that could make any graph grow flaccid. The take-aways here are that Lesser Bums™ (less than 2k shots) really do suck in general, and superstars aren’t really any better than the all-powerful 2000+ shot chucking Greater-Bums™.
But when it comes to clutch moments: everything changes. None of the above matters anymore. Below we have the same concept considering only clutch-qualifying shots (last 30 seconds of 4th of any OT when down 0-3 points):
Get your rulers out, because that’s the only way you’re going to notice the ever-slight upward slope of that blue trend line and its minuscule .12 correlation. Based on this, there is absolutely no reason to think players who are continually depended on to take final shots are in any way superior to anyone else: even the Lesser Bums™!
Fun fact: this .12 correlation is equivalent to the number of people who have died falling out of a wheel chair and levels of Uranium production in the United states from 1999 – 2008. Basically, there is no difference. Whether you’re Ben Simmons or Furkan Korkmaz on the 76ers, Kawhi Leonard or Mfiondu Kabengele on the Clippers, it doesn’t matter who takes the game deciding shot. It’s all the damn same. I even repeated this entire process to try the last five seconds of clutch moments (instead of 30 seconds) and the .12 correlation was unchanged. I’ll say it again. Bet your bottom Benjamin: Bums™ are bona fide buzzer beaters. Book it.
The explanation for all of this is not exactly rocket science. During regular game minutes, defenses use a more conservative approach and pay attention to all five opponents as potential shooters. But in crunch time, they know they can sell out on a team’s star and double him up or challenge him to get to his preferred spot. This explains why stars reign under normal circumstances before falling back to average in the clutch. With that at hand, I think we need to support our team’s respective bums and demand they get more chances in the limelight. Every fan needs to implore this of their team. Except, maybe the Knicks. Knicks fans should probably first campaign for getting a star player, and then picket for their Bums™.
Now that I’ve proved my point, I’m here to start this campaign by bringing some testimonials of the unheard Bums™ who were only give one chance in their career to be the hero. Since 1999, 174 Bums™ were given their one shot. Their one opportunity. Their one moment. Here are a few select stories of these neglected heroes who came through in their only time to shine:
Brad Wanamaker: 12/10/2019
The name says it all. If ever there were a guy who wanted to be a last shot maker, it’s Brad Wanamaker. Playing for the Celtics against the Pacers down 115-118 with 18 seconds left, Wanamaker heroically made a layup even though his team was down 3 (TECHNICALLY still qualifying as clutch) leaving his team forced to foul before losing the game.
OK, bad example.
Maurice Ndour: April 12, 2017
In his rookie year, Maurice Ndour drilled a 15-foot mid-range jumper with 18 seconds left for the Knicks to beat the 76ers by 1. Seeing they had a potential star on their hands with this young prospect, the New York Knicks waived Ndour after the season.
Jake Voskuhl: April 27, 2003
Jake the Snake drained a 6-footer with 2.3 ticks left to win it for the Suns on this date. In his nine-year career, Voskuhl played in 450 NBA games and was allotted just this one opportunity to be the hero. He deserved more opportunities in the sun.
Furkan Korkmaz: November 2, 2019
Korkmaz capitalized on his opportunity just this year for the 76ers by draining a three to win a game by one point. With a team comprised of the likes of Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons, it’s Korkmaz who popped off and came through each and every one time in the clutch. Here’s to hoping he get’s another chance in the bubble!
I hope these facts help bring more attention to how perfectly capable Bums™ are in the most critical times of an NBA game. While you’re watching NBA bubble action in the pivotal moments, take notice to any Bum™ left wide-cheeks open without being given an opportunity to push anything out. And think about what you can do to advocate for better clutch representation of your team’s Bums™. This should be done by every fan. Of every team.
Well, except the Knicks.
– El Jefe
Counterpoint:
