Westbrook lies to a restaurant to get free dessert

Among franchise players / first-options, in 2001-2011, for last-possession go-ahead baskets:

  • TMac, Ray Allen, and Westbrook are near the bottom at 36-38% FG%

  • Dirk, Kobe, Melo and D-Wade are average at 40-42%.

  • Duncan, Lebron, Nash, and CP3 are near the top at 45-46%. Note that Duncan's FG% is somewhat inflated (as compared to TS%) because he rarely shoots 3's compared to other first-options.

This remains true even if you extend these samples to other thresholds that can be agreed upon by a couple of well-informed fans - (i) 2 minutes within 5 points, (ii) 5 minutes within 5 points, (ii) 2 minutes within 3 points, etc. etc.

But if you ask a casual fan who relies on ESPN for analysis, they'll tell you CP3 is not clutch but TMac or Ray Allen are clutch. This perception is inconsistent with game records. There are defensible rationales for that: TMac or Ray Allen both had one really memorable game that everyone in the public knows about. CP3's dozens of game-winners had, unfortunately, not led him to the conference finals and have rarely been noticed by fans on other teams.

But that doesn't take away from the reality that CP3 had been constantly more effective in pressure situations, and this means something if we want to predict his future performance. We saw this with Lebron's performance in the last year -- those fans who saw the comeback being remotely possible were those that paid objective attention to Lebron's stats and made the educated guess that he has a different gear when his legacy is on the line. Those fans who were ridiculing him along with Klay Thompson at the end of game 4 were casual fans who bandwagon and talk shit based on short-term ex-post justifications of game results.


In any case: the fact that you have to ask already proves /u/Dongsquad420blazeit's point. There are two ways to interpret your question:

  1. the idealistic interpretation is that you genuinely want to know about the actual clutch stats of players, which partially confirms his statement.

  2. the pragmatic interpretation is that you barely give a shit about actual clutch stats, and you're setting him up to say "Kobe" so the massive Lakers fanbase here can go rail on him and give you karma points. This still makes him correct, and it also makes you a rather sad asshole.

(As I was typing this comment, you demonstrated that the second interpretation is valid.)

Either way, even you can agree there are lots of fans who regularly throw around "X is/isn't a clutch player" without spending 30 seconds to inform themselves of the players' actual records. Without even knowing the context of the games or shots they've been known for. This was true for Paul Pierce, who was vastly over-rated for his clutch stats in his early years. This was also true for Kobe, who was (unfairly) seen by many as un-clutch all the way until 2008.

If this type of willful ignorance of factual information doesn't bother you, it explains your choice to make snide remarks at fans who actually want to understand or discuss the game in a non-superficial way. You enjoy being shitty and condescending to other humans more than you actually want to appreciate the game of basketball.

Look, I'm not here to shit on bored joyless assholes on the Internet. There are too many of you around. But let me just say this: individual or aggregated game records on last-possession FG%, or tying shot %, or game-winning shots %, or nearly any related offensive metric are all widely available on the Internet. You can restrict that sample to playoffs. You can restrict that sample to finals games. You can cite that information and any additional, verbal argument you think is important. Actual, comprehensive data requires no effort to find, nor is it how to incorporate into an argument if you know it.

Yet you, and many posters like you in this sub, always spend more time baiting/insulting posters who attempt to be seriously informed about the game, rather than trying to acquire, comprehend, or present or criticize any of that data.

You vaguely pretend to actually know what the data indicates, but vaguely dismiss it as being incomplete at capturing the game, even though you have neither the ability nor the intention to actually explicate an actual basketball-related rationale. I can give you 3 solid basketball reasons right now for why/when PER or RPM is ineffective. I can do the opposite. You can't. You just pretend to know better whenever it contradicts your own wisdom or whenever you find it opportune to write up a snarky 1-liner to some unfortunate victim of your daily dose of dickish attention-whoring.

This is how a shameless charlatan operates. This is called being a "phony". And people who continue to act this way, in real life, will usually end up as massive failures. Take that sincere advice from someone who probably has 20 more years of life experience than you do.

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