Who is the Clutch-est NBA player of all time?

Posted by nuwandavek

23 comments
  1. The NBA started the Clutch Player of the Year award a couple of seasons ago. I extended the same criteria and tried to retroactively award players in past seasons. 2016-2017 Russell Westbrook has had the most clutch season of all, in the last 2 decades. Lebron would have probably won the award thrice – in 2007, 2008 and 2010. Steph, KD and Russ would have probably had 2 awards each. But if you consider avg clutch points, Kyrie is at the top!

    Let me know what else you want to see from NBA play-by-play/nbastats data! Plots is collection of data stories powered by [MinusX](https://minusx.ai). Check out the post for the data, more plots and and a detailed analysis: [https://minusx.ai/blog/plots01-nba-clutch/](https://minusx.ai/blog/plots01-nba-clutch/)

  2. How do you define clutch points? Is that total points scored in a close fourth quarter? It’s hard to tell if this is just highlighting players that score a lot of points and play a lot of close games, or if it’s identifying players that really outperform in those scenarios.

  3. Shouldn’t it be in relation to how much they score outside of the “clutch window”? Otherwise you’re basically ranking best scorers

  4. This has to be the dumbest fucking term in sports (momentum is up there too). Points scored at the end of a game, or quarter, or half, are no more valuable than points scored at the beginning.

  5. Zach LaVine definitely scored a lot of clutch points in 19-20, but sadly as a Bulls fan who watched those games, it still resulted in a lot of close losses, so I don’t think he would’ve won any award had there been one. But it was still pretty fun to watch!

  6. What a total shit post. “Who is the clutch-est NBA player of all time” proceeds to show only data from 2004!

  7. Points scored down by 5 in the fourth quarter I don’t think really count as clutch?..

    When I think of clutch it would probably be something along the lines of positive +- in the fourth quarter resulting in a win in a playoff or elimination series.

  8. It’s an interesting chart but I hate that you graphed this with fg% but then only choose to call out the player with the most raw points each year regardless of fg%.

    Look at 15-16′ for example. There are two players with almost as many points as Durant and much higher fg%.

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