With the Jerry West Clutch POTY Award only being two seasons old, I thought it’d be interesting to figure out the best clutch players of seasons past. Thanks to the work at inpredictable.com, we have some really great ways to measure clutch performance. Mike Buoy, who runs Inpredictable, created a Clutch Win Probably Added metric that goes back to the 1996-97 NBA season. Here’s more of an explanation from inpredictable.com:
NBA.com has a “Player Clutch” section in which they define clutch as the last five minutes of a game in which the point differential is 5 or less. While this is a straightforward and reasonable definition of clutch situations, it can clearly be improved. A three point basket with your team down by two and five seconds to play is far more clutch than a two pointer with 3:50 on the clock and up by three.
Let’s take one of the most famous clutch shots in recent memory: Ray Allen’s game tying three pointer from game 6 of the 2013 Finals. That shot was worth +35% in win probability added. On average, three point shots are worth +4.6% in WPA. So, one way to breakdown Ray Allen’s WPA for that shot is that about 5% is “normal basketball” WPA and 30% is “clutch WPA”.
I can breakdown a player’s WPA contributions into three numbers:
expected WPA (eWPA): the win probability added one would expect from just looking at a player’s box score stats
clutch WPA (clWPA): excess WPA (either plus or minus) due to WPA contributions during crucial game situations
garbage time WPA (gbWPA): WPA a player would have been credited with had their contributions come at more meaningful points in the game
And here is the equation:
WPA = eWPA + clWPA - gbWPA
The win probability difference between the two potential outcomes, the “swing” factor, tells you how important the shot is. A shot as time expires when trailing by one will leave the team with a win probability of 100% if successful, and 0% if unsuccessful - a maximum swing of 100%.
The table below summarizes how the four situational categories are defined in terms of win probability swing:
|| || ||Win probability swing|| |situation|2 Point Shot|3 Point Shot|% of Shots| |garbage time|>=0% and <2%|>=0% and <3%|15.5%| |normal basketball|>=2% and <7%|>=3% and <11%|75.7%| |Clutch situations|>=7% and <18%|>=11% and <32%|7.9%| |Clutch squared|>=18%|>=32%|0.9%|
The main stats I’ll be looking at are:
Clutch FG WPA: Win Probability Added due to clutch shooting (makes and misses)
Total Clutch %: eFG% on all clutch shots
Clutch% vs Normal%: eFG% on Clutch shots minus eFG% on Normal shots
Clutch shot attempts/game
% of team clutch shots taken by player (% Tm Clutch)
Clutch2 (clutch squared): Clutch shots that are in the top 1% of potential win probability added
Here are my top 3 for each season with numbers I thought were especially impressive in bold. You can also take an interactive look at these numbers on a career and single season basis using this report.
1997
1998
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018-2024 and Other notable seasons in comments.
Top 3 appearances
1. LeBron James (6)
2. Stephen Curry (5)
3. Damian Lillard (4)
4. Kobe Bryant (4)
5. Ray Allen (4)
6. Steve Nash (3)
7. DeMar DeRozan (3)
8. Shaquille O’Neal (3)
9. Giannis Antetokounmpo (3)
10. Anthony Davis (2)
11. James Harden (2)
12. Jason Terry (2)
13. Kevin Durant (2)
14. Shawn Marion (2)
15. Nikola Jokic (2)
16. Paul Pierce (2)
17. Dirk Nowitzki (2)
18. Kevin Garnett (2)
19. Manu Ginobili (2)
Any qualms with my picks? Anything else you’re interested in seeing?
Everything is right until you said westbrick was clutch.
Not exactly what the narrative has told us over years about who’s clutch and who’s not.
More ammo for my Steve Nash Propaganda <3
People care way too much about fg% when assessing clutch. Clutch is everything, not just scoring.
Here is the 1997-2013 top best 4th quarter teams by net rating:
2009 Cavaliers: +39.9
2013 Heat: +33.7
2011 Mavericks: +29.5
2007 Mavericks: +29.0
2006 Clippers: +27.1
2010 Cavaliers: +26.4
1998 Lakers: +26.2
1999 Magic: +25.7
2008 Cavaliers: +24.2
2004 Pacers: +23.Idk what it would look like updated but I’d say this list strongly suggests
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Lebron
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Dirk
for that time period
Kind of interesting. But what about the 2017 Warriors who were kicking the shit out of teams once the 4th rolled around? This gets rid of garbage time.
2023 Heat with the most ever Win Probability Added in clutch situations (regular + postseason). That doesn’t include just shooting, but it’s definitely the most important part.
Dubs did the shit kicking in the 3rd quarter. 4th was mostly garbage time.
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Shawn Marion was clutch dang
Yeah, he was one of the bigger surprises. Along with Horford, Okur, Terry, and AD.
2010 was 100% Kobes best clutch shooting year. Iirc he won us 6 games with just game winners. Insane
Greatest win probability added, but amylase as efficient.
Why did you stop at 2017?
Stupid reddit won’t let me attach more than 20 images and formatting tables is a nightmare.
You can post them on imgur.
There is an upload limit of 50 images per hour. There is no upload limit per account, so upload to your heart’s desire!
Unrelated but Magic of Rahat’s life got ruined by a homeless guy he helped accused him of stealing his gofundme funds. Everyone was outraged, he went suicidal, and quit YouTube. He came back a couple of years later and posted a whole bunch of receipts on Imgur disproving the claim that he stole. ( https://imgur.com/a/magic-of-rahats-proof-ZkfIDh1 ) . Then when I realized Imgur is useful for uploading lots of images.
Ok added some imgur links for some other seasons.
Giannis finished top 3, 3 times? Funny, I was always told he’s not clutch
Yeah his percentages are the most consistently great. I will say, it’s on not very many attempts and most of the actual attempts are dunks and layups. It’s not usually what you think of when you think of a clutch player.
Social media and even the media will say the wildest shit unchecked.
Then you got clowns like Skip Bayless who wakes up trying to figure out how to diminish his accomplishments.
the award itself is meaningful but also not meaningful enough because clutch should also mean to deliver in the biggest moment.
regular season game < playoff game < deciding game < finals < final decider etc
the bigger the occasion the bigger the pressure to deliver, also more serious defense you face against
it would be good to see such award can somehow include such metrics
Have those numbers too but then you get into players with small sample sizes because their teammates weren’t good.
Joe Johnson was the baddest motherfucker in the clutch in his prime and him not being here just shows that stats aren’t everything
3rd in 2010. Stats are better than sonorous fueled opinions and anecdotes.
Feel like this needs a minimum attempts cut-off (maybe like 20?)
Can you really call someone the most clutch when they only had 6 or 7 shot attempts over an 82 game season?
Funny Lebron and Steph are 1 and 2 when they both get “he’s not clutch” as a criticism alll the time 😂
Delusional MJ fans and oldheads that want to pretend like they’re not one of the top 10 most clutch players of all time (Skip Bagless).
Easily the best. I will say they both, especially Steph take a pretty big dip clutch-wise when it comes to the postseason. But that’s a much smaller sample size.
Can you also do the past 2 years? We already know who won but the data would still be nice to compare with.
And here’s the image I just added to the post.