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ââ 2012 NBA Finals ââ The King has been crowned; Heat win 2012 NBA Finals! Bron Finals MVP.
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by allen3xis,
- Start date
- 1,716
- 11
HankMoody wrote:
Al3xis wrote:
Shaq's 2000 resume:
- 30, 14 and 4 with 3 blocks a game
- 67 win team
- MVP
- Scoring title
- Finals MVP (38 and 17 over 6 games)
- 2nd Team All Defense
I'm inclined to believe he was 'best' and most 'dominant' in that time period over guys like Grant Hill and 4th year Kobe even if he couldn't make a shot outside of 8 feet.
Don't you get it? You have to judge LeBron by the exact same criteria used to judge someone like Kobe or Carmelo. Kevin Durant's beyond mediocre playmaking ability? Doesn't matter. He's better in late-game situations when his number is called. That's all that matters. Shaq couldnt have been the best then. That's not consistent. But of course this is all ridiculous.
And at the end of the game, what did they do with the "best" player in the league? Take him out of the game, so teams would stop intentionally fouling him. He was awesome for 44 minutes, then he had to get out of the way, his free throws were a hindrance. And he couldn't exactly dribble down the court without getting swiped now could he?
You both know what I was saying. Use the word complete if you want.
And Kool, no I still don't elevate David all that much. He had some added skills from most centers, but again, it's not like he was driving and kicking, or leading fast breaks or anything.But he did have a little KG in him, just not the same foot speed I don't think. I could see KG getting out and defending a Chris Paul in a given situation here and there without looking foolish, he had the lateral movement to do so, David would get ran circles around by CP3. To me, KG was the more "complete" of the 2.
They both also have a sleep mode in the 4th quarter.
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[h1]The truth about Kobe Bryant in crunch time[/h1]
By Henry Abbott
ESPN.com
Archive
Stephen Dunn/Getty Images Sport
At the end of Game 2 of the 2009 Finals, the Magic knew who to guard, and got the block.
Ask pundits. Ask general managers. Ask players. Ask almost anybody.
Who would you like to have take the last shot with the game on the line?
Kobe Bryant wins by a country mile. Every time. (In a general-manager poll this season, he earned 79 percent of the vote, his ninth consecutive blowout.)
There is not really any other serious candidate.
Ask me, though (as Ryen Russillo did last week and Mike Trudell the other day), and I'll tell you I don't know who's the best, but with all due respect to Bryant's amazing abilities scoring the ball, there's zero chance he's the king of crunch time.
The sin of predictability
Bryant makes crunch-time defense easy for opponents by shooting just about every time he touches the ball (over a five-year period, he mustered 56 clutch shots, to go with one assist).
Fans of his raw machismo howl that such criticism misses the point, but the point is that when Bryant gets the ball in crunch time, it's a virtual certainty that he'll shoot it, and it's better than 2-1 odds that he'll miss.
In 1997, he famously air-balled two shots that could have beat the Jazz; instead, the Jazz won the series. In 1999, he whiffed on a 3-pointer at the buzzer that would have tied Game 2 against the Spurs. In Game 4 against the Kings in 2002, he missed a 2-pointer that would have tied the game (before the ball was tipped out to Robert Horry for the winning 3). In Game 7 of that same series, Bryant missed a tip that would have won the game in regulation. In Game 3 against the Timberwolves in 2003, he missed two key shots in the last seconds of overtime, and the Lakers lost.
I'll spare you the entire list, but it's long. In the final 24 seconds of playoff games, Bryant has racked up almost as many air balls as makes, making just below 30 percent of game-tying or go-ahead shots. He hasn't hit such a shot in a playoff game, in fact, since 2008, including key misses in the closing moments against the Jazz and Magic in 2009, and the Thunder and Suns last spring. He made one of his four shots in the fourth quarter of Game 7 of last year's Finals.
No matter how you define crunch time -- from the last five minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime to the last 24 seconds -- and no matter how you define production -- field goal percentage, offensive efficiency, David Berri's Wins Produced, the results tell the same story: Bryant is about as likely to hit the big shot as any player.
ESPN Stats & Information's Alok Pattani dug through 15 years of NBA data (see table below) -- Bryant's entire career, regular season and playoffs -- and found that Bryant has attempted 115 shots in the final 24 seconds of a game in which the Lakers were tied or trailed by two or fewer points. He connected on 36, and missed 79 times.
One shot for all the cookies. And the NBA is nearly unanimous that this is the guy to take it, even though he has more than twice as many misses as makes?
His crunch-time production is slightly higher in the first half of this season, but still certainly not the best in the league. And analyzing any large number of games, one year, five years or 15 years, and defining crunch time a number of different ways, shows the same pattern. (There are many ways this has been sliced.)
Bryant shoots more than most, passes less and racks up misses at an all-time rate. There is no measure, other than YouTube highlights and folklore, by which he's the best scorer in crunch time.
The un-clutch Lakers
One of the key arguments in his favor is that he draws double-teams, which allows other Lakers to score. But that doesn't seem to happen much. Over Bryant's 15-year career, the Lakers have had the NBA's best offense, and second-best won-loss record. No other team can match their mighty 109 points per 100 possessions over the entire period.
You'd expect Los Angeles to also have one of the league's best offenses in crunch time, right? Especially with the ball in the hands of the player most suited to those moments.
That's not what happens, though. In the final 24 seconds of close games the Lakers offense regresses horribly, managing just 82 points per 100 possessions. And it's not a simple case of every team having a hard time scoring in crunch time. Over Bryant's career, 11 teams have had better crunch-time offenses, led by the Hornets with a shocking 107 points per 100 possessions in crunch time, a huge credit to Chris Paul.
The Lakers are not among the league leaders in crunch-time offense -- instead, they're just about average, scoring 82.35 points per 100 possessions in a league that averages 80.03. They are, however, among the league leaders in how much worse their offense declines in crunch time.
When Bryant is on the floor in crunch time, Bryant's Lakers are actually outscored by their opponents.
A great offensive team performing at average levels, with a star setting records for number of shots attempted. Teammates left wide open. Evidence, even, that Bryant's play puts his team into nailbiters that needn't be so close.
That, my friends, is a ball hog.
The makes
Nobody playing today has a crunch-time rÃ[emoji]169[/emoji]sumÃ[emoji]169[/emoji] with half the excitement, or sheer bulk, of Bryant's: A banked 3 against Miami in 2009. Two ridiculous plays in Game 4 in that 2006 playoff series against the Suns. Making the Celtics' great defense look meaningless. Those four shots would make a career for most All-Stars. They are a mere eighth of Bryant's best moments.
Respect the brute force of numbers. If you want to see someone who has proved he can hit big buckets, nobody can rival his collected works. That speaks to his preparation, his dedication, the trust his teammates have in him, and more subtle things like how his training regimen has kept him healthy and productive for such a long time.
At all times he's cool as hell. At all times he's polished, fearless, ruthless even. Most of the time he's double-teamed. The shots are impossibly difficult. It's intimidating. He looks like a robot of crunch-time destruction, if robots could jump really high, shoot really well and scowl really hard.
Nobody can match that. So we live in a world in which Bryant has been appointed king of all crunch time, and it's not hard to see why.
And well worth noting is that over that period he has clearly been one of the best players in the world, period, leading a team that has won five championships and has the potential to win more.
Bryant's absolutely the best in the world at the game of winning the hearts and minds of crunch time. A lot goes into it: creating shots against any defense, staying calm, ignoring fear and more. It's about who most has the rest of the league by the throat. In that game, it's cowardly to pass the ball, and misses are merely the cost of doing business. In that game, degree of difficulty counts.
That game, though, is not basketball.
In basketball, entrusting the ball to the open teammate really does benefit the team. Remember when Jordan passed to a wide-open Bill Wennington in the lane? Or to Steve Kerr or John Paxson in the Finals?
Can all those players, GMs and Phil Jackson be wrong?
TrueHoop reader Terence speaks for many when he writes:
It's not just players and GMs, it's almost everybody. What we see with our eyes and feel in our hearts is impossible to ignore, even when it's misleading.
[h4]With the game on the line[/h4]
Trailing by one or two points, or tied, in the final 24 seconds of regular-season and playoff games since 1996-97, with a minimum of 30 shots. From Alok Pattani of ESPN Stats & Information.
[th=""]Player[/th][th=""]Makes[/th][th=""]Attempts[/th][th=""]FG%[/th]
Yet we get things wrong all the time anyway, for the simple reason that a lot more happens in the NBA than anybody can catalog in any objective way.
In that same GM survey, for instance, John Wall was a heavy favorite to beat Blake Griffin for rookie of the year. Kevin Durant was a slam dunk to win this year's MVP.
In that player poll, Chauncey Billups got the second-most votes as the preferred go-to crunch-time scorer. Billups is 3-of-27 with the game on the line over the past five seasons. Dead last in the NBA among those who have attempted at least 15 shots.
None of that means anyone is dumb. Instead, it means that reputation is a huge factor, and it's beyond anyone to remember and catalog 7,000 or so shots in your head.
And as for Jackson, he wants the same kind of hit-the-open-man team play every coach wants. We know this because back when he was free to speak frankly on the topic, he could not have been more clear.
"I sometimes think Kobe is so addicted to being in control that he would rather shoot the ball when guarded, or even double-teamed, than dish it to an open teammate," Jackson wrote in his 2004 book "The Last Season." "He is saying to himself: how can he trust anyone else? Well, he should learn to trust ..."
Jackson published that book in the interlude when he was not coaching the Lakers. That he doesn't talk that way is hardly bizarre -- it's admirable for a coach to keep his criticism of a colleague "in the family."
However, don't confuse Bryant's domination of the ball with Jackson's endorsement of the plan. In the same book, Jackson tells of his annoyance at Bryant's ball-hogging in crunch time. In one instance, he describes drawing up a play with multiple options, in crunch time of a 2004 playoff series against Houston. Bryant destroyed all the options; instead of setting a baseline screen for Shaquille O'Neal he ran straight to the ball. "With the twenty-four-second clock winding down," writes Jackson, "Kobe forced a long jumper, a horrible shot in the game's most critical possession. The ball did not reach the rim..."
Jackson also tells of marching, more than once, into Mitch Kupchak's office to demand that the Lakers trade Bryant. He writes things like:
I see lots of evidence that Bryant dominates Lakers possessions in crunch time. But I see no evidence that it's part of Jackson's plan.
Should stats even be part of this conversation?
Yes.
But not because stats are better. But because this is a tricky -- and at least in terms of sports, important -- question. We should answer this with the best evidence we can get our hands on. In my mind, the final analysis would come from video, which captures the full complexity of the game. But that video should be of good and bad plays. And that video should consider many candidates, including Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony, and the like -- not just the assumed king.
Remember when SUVs first came into existence? People went crazy for them. They were, it turned out, what a huge percentage of drivers felt they had been waiting for.
Malcolm Gladwell explains more than anything people liked how these big strong trucks, riding up high, slathered in airbags, made everybody feel safe. You go out there, on those crowded, scary roads, and very little can hurt you. Everyone just knew that. The SUV matched a picture in our brains: This is how a safe automobile feels.
Only it was a crock. There were real reasons, many having to do with design, why SUVs were actually surprisingly unsafe. A minivan, for instance, at the time of Gladwell's writing, was far safer. Gladwell cites safety statistics compiled by Tom Wenzel, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Marc Ross, a physicist at the University of Michigan, which found, essentially, that little nimble cars with good visibility -- the precise cars people were abandoning for SUVs -- were safer still.
How did we learn that? With a commonsense look at some stats, specifically by comparing the number of fatalities to the number of cars of a certain model on the road. A safe car is one you don't die in, right? That's useful.
Similarly, Bryant looks like a great crunch-time scorer. He has the right skills, the right demeanor, the right highlights, the right jewelry. But as it turns out, Bryant's clutch like an SUV is safe.
There are a lot of misleading things in this world.
And let's be clear: The numbers that doom Bryant's campaign as the king of crunch time are not really statistics. They're not formulas, or algorithms. They're really just counting -- both makes and misses for the player and the team.
If you're asking me to pick one guy to make a shot with the game on the line, there's nothing complex about peeking at the record to see how well he has done that job in the past. Every number in that chart is a real moment of NBA basketball, with ten players on the court, and Bryant in a Lakers uniform, rising, firing, and -- most of the time -- missing. These things really happened, and as much as you might want to ignore opinion, or theory, there's no real reason to ignore 79 misses, broken plays, a shocking lack of passing, a coaching staff eager for more team play, and an elite team that gets below-par results with the game on the line.
As long as your mind is open to all that, it has to be closed to the idea that Kobe Bryant is the king of crunch time.
By Henry AbbottESPN.com
Archive
Stephen Dunn/Getty Images Sport
At the end of Game 2 of the 2009 Finals, the Magic knew who to guard, and got the block.
Ask pundits. Ask general managers. Ask players. Ask almost anybody.
Who would you like to have take the last shot with the game on the line?
Kobe Bryant wins by a country mile. Every time. (In a general-manager poll this season, he earned 79 percent of the vote, his ninth consecutive blowout.)
There is not really any other serious candidate.
Ask me, though (as Ryen Russillo did last week and Mike Trudell the other day), and I'll tell you I don't know who's the best, but with all due respect to Bryant's amazing abilities scoring the ball, there's zero chance he's the king of crunch time.
The sin of predictability
Bryant makes crunch-time defense easy for opponents by shooting just about every time he touches the ball (over a five-year period, he mustered 56 clutch shots, to go with one assist).
Fans of his raw machismo howl that such criticism misses the point, but the point is that when Bryant gets the ball in crunch time, it's a virtual certainty that he'll shoot it, and it's better than 2-1 odds that he'll miss.
In 1997, he famously air-balled two shots that could have beat the Jazz; instead, the Jazz won the series. In 1999, he whiffed on a 3-pointer at the buzzer that would have tied Game 2 against the Spurs. In Game 4 against the Kings in 2002, he missed a 2-pointer that would have tied the game (before the ball was tipped out to Robert Horry for the winning 3). In Game 7 of that same series, Bryant missed a tip that would have won the game in regulation. In Game 3 against the Timberwolves in 2003, he missed two key shots in the last seconds of overtime, and the Lakers lost.
I'll spare you the entire list, but it's long. In the final 24 seconds of playoff games, Bryant has racked up almost as many air balls as makes, making just below 30 percent of game-tying or go-ahead shots. He hasn't hit such a shot in a playoff game, in fact, since 2008, including key misses in the closing moments against the Jazz and Magic in 2009, and the Thunder and Suns last spring. He made one of his four shots in the fourth quarter of Game 7 of last year's Finals.
No matter how you define crunch time -- from the last five minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime to the last 24 seconds -- and no matter how you define production -- field goal percentage, offensive efficiency, David Berri's Wins Produced, the results tell the same story: Bryant is about as likely to hit the big shot as any player.
ESPN Stats & Information's Alok Pattani dug through 15 years of NBA data (see table below) -- Bryant's entire career, regular season and playoffs -- and found that Bryant has attempted 115 shots in the final 24 seconds of a game in which the Lakers were tied or trailed by two or fewer points. He connected on 36, and missed 79 times.
One shot for all the cookies. And the NBA is nearly unanimous that this is the guy to take it, even though he has more than twice as many misses as makes?
His crunch-time production is slightly higher in the first half of this season, but still certainly not the best in the league. And analyzing any large number of games, one year, five years or 15 years, and defining crunch time a number of different ways, shows the same pattern. (There are many ways this has been sliced.)
Bryant shoots more than most, passes less and racks up misses at an all-time rate. There is no measure, other than YouTube highlights and folklore, by which he's the best scorer in crunch time.
The un-clutch Lakers
One of the key arguments in his favor is that he draws double-teams, which allows other Lakers to score. But that doesn't seem to happen much. Over Bryant's 15-year career, the Lakers have had the NBA's best offense, and second-best won-loss record. No other team can match their mighty 109 points per 100 possessions over the entire period.
You'd expect Los Angeles to also have one of the league's best offenses in crunch time, right? Especially with the ball in the hands of the player most suited to those moments.
That's not what happens, though. In the final 24 seconds of close games the Lakers offense regresses horribly, managing just 82 points per 100 possessions. And it's not a simple case of every team having a hard time scoring in crunch time. Over Bryant's career, 11 teams have had better crunch-time offenses, led by the Hornets with a shocking 107 points per 100 possessions in crunch time, a huge credit to Chris Paul.
The Lakers are not among the league leaders in crunch-time offense -- instead, they're just about average, scoring 82.35 points per 100 possessions in a league that averages 80.03. They are, however, among the league leaders in how much worse their offense declines in crunch time.
When Bryant is on the floor in crunch time, Bryant's Lakers are actually outscored by their opponents.
A great offensive team performing at average levels, with a star setting records for number of shots attempted. Teammates left wide open. Evidence, even, that Bryant's play puts his team into nailbiters that needn't be so close.
That, my friends, is a ball hog.
The makes
Nobody playing today has a crunch-time rÃ[emoji]169[/emoji]sumÃ[emoji]169[/emoji] with half the excitement, or sheer bulk, of Bryant's: A banked 3 against Miami in 2009. Two ridiculous plays in Game 4 in that 2006 playoff series against the Suns. Making the Celtics' great defense look meaningless. Those four shots would make a career for most All-Stars. They are a mere eighth of Bryant's best moments.
Respect the brute force of numbers. If you want to see someone who has proved he can hit big buckets, nobody can rival his collected works. That speaks to his preparation, his dedication, the trust his teammates have in him, and more subtle things like how his training regimen has kept him healthy and productive for such a long time.
At all times he's cool as hell. At all times he's polished, fearless, ruthless even. Most of the time he's double-teamed. The shots are impossibly difficult. It's intimidating. He looks like a robot of crunch-time destruction, if robots could jump really high, shoot really well and scowl really hard.
Nobody can match that. So we live in a world in which Bryant has been appointed king of all crunch time, and it's not hard to see why.
And well worth noting is that over that period he has clearly been one of the best players in the world, period, leading a team that has won five championships and has the potential to win more.
Bryant's absolutely the best in the world at the game of winning the hearts and minds of crunch time. A lot goes into it: creating shots against any defense, staying calm, ignoring fear and more. It's about who most has the rest of the league by the throat. In that game, it's cowardly to pass the ball, and misses are merely the cost of doing business. In that game, degree of difficulty counts.
That game, though, is not basketball.
In basketball, entrusting the ball to the open teammate really does benefit the team. Remember when Jordan passed to a wide-open Bill Wennington in the lane? Or to Steve Kerr or John Paxson in the Finals?
Can all those players, GMs and Phil Jackson be wrong?
TrueHoop reader Terence speaks for many when he writes:
It's not just players and GMs, it's almost everybody. What we see with our eyes and feel in our hearts is impossible to ignore, even when it's misleading.
[h4]With the game on the line[/h4]
Trailing by one or two points, or tied, in the final 24 seconds of regular-season and playoff games since 1996-97, with a minimum of 30 shots. From Alok Pattani of ESPN Stats & Information.
| Carmelo Anthony | 21 | 44 | 47.7 |
| Chris Paul | 14 | 31 | 45.2 |
| Shawn Marion | 12 | 30 | 40 |
| Brandon Roy | 12 | 30 | 40 |
| Hedo Turkoglu | 12 | 30 | 40 |
| Rashard Lewis | 18 | 46 | 39.1 |
| Glenn Robinson | 14 | 36 | 38.9 |
| Deron Williams | 14 | 36 | 38.9 |
| Mike Bibby | 15 | 39 | 38.5 |
| Dirk Nowitzki | 25 | 65 | 38.5 |
| Jalen Rose | 12 | 32 | 37.5 |
| Tim Duncan | 23 | 62 | 37.1 |
| Eddie Jones | 13 | 36 | 36.1 |
| Karl Malone | 11 | 31 | 35.5 |
| Ben Gordon | 17 | 49 | 34.7 |
| Chris Webber | 18 | 52 | 34.6 |
| Raymond Felton | 12 | 36 | 33.3 |
| LeBron James | 23 | 69 | 33.3 |
| Ray Allen | 23 | 70 | 32.9 |
| Gilbert Arenas | 13 | 40 | 32.5 |
| Vince Carter | 31 | 96 | 32.3 |
| Steve Francis | 14 | 44 | 31.8 |
| Damon Stoudamire | 12 | 38 | 31.6 |
| Nick Van Exel | 16 | 51 | 31.4 |
| Kobe Bryant | 36 | 115 | 31.3 |
| Jason Terry | 14 | 45 | 31.1 |
| Allen Iverson | 21 | 68 | 30.9 |
| Kevin Garnett | 22 | 72 | 30.6 |
| Ron Artest | 9 | 30 | 30 |
| Allan Houston | 12 | 41 | 29.3 |
| Entire league | 2038 | 6861 | 29.7 |
Yet we get things wrong all the time anyway, for the simple reason that a lot more happens in the NBA than anybody can catalog in any objective way.
In that same GM survey, for instance, John Wall was a heavy favorite to beat Blake Griffin for rookie of the year. Kevin Durant was a slam dunk to win this year's MVP.
In that player poll, Chauncey Billups got the second-most votes as the preferred go-to crunch-time scorer. Billups is 3-of-27 with the game on the line over the past five seasons. Dead last in the NBA among those who have attempted at least 15 shots.
None of that means anyone is dumb. Instead, it means that reputation is a huge factor, and it's beyond anyone to remember and catalog 7,000 or so shots in your head.
And as for Jackson, he wants the same kind of hit-the-open-man team play every coach wants. We know this because back when he was free to speak frankly on the topic, he could not have been more clear.
"I sometimes think Kobe is so addicted to being in control that he would rather shoot the ball when guarded, or even double-teamed, than dish it to an open teammate," Jackson wrote in his 2004 book "The Last Season." "He is saying to himself: how can he trust anyone else? Well, he should learn to trust ..."
Jackson published that book in the interlude when he was not coaching the Lakers. That he doesn't talk that way is hardly bizarre -- it's admirable for a coach to keep his criticism of a colleague "in the family."
However, don't confuse Bryant's domination of the ball with Jackson's endorsement of the plan. In the same book, Jackson tells of his annoyance at Bryant's ball-hogging in crunch time. In one instance, he describes drawing up a play with multiple options, in crunch time of a 2004 playoff series against Houston. Bryant destroyed all the options; instead of setting a baseline screen for Shaquille O'Neal he ran straight to the ball. "With the twenty-four-second clock winding down," writes Jackson, "Kobe forced a long jumper, a horrible shot in the game's most critical possession. The ball did not reach the rim..."
Jackson also tells of marching, more than once, into Mitch Kupchak's office to demand that the Lakers trade Bryant. He writes things like:
- "Kobe tends to hold on to the ball longer than necessary causing the offense to stagnate."
- "He won't listen to anyone. I've had it with this kid."
- "As usual, Kobe seemed intent on taking over."
I see lots of evidence that Bryant dominates Lakers possessions in crunch time. But I see no evidence that it's part of Jackson's plan.
Should stats even be part of this conversation?
Yes.
But not because stats are better. But because this is a tricky -- and at least in terms of sports, important -- question. We should answer this with the best evidence we can get our hands on. In my mind, the final analysis would come from video, which captures the full complexity of the game. But that video should be of good and bad plays. And that video should consider many candidates, including Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony, and the like -- not just the assumed king.
Remember when SUVs first came into existence? People went crazy for them. They were, it turned out, what a huge percentage of drivers felt they had been waiting for.
Malcolm Gladwell explains more than anything people liked how these big strong trucks, riding up high, slathered in airbags, made everybody feel safe. You go out there, on those crowded, scary roads, and very little can hurt you. Everyone just knew that. The SUV matched a picture in our brains: This is how a safe automobile feels.
Only it was a crock. There were real reasons, many having to do with design, why SUVs were actually surprisingly unsafe. A minivan, for instance, at the time of Gladwell's writing, was far safer. Gladwell cites safety statistics compiled by Tom Wenzel, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Marc Ross, a physicist at the University of Michigan, which found, essentially, that little nimble cars with good visibility -- the precise cars people were abandoning for SUVs -- were safer still.
How did we learn that? With a commonsense look at some stats, specifically by comparing the number of fatalities to the number of cars of a certain model on the road. A safe car is one you don't die in, right? That's useful.
Similarly, Bryant looks like a great crunch-time scorer. He has the right skills, the right demeanor, the right highlights, the right jewelry. But as it turns out, Bryant's clutch like an SUV is safe.
There are a lot of misleading things in this world.
And let's be clear: The numbers that doom Bryant's campaign as the king of crunch time are not really statistics. They're not formulas, or algorithms. They're really just counting -- both makes and misses for the player and the team.
If you're asking me to pick one guy to make a shot with the game on the line, there's nothing complex about peeking at the record to see how well he has done that job in the past. Every number in that chart is a real moment of NBA basketball, with ten players on the court, and Bryant in a Lakers uniform, rising, firing, and -- most of the time -- missing. These things really happened, and as much as you might want to ignore opinion, or theory, there's no real reason to ignore 79 misses, broken plays, a shocking lack of passing, a coaching staff eager for more team play, and an elite team that gets below-par results with the game on the line.
As long as your mind is open to all that, it has to be closed to the idea that Kobe Bryant is the king of crunch time.
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Shawn Marion is more clutch than Kobe.
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Mike Bibby is more clutch than Kobe
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Shaq was a beast. There were playoff series where he would average over 35 points and over 15 rebounds, and you guys forget that he always hit his free throws late in games whenOriginally Posted by rck2sactown
QFT.
Were there ever any certified Shaq-stoppers????
I recall Mutombo getting a lot of praise when he was with the Sixers and Nets.... but all I remember was him getting bullied in the post
they mattered.
that Shaq did. 
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Don't you get it? You have to judge LeBron by the exact same criteria used to judge someone like Kobe or Carmelo. Kevin Durant's beyond mediocre playmaking ability? Doesn't matter. He's better in late-game situations when his number is called. That's all that matters. Shaq couldnt have been the best then. That's not consistent. But of course this is all ridiculous.
And at the end of the game, what did they do with the "best" player in the league? Take him out of the game, so teams would stop intentionally fouling him. He was awesome for 44 minutes, then he had to get out of the way, his free throws were a hindrance. And he couldn't exactly dribble down the court without getting swiped now could he?
You both know what I was saying. Use the word complete if you want.
so if it's the year 2000, you're not going with Shaq to start your team with to try and win a championship for right then and there? If not, who would it have been?
I just can't agree that from 1999-2005 that not once were Shaq nor Duncan the best player in the league because there games weren't diversified enough. KG was more complete than both, but I'd never say he was better. Complete is the right word, but I don't see how that stops guys like that from being #1. Whether it's dominance or being complete..you'd still want those guys on your team before anyone else. At least I would have.
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lol that list of clutch players is hilarious...shawn marion?? mike bibby?? raymond felton?? cmon seriously
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Here's a situation where kobe missed the clutch shot, but the point is that Kobe has always had help when he's won championships.
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Glenn Robinson >
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Savraj1 wrote:
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I see your Kobe missing a clutch shot.. Raise you him making 3... And Commissioner Gordon missing 2
By the way every NBA player who has been the guy on a team has had help to win a championship..
By the way every NBA player who has been the guy on a team has had help to win a championship..
MVP
Supporter
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Don't argue with the numbers guys...he obviously isn't clutch. Just the fact that he's taken 3 times more of "clutch" shots than any of the other guys on the lists shouldn't matter at all. He's always in the position of having to save the Lakers good or bad and therefore has had many more opportunities to make and miss those money shots.
You'd be a fool to take anyone else outside of maybe Melo/Dirk over him even at age 33.
You'd be a fool to take anyone else outside of maybe Melo/Dirk over him even at age 33.
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debates, debates, debates....just be happy that we have the NBA. My father was watching some middle eastern pro basketball today, and he said it was trash after 1 minute. lol. Kobe is clutch vs isn't clutch....at the end of the day, he's one of the best we've seen. I hope we all can appreciate that.
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You guys can make up all the moronic arbitrary definitions for "best" that you want, none of this will make Kobe not be in decline, and not of this will create parralle universe in which LeBron is not the most effective and therefore the best basketball player in the world...and fyi there are precious few years where he was that, let alone for a decade.
Eh, different arguments aren't they? Best player, vs player you start a team with to win today or tomorrow, or next 10 years, etc.
If you are looking at it that way, then what makes Bron any better than Dwight, right now this very second? Or the same Chris Paul we saw in the first round last year? Or Dirk even?
I'm speaking in terms of complete, overall, total games. What those players can do on a court. Wing guys, just by sheer nature, can do MORE than a Center, no? More complete = Best, depending on how you view it I guess. Not saying I'm right, or you're wrong or any of that. I certainly agree Shaq in 2000 was outstanding, no way I would argue otherwise. And the perimeter talent back then was not yet ready so to speak. Penny and Hill were hurt, Kobe/Vince/Tmac were kids, AI was not posting up or going to block shots and rebound
Damn, back at that time, it was all about the PF. Dunc, KG, Web, Sheed, Malone aging, Dyess was nice. Lotta talent back then compared to the wing guys. Hell, there ya go right there, KG had the more complete overall game, the better true do anything type I am talkin about, than Duncan, but Duncan was simply the better winner, closer and what not. KG could guard a PG, Duncan could not. They alone sort of show what I am looking at in terms of "best"
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Deleted member 38182
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+%+@ that $!** homie
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Man, I would Paypal somebody a commission if you can find a size 7 7/8 or 8 or Adidas XL/XXL Thunder fitted. This yr the Thunder store got rid of ALL the fitteds and got nothing but those crap Adidas snapback and L/M/S type hats. My cranium can't do nothing with those but be restricted
Pathos
formerly retrosan
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Kobe
that list is hilarious although they hit it on the nail with Melo being the clutch gawd
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More complete = Best, depending on how you view it I guess.
me and you view it differently then.
I get what you'r saying, I just think there was definitely a time when Shaq was top dog. nobody else could dominant a game like him or the league.
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So a PF or C can never be the best player in the league. They can never be as "complete" as a guard or small forward. Who knew this was a small man's league after all?
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All-Suspected Surprises team
Two weeks isn't a huge sample, even with the games coming at us out of a fire hose in this compressed schedule. Nonetheless, it's a big enough portion of the season that by now, radical shifts should grab our attention. For instance, if a player has nearly doubled his assist and rebound rate from last season while scoring more and shooting better, that probably would get our attention. Especially if he was leading all point guards in PER, millimeters ahead of a certain MVP winner.
Or it would, anyway, if the player doing it wasn't Mr. Invisible himself, Houston Rockets guard Kyle Lowry. Already one of the game's most underrated players because his bulldog defense goes so unrecognized, Lowry has stepped up his game in a major way -- his per-40 minute stats are a near triple-double of 18.8 points, 12.2 assists and 7.6 boards, and his 60.6 true shooting percentage includes several bailout 3s at the end of the shot clock.
Lowry has played only seven games because he missed two with a foot injury, but he doesn't have a big outlier game in the bunch. Additionally, he's played one of the league's most difficult schedules -- Tuesday night's game in Charlotte was the Rockets' first against one of last season's lottery teams.
Overall, Lowry's 23.44 PER is miles ahead of last season's 16.51. Although we should expect him to regress to the mean, especially in his percentages, and it remains unlikely that he'll be atop that point guard list for long, enough games are in his pocket that we can't just write this off as a short-term fluke. Lowry probably is genuinely a lot better than he was last season.
You can make a similar case for several other players, if not as profound as the one for Lowry. So let's go through the list of what might be called the "Suspected Surprises" team -- players who have played well enough for long enough that it warrants discussion of how and what they improved. (Side note: As implied by the "improved" tag, there are no rookies on this squad.)
Let's look at the rest of my 12-man squad:
Kobe Bryant
Score one for German knee doctors. Kobe has his highest PER and highest scoring rate since 2005-06, a whopping 32.4 points per 40 minutes. The kicker is that his assist rate hasn't declined. He's quietly yanking more than six boards per 40 minutes, too. Although he isn't driving all the way to the rim as much, Bryant is getting to the line more through a brute-force post game (8.4 freebies a night). He's done all this even though he can't buy a 3-pointer (9-for-4
While we're on the topic of the Lakers, Andrew Bynum also warrants mentioning and would be on this list if he were not suspended for the first four games. Bynum is averaging 21.3 points and 17.4 boards per 40 minutes and leads the NBA in rebound rate. There's still room for improvement -- he has only four assists all season and is shooting 56.3 percent from the stripe. Even with those shortcomings, he may be headed to his first All-Star Game given the paucity of Western Conference centers.
Spencer Hawes, Lou Williams and pretty much every other 76er
OK, this is getting ridiculous. Tuesday night the Sixers beat Sacramento by 27 for their fifth 20-plus-point win in nine outings. They rank first in the NBA in offense and defense. Williams very nearly has the top PER among point guards; Hawes and rookie Nikola Vucevic are two of the top seven centers, and Thaddeus Young is the only roadblock to James Harden's Sixth Man Award coronation. Evan Turner nearly had a triple-double Tuesday, and Andre Iguodala is raining jump shots.
I won't belabor the point because I wrote about these guys so much Tuesday, but suffice it to say that if you play for the 76ers and don't have five characters in both your first and last name, you've earned a spot on this list.
DeMarcus Cousins
Seriously. All the attention focused on the Paul Westphal situation has distracted everyone from how much Cousins has improved from last season. He's in much better shape and posting a monstrous 20.8 rebound rate. Despite criticism of his shot selection, he's posting a better TS% than last season -- one that would be dramatically better, as our Kevin Pelton pointed out, if not for an unusually large number of rimmed-out chippies. He blocks nearly two shots a game and takes numerous charges, and he has his way against star players too. Cousins neutralized Orlando's Dwight Howard by drawing several fouls and overwhelmed L.A.'s Pau Gasol with his physicality.
The only thing holding him back is fouls -- he's picking up nearly one every five minutes, making it tough for him to stay on the court.
Ryan Anderson
Quick, guess who leads the Orlando Magic in PER? No, it's not Dwight Howard -- it's the grenade launcher, who at 25.17 is a few hundredths ahead of Superman. Anderson averages 23.5 points per 40 minutes by splashing his shoulder-fired missiles -- he's taking more than eight 3s a game -- and you realize how effective it is once you notice that he has two turnovers in nine games this season.
Anderson also can rebound, using the offensive glass as a secondary weapon to generate layups and free throw attempts, but his main weapon is the long ball. His release is quick and accurate, and at 6-foot-10 he can get it off over closing defenders.
Al Jefferson
We've known that Jefferson could score like this. We've never seen Jefferson score like this and win, however. So far, that's what's happening in Utah, where the Jazz are a surprising 6-3 while Jefferson is setting career highs in PER and shooting percentage. Jefferson's standout feature is his ability to create a volume of shots with virtually no turnovers, and this season his turnover rate is a career-low 5.9.
Meanwhile, he averages 23.7 points per 40 minutes while playing quasi-respectable defense and leads all Western Conference centers in PER. I'm dubious that the Jazz can keep playing this well but am far less suspicious of Jefferson. If the Jazz somehow stay above .500, he could land in the All-Star Game.
Andrea Bargnani
Il Mago always could score -- even last season, he averaged a scintillating 24.0 points per 40 minutes while disappointing in virtually every other phase. What has stood out this season is that he's doing every thing a little better -- rebounding, passing, shooting -- and the visual is that there's more of an attacking mentality and a confidence to everything he's doing. It's easier to envision that, of course, when the ball is going in. Bargnani's 51.5 percent shooting from the floor is unlikely to stay this elevated for long, though.
But there's another reason to put Bargnani on this list: It appears he's actually trying on defense. It's early, and I don't want to get carried away, but the standout feature when I've watched Toronto is the lack of glaring breakdowns that used to be a nightly treat. I've yet to see an opponent score while Bargnani stood 3 feet away with his back to the play, for instance. Baby steps, I know, but it appears Dwane Casey's defensive message is getting through. In the meantime, his 23.53 PER is miles ahead of his previous career bests, and at age 26, it appears he's finally realizing the potential Toronto saw when it drafted him six years ago.
James Harden
Among shooting guards who have played more than five games and didn't visit a German knee doctor this past summer, Harden is first in PER. He's also nearly leading the Thunder in the same category, which is pretty impressive considering the two other All-Stars on the roster. Harden continues to refine his pick-and-roll wizardry, sharply upping his efficiency through the first 11 games. Harden's 19.5 assist ratio is almost in point guard territory, while his 22.7 points per 40 minutes signify his evolution into an A-list primary scoring threat.
The real kicker, though, is the efficiency. Harden's 65.3 TS% is the best of any player with a usage rate above 20 and more than five games played; he's drawing 6.8 free throw attempts per game despite taking nearly half his shots from beyond the 3-point line, producing a lethal cocktail of high-value scoring chances.
Byron Mullens
The most shocking moment of the season for me came in the Charlotte-Cleveland game, when Mullens scored on four straight midpost isolations -- the last two coming against Cavs defensive stalwart Anderson Varejao. Yeah, this dude can score. The 7-footer has shown a sweet stroke, shooting 49.5 percent from the floor and making 20 of his 21 free throw attempts; he's also scoring in bunches for the otherwise points-starved Bobcats, pumping in 22.8 points per 40 minutes.
His game still looks a bit one-dimensional, but he's only 22 and has virtually no NBA experience. It seems obvious that the Bobcats need to get him more playing time as the season goes on, and it wouldn't shock me at all if he's starting by midseason.
Ian Mahinmi
His brief NBA career has produced good enough per-minute stats that it seemed he'd be a productive regular once he got the chance. Well, the numbers don't lie. Mahinmi's TS% is a blistering 70.4, which one might write off as a fluke except that he's never been below 64.5 in four NBA seasons. He's a somewhat disastrous ball handler and commits a foul every six minutes, which may hamper him from taking Brendan Haywood's starting job even though he's badly outplaying him. But with Tyson Chandler's departure opening minutes for Mahinmi in the middle, he's taking full advantage and establishing himself as a very solid frontcourt weapon.
.J. White
Notice something about the last four players on this list? Sam Presti drafted all four. Mahinmi was a snag from France when Presti worked for the Spurs; Mullens and White were late first-round picks in Oklahoma City that the Thunder traded when they couldn't wriggle their way into that team's deep rotation, and Harden, of course, was a lottery pick three years ago.
White is the least heralded of the bunch, but his per-minute stats always had indicated he would be an effective player if he played. Now that he's paying, that's bearing out. His 15.9 points and 9.2 boards per 40 minutes are almost exactly what he did in limited minutes last season, and his shooting percentages have held solid, too. He's not an elite athlete and doesn't have much upside to improve upon beyond this point, but he's a smart, low-mistake role player who can't be left open. Every team in the league could use a guy like him.
