Must be nice to be Kobe Bryant. People and analysts illogically think that you are the most clutch player in the NBA. You try and prove them wrong by practically airballing TWO game winning shots in crucial playoff games, and BOTH times your so called "non clutch" teammates save you with a layup.
Pretty sure in game 7 of the NBA finals the Lakers will be down by 1 with seconds left, Kobe will throw up an airball and Gasol will take it out of the air and dunk it. The world will then praise Kobe for having the insight to oop it to Gasol and will be given the next 7 NBA finals MVPs. And yes, I might be a little bit bitter because that dude runs better than anyone ever should. Let's look at his career.
1. Get to play with by far the most dominant player in the NBA and grab 3 titles
2. Get into arguments with that player, BLOW A FINALS WITH EPIC 35% FG SHOOTING WHILE NOT GIVING SHAQ THE BALL, and somehow blame Shaq and get him run out of town.
3. Play on a shitty team for a while to get some guady individual stats like 35ppg and 81 point games for 3 years
4. Pick up Gasol for effectively nothing
5. Win a title with the whole world ignoring Gasol's brilliance and Ariza's game saving plays on multiple occasions.
6. This year's garbage!
Some guy on Something Awful (Dokmo) is a professional analyst, but he's mum on where exactly he does his statwork. He actually posted some lategame stats throughout the season and it added up to Kobe actually being about as "clutch" as all that. (His fg% actually increases by quite a lot late in the fourth in close games.) However, there WAS a player who had higher bumps than Kobe----LeBron James.
So it's not all bunk.
Well, there's also a page for game winning shots over a 5 year period. Not many are TRUE game winners. Their idea of a game winning shot was
1. 2 point, 1 point, or tied game
2. Under 24 seconds on the shot clock
This way you are changing the lead in some form whenever you make a shot with less than 1 shot clock duration left in the game. This way before this year, when I think Kobe did okay here, but Kobe has an astounding 25% FG percentage in this area. Of the top 50 players in makes that was 2nd worst behind only Billups.
Now league average is only like 30 IIRC in this area, because these are not easy shots to make, but 25 is pretty fail.
Lebron has led in makes, with a 34% clip, which isn't too awful, but still not as good as Carmelo who has 13 makes in 27 attempts.
Also if you look, Kobe had 56 attempts, 1 assist and 5 turnovers.
Lebron had 50 attempts with 6 assists and 4 turnovers. At least passing appears to be an option for Lebron.
(Paul Pierce to his credit has 34 shots and 9 assists.)
Finally, Kobe is 12/15 from the line. Tiny sample size, but 80% isn't any higher than Kobe's normal average. Lebron's 14/20 sits a bit below his sad FT percentage.
Long story short, the three guys I would want shooting the ball in the clutch are Carmelo, Lebron, and Ray Allen. Granted some of Allen's makes could be coming off those dimes from Pierce, which means that Boston could have the best 1-2 punch in the league in the clutch.
http://www.82games.com/gamewinningshots.htm
