OFFICIAL 2010-2011 NBA PLAYOFFS THREAD : VOL. MOST. ANTICIPATED. PLAYOFFS. EVER?
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jpzx
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- Feb 7, 2008
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I know you're kidding, but just in case, Timberwolves mascot.
jpzx
Supporter
- Feb 7, 2008
- 58,715
- 28,044
I know you're kidding, but just in case, Timberwolves mascot.
I was there when it happened to Julius Erving: November 9, 1984, Philly at Boston, the night his five-year rivalry with Larry Bird went up in smoke. Bird outscored Erving 42 to 6 in three quarters before words were exchanged and, incredibly, two of the league's biggest stars started fighting at midcourt. Imagine two kids getting their picture taken with Santa, then imagine their faces if Santa got into a brawl with the Easter Bunny. That was Bird fighting Erving. Their scuffle was so preposterous that it overshadowed the real story: Julius Erving had gone through The Change. He was great, and then he wasn't. And it happened overnight.
Sift through NBA history and you'll notice that, for modern superstars, The Change occured somewhere between the 900th and 1200th career game (including playoffs) for everyone except Karl Malone and John Stockton, who fended it off because of their extraordinary work ethics, their signature play (an unstoppable pick-and-roll that they could have run into their 50s), Utah's altitude (which may have given them a conditioning advantage), and the little-known fact that John Stockton is actually an alien. An NBA career is really pressure over time: knees are Shawshank's prison wall, games are Andy's rock hammer, and that hammer just keeps chipping away. Eventually, your career gives out. That's the rule.
Or, that was the rule. Because Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki and Kobe Bryant are fending off that rock hammer in ways that have to make us wonder if we're headed for a historical revamping along the lines of the Steroids Era blowing up baseball like an "Angry Birds" grenade. Everything we thought we knew about basketball is changing ... and for all the right reasons, too. (Well, unless you're Rashard Lewis and O.J. Majo.) They are beneficiaries of undeniable advantages over everyone who played before them: better doctors, surgical procedures, dieting, drug testing, trainers, computers, video equipment, workout equipment, workout regiments, airplanes ... even pillows are better.
Check out the career numbers (regular season and playoffs) for Allen, Pierce, Nash, Nowitzki and Bryant for games, minutes, minutes per game and seasons played.
[h4]AGING STARS[/h4]
RS Min = regular season minutes; PL Min = playoff minutes; RS MPG = regular season minutes per game; PL MPG = playoffs minutes per game
[th=""]Player[/th][th=""]Games[/th][th=""]Playoffs[/th][th=""]RS Min[/th][th=""]PL Min[/th][th=""]RS MPG[/th][th=""]PL MPG[/th][th=""]Seasons[/th]
Bryant 1067 198 38,887 7,811 36.5 39.4 14 Allen 1067 101 39,535 3,987 37.1 39.5 15 Nash 1057 118 33,055 4,228 31.3 35.8 15 Nowitzki 956 103 34,980 4,301 36.6 41.8 12 Pierce 929 101 34,480 4,032 37.1 39.9 12
All right, get ready for a second group of perimeter stars that also includes two other pieces of information: the season they went through The Change, as well as their drop in win shares from the previous season. (Note: I'm not a huge fan of win shares, especially because it doesn't show how someone like Jason Kidd or Gary Payton slipped defensively almost overnight, but it's the simplest statistical way to show a player's decline.) And keep in mind, Bird's career and Magic's career ended prematurely; Jordan missed multiple seasons because of his two retirements; and Kidd is obviously still playing (post-Change). Anyway ...
[h4]STARS OF YESTERDAY[/h4]
Change = Season in which "The Change" in the player's productivity took place; WS = Decline in win shares from the previous season.
[th=""]Player[/th][th=""]Games[/th][th=""]Play[/th][th=""]RS Min[/th][th=""]PL Min[/th][th=""]RS MPG[/th][th=""]PL MPG[/th][th=""]Seasons[/th][th=""]Change[/th][th=""]WS[/th]
Stockton 1504 182 47,674 6,398 31.8 35.8 19 14 -5.6 Miller 1389 144 47,619 5,308 34.3 36.9 18 16 -0.8 Payton 1335 154 47,417 5,482 35.3 35.6 17 13 -3.5 Erving 1243 189 45,227 7,352 36.4 38.9 16 14 -2.5 Kidd 1231 121 45,510 4,953 37.0 40.9 17 14 -3.4 Pippen 1178 208 41,069 8,105 34.9 39.0 17 12 -1.7 Drexler 1086 145 37,537 5,572 34.6 38.4 15 13 -5.2 Wilkins 1074 56 38,113 2,172 35.5 38.8 15 13 -2.1 Jordan 1072 179 41,010 7,474 38.3 41.8 15 14 -12.5 Thomas 979 111 35,516 4,216 36.3 38.0 13 12 -2.1 Iverson 914 76 37,485 3,205 41.1 45.1 14 13 -8.5 Magic 906 160 33,245 7,538 36.7 39.7 13 13 -11.8 Bird 897 164 34,443 6,886 38.4 42.0 13 10 -14.5
Translation: If you're a perimeter guy, no matter how talented you are, you should go downhill between Season 12 and Season 14 unless you're a freak shooter (like Miller) or an actual alien (like Stockton). So how do you explain our five aforementioned career freaks? Let's look at them again through last Wednesday's games measured by the per-36-minute averages for points/rebounds/assists, field goals/free throws/3s attempted, and percentages for field goals/free throws/threes, as well as advanced metrics for usage rate (the percentage of possessions involves that player when he's on the floor), player efficiency and win shares per 48 minutes:
[h4]ALMOST AS GOOD AS EVER[/h4][th=""]Player/Yr/Age[/th][th=""]Pts[/th][th=""]Ast[/th][th=""]Reb[/th][th=""]FGA[/th][th=""]FTA[/th][th=""]3PA[/th][th=""]FG%[/th][th=""]3P%[/th][th=""]Rate[/th][th=""]PER[/th][th=""]WS/48[/th]
Kobe '08 (29) 26.2 5.0 5.8 19.1 8.4 4.7 46% 36% 31.4 24.2 .208 Kobe '11 (32) 27.1 5.2 5.5 20.7 8.1 4.4 46% 31% 34.3 24.7 .198 Allen '08 (32) 17.5 3.1 3.7 13.5 3.3 6.2 45% 40% 21.6 16.4 .177 Allen '11 (35) 17.4 3.1 3.7 12.5 2.9 4.8 51% 45% 20.4 17.9 .182 Nash '08 (34) 17.8 11.6 3.7 12.5 3.0 4.7 50% 47% 22.0 21.1 .181 Nash '11 (37) 18.9 12.8 4.0 12.7 4.1 2.7 53% 42% 23.2 24.3 .195 Dirk '08 (29) 23.6 3.5 8.6 17.1 7.1 2.9 48% 36% 28.8 24.6 .223 Dirk '11 (32) 24.2 2.5 7.4 16.9 6.4 2.8 52% 39% 29.0 23.7 .200 Pierce '08 (30) 19.7 4.5 5.1 13.8 6.1 4.6 48% 36% 24.8 19.6 .207 Pierce '11 (33) 19.2 3.5 5.4 13.5 5.3 3.7 51% 43% 23.6 20.9 .222
I know, I know. You expected a sports column, not an AP Math exam. But for each player, the differences between 2008 and 2011 are so subtle, you can barely tell the years apart. If Jennifer Aniston looks as good three years from now as she does right now, you'll know she had some work done. If Obama's hair doesn't look any more gray than it does right now, you'll know he colored it. But five elite players defying all laws of career gravity like that?
Really, it's the first wave of something Malcolm Gladwell and I tackled 13 months ago, when we wondered if Kobe's generation would accomplish things we had never seen before. I listed those modern advantages (training, dieting, etc) and mentioned that basketball players have a better chance of succeeding now. Gladwell piggybacked the point by bringing up capitalization rates (how efficiently any group makes use of its talent), deciding that "there isn't more talent than before, but there is -- for a variety of reasons -- a more efficient use of talent." Somehow we never connected the dots to Gladwell's concept of outliers: that outside factors can affect someone's success or failure more than we realize.
Nash, Pierce, Kobe, Allen and Nowitzki? NBA outliers. All of them. Their extended primes might last 15-20 percent longer than anything we've seen from a perimeter player before. A closer look:
Nash: He's already the career free-throw percentage leader (and along with Mark Price, one of two players over 90 percent). He should be able to leapfrog GP, Isiah, Oscar and Magic on the career assists chart and settle at No. 3 (behind Stockton and Kidd). And if he bumps his career field-goal percentage from 49.1 percent to 49.5 percent, he could retire as a 50-40-90 guy.
Twenty years ago, Nash's troublesome back would have derailed his career much like Tim Hardaway, Kevin Johnson and Mark Price were betrayed by their bodies. No more. In 2011, if you take care of your body, your body will take care of you. When Steve Nash turns 38 next month, he will be playing point guard at a level that nobody 35 years old has played it. Unless, of course, he snaps because his bosses blew up a Western Conference finalist and saddled him with Vince Carter (the one guy in the league who represents everything that Nash is metaphorically against), then either retires or hires Robert Horry to repeatedly body-block him into a scorer's table until his back gives out.
Pierce: This has been his "Linda Hamilton in 'Terminator 2'" season -- he showed up in spectacular shape and swayed his Hall of Fame chances. With Pierce's shooting touch, high basketball IQ and herky-jerky half-court game, I see him playing at this level for two more seasons after this one, followed by a three-year dropoff and retirement ... and if it plays out that way, he's a serious threat to retire with 27,500 points (moving him into the top nine all time) and official John Havlicek 2.0 status. It's true. Insert "lame joke from a Lakers fan saying that Springfield needs to get the wheelchair ready" here.
[h4]LONG-RANGE BOMBER[/h4]
NBA.com's "Stats Cube" examined Ray Allen's career this week and found the following things:
• Only 12 players attempted 300-plus 3-pointers and made 39 percent or more in one season. Reggie Miller did it a record nine times; Ray Allen has done it seven times (this year will probably be No..
• Allen's 3-point percentages by quarter (since 1996-97): 41.3 (First), 40.6 (Second), 39.9 (Third), 38.5 (Fourth), and 43.4 (OT). For fourth quarter and OT combined, only five players averaged higher than 36 percent in the past 15 years: Steve Nash (45.6 percent), Allen (42.6 percent), Jason Terry (41.9 percent), Chauncey Billups (41.3 percent) and Dirk Nowitzki (37.1 percent). Reggie Miller over that time: 34.1 percent.
• The top-5 for clutch 3-point shooting (either OT or 3:00 or less in the fourth, with a margin of three points or fewer) since 1996-97: Mike Bibby (41.8 percent), Allen (40.2 percent), Terry (39.2 percent), Billups (38.4 percent), Nash (37.8 percent). Reggie Miller from 1996 to 2005: 33.1 percent.
• Allen is averaging better than 45 percent on 3-pointers in five cities: Miami (50 percent), Toronto (47.6 percent), Golden State (46.8 percent), Memphis (46.2 percent) and Denver (45.2 percent).
• Since 1996-97, Allen has attempted 25.9 percent of his 3s from the corners (making 42.4 percent) and 74.1 percent from everywhere else (making 39.3 percent).
Allen: I hope you enjoyed the "Reggie Miller versus Ray Allen" debate. It's been over for a year. Right now, Ray ranks second in 3-pointers made (2,543, just 17 behind Reggie; nobody else is within 800 of them) and second in 3s attempted (6,38, only he's made 40 percent of them (one of 40 players who can say that). He's also the fourth-best free-throw shooter ever (89.4 percent). Given his phenomenal work ethic, we can safely say 25,000 points, 3,000 made 3s and a 45-40-90 career percentages are in play. I just don't think we're seeing that again. His extended prime made him the most efficient shooting guard who ever lived; throw in his clutch shooting numbers (see sidebar) and it's been a wildly underrated career.
Other than Reggie, you know who the biggest loser is here? Sam Presti, who made a totally defensible trade when he was rebuilding Seattle around Kevin Durant in 2007 (Allen and the rights to Glen Davis for the rights to Jeff Green, Delonte West and Wally Szczerbiak's expiring contract) and never imagined he was giving up five or six more killer Ray Allen seasons. I can't wait for the "40 for 40" documentary about the 2007 draft in 10 years.
Nowitzki: I can't decide if he's moving into the Barkley/Malone discussion (for best post-1990 power forward ever) or the Larry Bird/Rick Barry discussion (for best offensive forward ever), but there's definitely been some moving. It's a junior version of the Kobe/Michael thing: Nowitzki's peak can't come close to matching Bird's peak, but his freaky consistency and legendary summer work ethic makes a Bird/Nowitzki career comparison closer than you'd think.
For 11 straight seasons, he's been the best player on a contender. Grab any Dirk season from 2001 to 2011 and it will look something close to his career numbers (22.6 PPG, 8.3 RPG, 48% FG, 38% 3FG, 88% FT, 23.8 PER, 0.213 WS/48, 27.0 usage rate, 58.1 true shooting). And he hasn't slipped even a little. I asked ESPN's Marc Stein, the Gayle to Dirk's Oprah, whether 2011 Dirk looks any different than 2001 Dirk or 2007 Dirk. His response: "He's a little creakier, but it's not like his first step was ever the key to his game. He's shooting the ball as well as he ever has. He's like a surgeon now, he just carves up anything you throw at him. (Erik) Spoelstra told me that too -- he said the stuff (Miami) did in 2006 just doesn't work anymore."
Quick tangent: For whatever reason, basketball fans don't care about career NBA numbers like baseball fans care about baseball numbers. I see four reasons for this: (1) baseball has been around almost twice as long as basketball; (2) baseball's signature threshold numbers are famously identifiable (500, 3,000 and 300), as are the players who broke its major records, whereas your average sports fan would struggle to answer questions like "Who leads the NBA in career scoring?"; (3) statistics matter more in baseball because it's an individual sport; and (4) we need to throw ourselves into baseball statistics because the sport itself is so f------ boring. If we were eating lunch and I told you, "Johnny Damon has 2,571 hits right now," that would mean something to you. If you're a true baseball fan, you would process that information in 0.008 seconds and think, "He needs 429 for 3,000, that's doable!" But if I told you "Dirk Nowitzki has 21,925 points right now," you wouldn't think anything other than, "That's a lot."
Well, only 19 players have ever topped 25,000 points. Only 10 players (I'm including Kobe, who will get it next week) have topped 27,000. Only five players have topped 30,000. Only two (Kareem and Mailman) have topped 32,500. And then there's Dirk, who should be close to 23,000 by the end of this season and grinding out 1700-1900 points for at least three after that ... and we haven't even covered the final phase of his career, his late-30s, when he hangs on for an extra four years as the greatest version of Sam Perkins ever. Barring injury, we'll have our first foreign-born player in the 30,000 Point Club. Throw in longevity, durability and eye-popping shooting percentages (for his career, he's a 48-38-88 guy right now) and suddenly we're talking about one of the best 15-18 players ever and the best foreign-born player other than Hakeem. Pretty high stakes. Twenty years ago? He'd already be in the Fat Sam Perkins stage. With equally horrible hair.
Last footnote on Dirk: With advanced metrics slowly taking over basketball for better and worse, Dirk should be one of the big retroactive winners historically, a little like how the sneaky-great Tim Raines dropped the "sneaky" about two years and 550 homicidally impassioned pro-Raines sabermetic essays ago. I was there for Dirk, and I was there for Bird. It's no contest. (These three YouTube clips explain everything: "Why You Don't Mess With Larry Bird", "Larry Bird 47 Points vs. Portland (the Left-handed Game)" and "Larry Bird Greatest Passer of All-Time.") But Nowitzki's PER, win shares and true shooting percentages are better, and as long as you throw out MVPs, titles and overall impact, and you skew longevity, you can make a great case that Dirk Nowitzki was better than Larry Bird. I will now light my game-worn Bird jersey on fire with me in it.
Bryant: Not much at stake historically other than MJ's six rings, Kareem's scoring record, Magic's "Greatest Laker Ever" title and Jordan's undisputed title as the GOAT. You know, just the usual stuff. Even with some subtle signs of slippage -- specifically, his 3-point accuracy and his willingness/ability to get to the line, both reflections of an ailing right knee -- when I caught him in person on Tuesday night (the Utah blowout), it looked like the same Old New Kobe to me: he scored 21 points in 26 minutes, controlled the game and even shifted into Eff You Mode once (when Raja Bell angered him in the third quarter, prompting Kobe to demand the ball and then shoot a gorgeous 12-foot turnaround in his mug).
He's gone from being a breakaway running back to being one of those guys who grinds out 4.4 yards a carry. Keep the chains moving. That's all he does now. It's like he calculated exactly how many jumps his knees had left, put his last 435 or so quality bursts in reserve like Vin Diesel's nitrous canister in a "Fast and Furious" movie, then vowed never to break one out unless he absolutely needed it. On a breakaway dunk in the third quarter on Tuesday, with fans screaming for a dunk, Kobe jumped off two feet and gingerly shoved the ball through the rim. Sorry, everybody. You can't waste that nitrous canister switch in a blowout.
Maybe he'll never soar through the air like he once did, and maybe he no longer has the luxury of saying, "We need a basket -- I think I'll just beat my guy off the dribble, get into the paint and beat their big guys to the rim" like you or I would decide to go grocery shopping. But Kobe's arsenal of Jedi Mind Trick upfakes, stutter-steps, spin moves and start-and-stops rival everything Jordan had. He brings it every quarter and every play, much like Jordan did, which is the highest compliment you can give somebody. And he knows Gasol, Fisher, Odom and Bynum so well by know that, as crazy as it sounds, Kobe's chemistry with his teammates might be his single best asset.
You could say he's delivering nearly the same production as before, just in a slightly different way: a less dominant version of Jordan's final Chicago season. For All-Star Weekend next month, NBA.com is creating highlight reels from every Kobe season since 1997; these sneak peaks from 1998 (his second season, when he had Griffin-like ups) and 2005 (his athletic prime) illustrate how much his game has changed over the years. Kobe 1.0 relied on phenomenal athletic ability alone. Kobe 2.0 blended that athletic ability with a scorer's mentality. Kobe 3.0 was basically Kobe 2.0 with better teammates and a better attitude. Now we're watching Kobe 4.0, someone who should be slipping ... only he wouldn't let it happen.
Of course, if you believe what Kobe told Peter Vecsey last week in a rare interview, his body is starting to break down. Kobe admitted that he didn't practice for the first two months of the season and "has very little cartilage under his right kneecap, it's basically bone on bone." Hmmmmmm. Could there be some gamesmanship there? Why would Kobe -- the guy who kept everything under wraps for so many years, the guy who tried to pretend last spring that beating Boston didn't matter because he didn't want to show any signs of weakness -- suddenly be admitting his mortality and pulling the Fred Sanford Memorial "Look Out Elizabeth, I'm Coming To Join You!" routine?
Whatever his shelf life looks like, one thing's for sure: We've never seen anyone do this before. No perimeter player has ever made first- or second-team All-NBA after passing the 1200-game mark; Kobe will almost definitely do it this year. He's going to hit 27,000 points next week in a season that saw him pass Oscar, 'Nique, Ice, Hondo and (this weekend) Hakeem on the list. And he's fighting off The Change like nobody since Karl Malone.
Full confession: I never liked Kobe. (Crap, you knew that. I forgot.) But it's tough watching any great player go through The Change. Especially in basketball, the most naked of our professional sports: Just 10 players wearing sleeveless jerseys and shorts, with fans sitting as close as three feet away and devouring every expression, every nuance, every move, everything. When a baseball player slips, we give him the benefit of the doubt: Maybe it's a slump, maybe it's his catcher, maybe his arm is bothering him, maybe he's playing in the wrong ballpark ... you could never definitively say, "Write that guy off." Same for a football player: Maybe his quarterback sucks, maybe his hammy is bothering him, maybe it's the offense, maybe it's the system, maybe it's his offensive line, maybe it's his coach. We realize after the fact that football players are washed up, or right at the very end. In basketball, you know right away.
I thought that day was coming for Kobe Bryant. He had other ideas. So did Nash, Pierce, Nowitzki and Allen. Everything we ever thought we knew about basketball is being rewritten. Twelve-year primes are going to stretch to 15. Fifteen-year careers are going to stretch past 20. The 20,000 Point Club will become the 30,000 Point Club. It's not just that records will be made and stretched, or that we'll be seeing things we've never seen before. For the first time, basketball records might actually start mattering beyond "100 points," "72 wins," "33 straight," "11 rings" and "However Many Points Kareem Ended Up With."
And if you want to think about something truly frightening, consider the following four things ...
1. LeBron James passed 16,000 points a few weeks ago. It took him fewer than 600 games.
2. Barring injury and a prolonged lockout, by the end of his 10th season (2012-13), LeBron should be sitting at 22,000 points.
3. If LeBron plays the next seven and a half seasons 85 percent as well as he played the previous seven and a half seasons, he'll be sitting at 30,000 points, 7500 assists and 7500 rebounds ... and he'll be 33 years old. A few months older than Kobe right now.
4. Like it or not, we are all going to be witnesses.
Bill gets a little ahead of himself with this stuff, but overall very solid. He just gave Peirce 5 more years of NBA basketball like it was nothing.And Dirk somehow went from 23K to 30K like that would be easy as pie too.
But still, if those guys come even close to those final numbers, it's impressive.
He also forgot to mention the amount of games Bron will have on him at that point in 7 years. It'll be more then these 5 by a couple hundred, and that's an awful lot.
I was there when it happened to Julius Erving: November 9, 1984, Philly at Boston, the night his five-year rivalry with Larry Bird went up in smoke. Bird outscored Erving 42 to 6 in three quarters before words were exchanged and, incredibly, two of the league's biggest stars started fighting at midcourt. Imagine two kids getting their picture taken with Santa, then imagine their faces if Santa got into a brawl with the Easter Bunny. That was Bird fighting Erving. Their scuffle was so preposterous that it overshadowed the real story: Julius Erving had gone through The Change. He was great, and then he wasn't. And it happened overnight.
Sift through NBA history and you'll notice that, for modern superstars, The Change occured somewhere between the 900th and 1200th career game (including playoffs) for everyone except Karl Malone and John Stockton, who fended it off because of their extraordinary work ethics, their signature play (an unstoppable pick-and-roll that they could have run into their 50s), Utah's altitude (which may have given them a conditioning advantage), and the little-known fact that John Stockton is actually an alien. An NBA career is really pressure over time: knees are Shawshank's prison wall, games are Andy's rock hammer, and that hammer just keeps chipping away. Eventually, your career gives out. That's the rule.
Or, that was the rule. Because Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki and Kobe Bryant are fending off that rock hammer in ways that have to make us wonder if we're headed for a historical revamping along the lines of the Steroids Era blowing up baseball like an "Angry Birds" grenade. Everything we thought we knew about basketball is changing ... and for all the right reasons, too. (Well, unless you're Rashard Lewis and O.J. Majo.) They are beneficiaries of undeniable advantages over everyone who played before them: better doctors, surgical procedures, dieting, drug testing, trainers, computers, video equipment, workout equipment, workout regiments, airplanes ... even pillows are better.
Check out the career numbers (regular season and playoffs) for Allen, Pierce, Nash, Nowitzki and Bryant for games, minutes, minutes per game and seasons played.
[h4]AGING STARS[/h4]
RS Min = regular season minutes; PL Min = playoff minutes; RS MPG = regular season minutes per game; PL MPG = playoffs minutes per game
[th=""]Player[/th][th=""]Games[/th][th=""]Playoffs[/th][th=""]RS Min[/th][th=""]PL Min[/th][th=""]RS MPG[/th][th=""]PL MPG[/th][th=""]Seasons[/th]
Bryant 1067 198 38,887 7,811 36.5 39.4 14 Allen 1067 101 39,535 3,987 37.1 39.5 15 Nash 1057 118 33,055 4,228 31.3 35.8 15 Nowitzki 956 103 34,980 4,301 36.6 41.8 12 Pierce 929 101 34,480 4,032 37.1 39.9 12
All right, get ready for a second group of perimeter stars that also includes two other pieces of information: the season they went through The Change, as well as their drop in win shares from the previous season. (Note: I'm not a huge fan of win shares, especially because it doesn't show how someone like Jason Kidd or Gary Payton slipped defensively almost overnight, but it's the simplest statistical way to show a player's decline.) And keep in mind, Bird's career and Magic's career ended prematurely; Jordan missed multiple seasons because of his two retirements; and Kidd is obviously still playing (post-Change). Anyway ...
[h4]STARS OF YESTERDAY[/h4]
Change = Season in which "The Change" in the player's productivity took place; WS = Decline in win shares from the previous season.
[th=""]Player[/th][th=""]Games[/th][th=""]Play[/th][th=""]RS Min[/th][th=""]PL Min[/th][th=""]RS MPG[/th][th=""]PL MPG[/th][th=""]Seasons[/th][th=""]Change[/th][th=""]WS[/th]
Stockton 1504 182 47,674 6,398 31.8 35.8 19 14 -5.6 Miller 1389 144 47,619 5,308 34.3 36.9 18 16 -0.8 Payton 1335 154 47,417 5,482 35.3 35.6 17 13 -3.5 Erving 1243 189 45,227 7,352 36.4 38.9 16 14 -2.5 Kidd 1231 121 45,510 4,953 37.0 40.9 17 14 -3.4 Pippen 1178 208 41,069 8,105 34.9 39.0 17 12 -1.7 Drexler 1086 145 37,537 5,572 34.6 38.4 15 13 -5.2 Wilkins 1074 56 38,113 2,172 35.5 38.8 15 13 -2.1 Jordan 1072 179 41,010 7,474 38.3 41.8 15 14 -12.5 Thomas 979 111 35,516 4,216 36.3 38.0 13 12 -2.1 Iverson 914 76 37,485 3,205 41.1 45.1 14 13 -8.5 Magic 906 160 33,245 7,538 36.7 39.7 13 13 -11.8 Bird 897 164 34,443 6,886 38.4 42.0 13 10 -14.5
Translation: If you're a perimeter guy, no matter how talented you are, you should go downhill between Season 12 and Season 14 unless you're a freak shooter (like Miller) or an actual alien (like Stockton). So how do you explain our five aforementioned career freaks? Let's look at them again through last Wednesday's games measured by the per-36-minute averages for points/rebounds/assists, field goals/free throws/3s attempted, and percentages for field goals/free throws/threes, as well as advanced metrics for usage rate (the percentage of possessions involves that player when he's on the floor), player efficiency and win shares per 48 minutes:
[h4]ALMOST AS GOOD AS EVER[/h4][th=""]Player/Yr/Age[/th][th=""]Pts[/th][th=""]Ast[/th][th=""]Reb[/th][th=""]FGA[/th][th=""]FTA[/th][th=""]3PA[/th][th=""]FG%[/th][th=""]3P%[/th][th=""]Rate[/th][th=""]PER[/th][th=""]WS/48[/th]
Kobe '08 (29) 26.2 5.0 5.8 19.1 8.4 4.7 46% 36% 31.4 24.2 .208 Kobe '11 (32) 27.1 5.2 5.5 20.7 8.1 4.4 46% 31% 34.3 24.7 .198 Allen '08 (32) 17.5 3.1 3.7 13.5 3.3 6.2 45% 40% 21.6 16.4 .177 Allen '11 (35) 17.4 3.1 3.7 12.5 2.9 4.8 51% 45% 20.4 17.9 .182 Nash '08 (34) 17.8 11.6 3.7 12.5 3.0 4.7 50% 47% 22.0 21.1 .181 Nash '11 (37) 18.9 12.8 4.0 12.7 4.1 2.7 53% 42% 23.2 24.3 .195 Dirk '08 (29) 23.6 3.5 8.6 17.1 7.1 2.9 48% 36% 28.8 24.6 .223 Dirk '11 (32) 24.2 2.5 7.4 16.9 6.4 2.8 52% 39% 29.0 23.7 .200 Pierce '08 (30) 19.7 4.5 5.1 13.8 6.1 4.6 48% 36% 24.8 19.6 .207 Pierce '11 (33) 19.2 3.5 5.4 13.5 5.3 3.7 51% 43% 23.6 20.9 .222
I know, I know. You expected a sports column, not an AP Math exam. But for each player, the differences between 2008 and 2011 are so subtle, you can barely tell the years apart. If Jennifer Aniston looks as good three years from now as she does right now, you'll know she had some work done. If Obama's hair doesn't look any more gray than it does right now, you'll know he colored it. But five elite players defying all laws of career gravity like that?
Really, it's the first wave of something Malcolm Gladwell and I tackled 13 months ago, when we wondered if Kobe's generation would accomplish things we had never seen before. I listed those modern advantages (training, dieting, etc) and mentioned that basketball players have a better chance of succeeding now. Gladwell piggybacked the point by bringing up capitalization rates (how efficiently any group makes use of its talent), deciding that "there isn't more talent than before, but there is -- for a variety of reasons -- a more efficient use of talent." Somehow we never connected the dots to Gladwell's concept of outliers: that outside factors can affect someone's success or failure more than we realize.
Nash, Pierce, Kobe, Allen and Nowitzki? NBA outliers. All of them. Their extended primes might last 15-20 percent longer than anything we've seen from a perimeter player before. A closer look:
Nash: He's already the career free-throw percentage leader (and along with Mark Price, one of two players over 90 percent). He should be able to leapfrog GP, Isiah, Oscar and Magic on the career assists chart and settle at No. 3 (behind Stockton and Kidd). And if he bumps his career field-goal percentage from 49.1 percent to 49.5 percent, he could retire as a 50-40-90 guy.
Twenty years ago, Nash's troublesome back would have derailed his career much like Tim Hardaway, Kevin Johnson and Mark Price were betrayed by their bodies. No more. In 2011, if you take care of your body, your body will take care of you. When Steve Nash turns 38 next month, he will be playing point guard at a level that nobody 35 years old has played it. Unless, of course, he snaps because his bosses blew up a Western Conference finalist and saddled him with Vince Carter (the one guy in the league who represents everything that Nash is metaphorically against), then either retires or hires Robert Horry to repeatedly body-block him into a scorer's table until his back gives out.
Pierce: This has been his "Linda Hamilton in 'Terminator 2'" season -- he showed up in spectacular shape and swayed his Hall of Fame chances. With Pierce's shooting touch, high basketball IQ and herky-jerky half-court game, I see him playing at this level for two more seasons after this one, followed by a three-year dropoff and retirement ... and if it plays out that way, he's a serious threat to retire with 27,500 points (moving him into the top nine all time) and official John Havlicek 2.0 status. It's true. Insert "lame joke from a Lakers fan saying that Springfield needs to get the wheelchair ready" here.
[h4]LONG-RANGE BOMBER[/h4]
NBA.com's "Stats Cube" examined Ray Allen's career this week and found the following things:
• Only 12 players attempted 300-plus 3-pointers and made 39 percent or more in one season. Reggie Miller did it a record nine times; Ray Allen has done it seven times (this year will probably be No..
• Allen's 3-point percentages by quarter (since 1996-97): 41.3 (First), 40.6 (Second), 39.9 (Third), 38.5 (Fourth), and 43.4 (OT). For fourth quarter and OT combined, only five players averaged higher than 36 percent in the past 15 years: Steve Nash (45.6 percent), Allen (42.6 percent), Jason Terry (41.9 percent), Chauncey Billups (41.3 percent) and Dirk Nowitzki (37.1 percent). Reggie Miller over that time: 34.1 percent.
• The top-5 for clutch 3-point shooting (either OT or 3:00 or less in the fourth, with a margin of three points or fewer) since 1996-97: Mike Bibby (41.8 percent), Allen (40.2 percent), Terry (39.2 percent), Billups (38.4 percent), Nash (37.8 percent). Reggie Miller from 1996 to 2005: 33.1 percent.
• Allen is averaging better than 45 percent on 3-pointers in five cities: Miami (50 percent), Toronto (47.6 percent), Golden State (46.8 percent), Memphis (46.2 percent) and Denver (45.2 percent).
• Since 1996-97, Allen has attempted 25.9 percent of his 3s from the corners (making 42.4 percent) and 74.1 percent from everywhere else (making 39.3 percent).
Allen: I hope you enjoyed the "Reggie Miller versus Ray Allen" debate. It's been over for a year. Right now, Ray ranks second in 3-pointers made (2,543, just 17 behind Reggie; nobody else is within 800 of them) and second in 3s attempted (6,38
Other than Reggie, you know who the biggest loser is here? Sam Presti, who made a totally defensible trade when he was rebuilding Seattle around Kevin Durant in 2007 (Allen and the rights to Glen Davis for the rights to Jeff Green, Delonte West and Wally Szczerbiak's expiring contract) and never imagined he was giving up five or six more killer Ray Allen seasons. I can't wait for the "40 for 40" documentary about the 2007 draft in 10 years.
Nowitzki: I can't decide if he's moving into the Barkley/Malone discussion (for best post-1990 power forward ever) or the Larry Bird/Rick Barry discussion (for best offensive forward ever), but there's definitely been some moving. It's a junior version of the Kobe/Michael thing: Nowitzki's peak can't come close to matching Bird's peak, but his freaky consistency and legendary summer work ethic makes a Bird/Nowitzki career comparison closer than you'd think.
For 11 straight seasons, he's been the best player on a contender. Grab any Dirk season from 2001 to 2011 and it will look something close to his career numbers (22.6 PPG, 8.3 RPG, 48% FG, 38% 3FG, 88% FT, 23.8 PER, 0.213 WS/48, 27.0 usage rate, 58.1 true shooting). And he hasn't slipped even a little. I asked ESPN's Marc Stein, the Gayle to Dirk's Oprah, whether 2011 Dirk looks any different than 2001 Dirk or 2007 Dirk. His response: "He's a little creakier, but it's not like his first step was ever the key to his game. He's shooting the ball as well as he ever has. He's like a surgeon now, he just carves up anything you throw at him. (Erik) Spoelstra told me that too -- he said the stuff (Miami) did in 2006 just doesn't work anymore."
Quick tangent: For whatever reason, basketball fans don't care about career NBA numbers like baseball fans care about baseball numbers. I see four reasons for this: (1) baseball has been around almost twice as long as basketball; (2) baseball's signature threshold numbers are famously identifiable (500, 3,000 and 300), as are the players who broke its major records, whereas your average sports fan would struggle to answer questions like "Who leads the NBA in career scoring?"; (3) statistics matter more in baseball because it's an individual sport; and (4) we need to throw ourselves into baseball statistics because the sport itself is so f------ boring. If we were eating lunch and I told you, "Johnny Damon has 2,571 hits right now," that would mean something to you. If you're a true baseball fan, you would process that information in 0.008 seconds and think, "He needs 429 for 3,000, that's doable!" But if I told you "Dirk Nowitzki has 21,925 points right now," you wouldn't think anything other than, "That's a lot."
Well, only 19 players have ever topped 25,000 points. Only 10 players (I'm including Kobe, who will get it next week) have topped 27,000. Only five players have topped 30,000. Only two (Kareem and Mailman) have topped 32,500. And then there's Dirk, who should be close to 23,000 by the end of this season and grinding out 1700-1900 points for at least three after that ... and we haven't even covered the final phase of his career, his late-30s, when he hangs on for an extra four years as the greatest version of Sam Perkins ever. Barring injury, we'll have our first foreign-born player in the 30,000 Point Club. Throw in longevity, durability and eye-popping shooting percentages (for his career, he's a 48-38-88 guy right now) and suddenly we're talking about one of the best 15-18 players ever and the best foreign-born player other than Hakeem. Pretty high stakes. Twenty years ago? He'd already be in the Fat Sam Perkins stage. With equally horrible hair.
Last footnote on Dirk: With advanced metrics slowly taking over basketball for better and worse, Dirk should be one of the big retroactive winners historically, a little like how the sneaky-great Tim Raines dropped the "sneaky" about two years and 550 homicidally impassioned pro-Raines sabermetic essays ago. I was there for Dirk, and I was there for Bird. It's no contest. (These three YouTube clips explain everything: "Why You Don't Mess With Larry Bird", "Larry Bird 47 Points vs. Portland (the Left-handed Game)" and "Larry Bird Greatest Passer of All-Time.") But Nowitzki's PER, win shares and true shooting percentages are better, and as long as you throw out MVPs, titles and overall impact, and you skew longevity, you can make a great case that Dirk Nowitzki was better than Larry Bird. I will now light my game-worn Bird jersey on fire with me in it.
Bryant: Not much at stake historically other than MJ's six rings, Kareem's scoring record, Magic's "Greatest Laker Ever" title and Jordan's undisputed title as the GOAT. You know, just the usual stuff. Even with some subtle signs of slippage -- specifically, his 3-point accuracy and his willingness/ability to get to the line, both reflections of an ailing right knee -- when I caught him in person on Tuesday night (the Utah blowout), it looked like the same Old New Kobe to me: he scored 21 points in 26 minutes, controlled the game and even shifted into Eff You Mode once (when Raja Bell angered him in the third quarter, prompting Kobe to demand the ball and then shoot a gorgeous 12-foot turnaround in his mug).
He's gone from being a breakaway running back to being one of those guys who grinds out 4.4 yards a carry. Keep the chains moving. That's all he does now. It's like he calculated exactly how many jumps his knees had left, put his last 435 or so quality bursts in reserve like Vin Diesel's nitrous canister in a "Fast and Furious" movie, then vowed never to break one out unless he absolutely needed it. On a breakaway dunk in the third quarter on Tuesday, with fans screaming for a dunk, Kobe jumped off two feet and gingerly shoved the ball through the rim. Sorry, everybody. You can't waste that nitrous canister switch in a blowout.
Maybe he'll never soar through the air like he once did, and maybe he no longer has the luxury of saying, "We need a basket -- I think I'll just beat my guy off the dribble, get into the paint and beat their big guys to the rim" like you or I would decide to go grocery shopping. But Kobe's arsenal of Jedi Mind Trick upfakes, stutter-steps, spin moves and start-and-stops rival everything Jordan had. He brings it every quarter and every play, much like Jordan did, which is the highest compliment you can give somebody. And he knows Gasol, Fisher, Odom and Bynum so well by know that, as crazy as it sounds, Kobe's chemistry with his teammates might be his single best asset.
You could say he's delivering nearly the same production as before, just in a slightly different way: a less dominant version of Jordan's final Chicago season. For All-Star Weekend next month, NBA.com is creating highlight reels from every Kobe season since 1997; these sneak peaks from 1998 (his second season, when he had Griffin-like ups) and 2005 (his athletic prime) illustrate how much his game has changed over the years. Kobe 1.0 relied on phenomenal athletic ability alone. Kobe 2.0 blended that athletic ability with a scorer's mentality. Kobe 3.0 was basically Kobe 2.0 with better teammates and a better attitude. Now we're watching Kobe 4.0, someone who should be slipping ... only he wouldn't let it happen.
Of course, if you believe what Kobe told Peter Vecsey last week in a rare interview, his body is starting to break down. Kobe admitted that he didn't practice for the first two months of the season and "has very little cartilage under his right kneecap, it's basically bone on bone." Hmmmmmm. Could there be some gamesmanship there? Why would Kobe -- the guy who kept everything under wraps for so many years, the guy who tried to pretend last spring that beating Boston didn't matter because he didn't want to show any signs of weakness -- suddenly be admitting his mortality and pulling the Fred Sanford Memorial "Look Out Elizabeth, I'm Coming To Join You!" routine?
Whatever his shelf life looks like, one thing's for sure: We've never seen anyone do this before. No perimeter player has ever made first- or second-team All-NBA after passing the 1200-game mark; Kobe will almost definitely do it this year. He's going to hit 27,000 points next week in a season that saw him pass Oscar, 'Nique, Ice, Hondo and (this weekend) Hakeem on the list. And he's fighting off The Change like nobody since Karl Malone.
Full confession: I never liked Kobe. (Crap, you knew that. I forgot.) But it's tough watching any great player go through The Change. Especially in basketball, the most naked of our professional sports: Just 10 players wearing sleeveless jerseys and shorts, with fans sitting as close as three feet away and devouring every expression, every nuance, every move, everything. When a baseball player slips, we give him the benefit of the doubt: Maybe it's a slump, maybe it's his catcher, maybe his arm is bothering him, maybe he's playing in the wrong ballpark ... you could never definitively say, "Write that guy off." Same for a football player: Maybe his quarterback sucks, maybe his hammy is bothering him, maybe it's the offense, maybe it's the system, maybe it's his offensive line, maybe it's his coach. We realize after the fact that football players are washed up, or right at the very end. In basketball, you know right away.
I thought that day was coming for Kobe Bryant. He had other ideas. So did Nash, Pierce, Nowitzki and Allen. Everything we ever thought we knew about basketball is being rewritten. Twelve-year primes are going to stretch to 15. Fifteen-year careers are going to stretch past 20. The 20,000 Point Club will become the 30,000 Point Club. It's not just that records will be made and stretched, or that we'll be seeing things we've never seen before. For the first time, basketball records might actually start mattering beyond "100 points," "72 wins," "33 straight," "11 rings" and "However Many Points Kareem Ended Up With."
And if you want to think about something truly frightening, consider the following four things ...
1. LeBron James passed 16,000 points a few weeks ago. It took him fewer than 600 games.
2. Barring injury and a prolonged lockout, by the end of his 10th season (2012-13), LeBron should be sitting at 22,000 points.
3. If LeBron plays the next seven and a half seasons 85 percent as well as he played the previous seven and a half seasons, he'll be sitting at 30,000 points, 7500 assists and 7500 rebounds ... and he'll be 33 years old. A few months older than Kobe right now.
4. Like it or not, we are all going to be witnesses.
Bill gets a little ahead of himself with this stuff, but overall very solid. He just gave Peirce 5 more years of NBA basketball like it was nothing.And Dirk somehow went from 23K to 30K like that would be easy as pie too.
But still, if those guys come even close to those final numbers, it's impressive.
He also forgot to mention the amount of games Bron will have on him at that point in 7 years. It'll be more then these 5 by a couple hundred, and that's an awful lot.
- Sep 5, 2010
- 92,865
- 129,184
Long article on Kobe's clutch
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 1996-1997, 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 G.M. 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 three of 27 with the game on the line over the last five seasons. Dead last in the whole 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 ballhogging 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 Laker possessions in crunch time. But I see no evidence 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 Laker 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.
Spoiler [+]
The truth about Kobe Bryant in crunch time
Ask pundits. Ask general managers. Ask players. Ask almost anybody.
Who would 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% 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 two-to-one odds that he'll miss.
In 1997, he famously airballed 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 airballs 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 and 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 fifteen years, and defining crunch time a number of different ways, shows the same pattern. (There are a 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 Laker 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 ballhog.
The makes
Nobody playing today has a crunch time résumé 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 proven 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. And so we live in a world where 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:
Ask pundits. Ask general managers. Ask players. Ask almost anybody.
Who would 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% 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 two-to-one odds that he'll miss.
In 1997, he famously airballed 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 airballs 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 and 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 fifteen years, and defining crunch time a number of different ways, shows the same pattern. (There are a 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 Laker 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 ballhog.
The makes
Nobody playing today has a crunch time résumé 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 proven 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. And so we live in a world where 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 1996-1997, 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 G.M. 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 three of 27 with the game on the line over the last five seasons. Dead last in the whole 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 ballhogging 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 Laker possessions in crunch time. But I see no evidence 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 Laker 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.
- Sep 5, 2010
- 92,865
- 129,184
Long article on Kobe's clutch
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 1996-1997, 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 G.M. 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 three of 27 with the game on the line over the last five seasons. Dead last in the whole 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 ballhogging 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 Laker possessions in crunch time. But I see no evidence 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 Laker 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.
Spoiler [+]
The truth about Kobe Bryant in crunch time
Ask pundits. Ask general managers. Ask players. Ask almost anybody.
Who would 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% 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 two-to-one odds that he'll miss.
In 1997, he famously airballed 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 airballs 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 and 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 fifteen years, and defining crunch time a number of different ways, shows the same pattern. (There are a 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 Laker 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 ballhog.
The makes
Nobody playing today has a crunch time résumé 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 proven 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. And so we live in a world where 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:
Ask pundits. Ask general managers. Ask players. Ask almost anybody.
Who would 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% 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 two-to-one odds that he'll miss.
In 1997, he famously airballed 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 airballs 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 and 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 fifteen years, and defining crunch time a number of different ways, shows the same pattern. (There are a 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 Laker 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 ballhog.
The makes
Nobody playing today has a crunch time résumé 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 proven 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. And so we live in a world where 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 1996-1997, 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 G.M. 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 three of 27 with the game on the line over the last five seasons. Dead last in the whole 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 ballhogging 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 Laker possessions in crunch time. But I see no evidence 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 Laker 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.
Nas,
Grant (West Palm Beach)
CP3 to the Clippers. Paul. Gordon. Aminu. Griffin. Jordan. Looks like a championship team to me.
John Hollinger (2:21 PM)
Right team, wrong point guard. Deron Williams is the guy who may very well be a Clipper in 2012. People think of Texas with him but he actually lives in San Diego in the offseason.
Grant (West Palm Beach)
CP3 to the Clippers. Paul. Gordon. Aminu. Griffin. Jordan. Looks like a championship team to me.
John Hollinger (2:21 PM)
Right team, wrong point guard. Deron Williams is the guy who may very well be a Clipper in 2012. People think of Texas with him but he actually lives in San Diego in the offseason.
Nas,
Grant (West Palm Beach)
CP3 to the Clippers. Paul. Gordon. Aminu. Griffin. Jordan. Looks like a championship team to me.
John Hollinger (2:21 PM)
Right team, wrong point guard. Deron Williams is the guy who may very well be a Clipper in 2012. People think of Texas with him but he actually lives in San Diego in the offseason.
Grant (West Palm Beach)
CP3 to the Clippers. Paul. Gordon. Aminu. Griffin. Jordan. Looks like a championship team to me.
John Hollinger (2:21 PM)
Right team, wrong point guard. Deron Williams is the guy who may very well be a Clipper in 2012. People think of Texas with him but he actually lives in San Diego in the offseason.
- Sep 5, 2010
- 92,865
- 129,184
I read that yesterday
...I can't imagine it happening though. Gotta pay EJ and Griffin these next two years and still got Baron's contract on the books in 2012. Plus to go from a well run organization like the Jazz to the Clippers is hard to fathom.
- Sep 5, 2010
- 92,865
- 129,184
I read that yesterday
...I can't imagine it happening though. Gotta pay EJ and Griffin these next two years and still got Baron's contract on the books in 2012. Plus to go from a well run organization like the Jazz to the Clippers is hard to fathom.
- Sep 5, 2010
- 92,865
- 129,184
I thought management did a good job given the circumstances. But like you said, the pieces don't quite fit. They need to trade Kirilenko for another swingman on a reasonable contact and reduce Bell's minutes.
- Sep 5, 2010
- 92,865
- 129,184
I thought management did a good job given the circumstances. But like you said, the pieces don't quite fit. They need to trade Kirilenko for another swingman on a reasonable contact and reduce Bell's minutes.
- Feb 3, 2010
- 5,215
- 837
"The Change" article...good read...at least up to where I stopped....jokers long as hell lol
- Feb 3, 2010
- 5,215
- 837
"The Change" article...good read...at least up to where I stopped....jokers long as hell lol
jpzx
Supporter
- Feb 7, 2008
- 58,715
- 28,044
I think someone posted the NY Times article in here, so I'll post this as well since they piggback off one another:
jpzx
Supporter
- Feb 7, 2008
- 58,715
- 28,044
I think someone posted the NY Times article in here, so I'll post this as well since they piggback off one another:
- Sep 5, 2010
- 92,865
- 129,184
I think their rotation of Jefferson, Millsap, Okur (provided he's healthy), Elson and Fesenko is fine.
Millsap wants to start, but maybe he's better off as a reserve. Could give their second unit even more energy and spread the floor better if Okur starts next to Jefferson.
- Sep 5, 2010
- 92,865
- 129,184
I think their rotation of Jefferson, Millsap, Okur (provided he's healthy), Elson and Fesenko is fine.
Millsap wants to start, but maybe he's better off as a reserve. Could give their second unit even more energy and spread the floor better if Okur starts next to Jefferson.
Forgot about Okur. Not a bad lineup at all, just think that Murphy (who's not a defensive stopper but can hold his own) would help Al take more chances on both sides of the ball. I agree with you on Millsap. To branch off a little bit, I think Marcus Thorton out in NO would be perfect for that role on his team as well.
BTW, if you guys get your hands on Rubio footage let me know when he decides to actually score. He's looked awful this year.
BTW, if you guys get your hands on Rubio footage let me know when he decides to actually score. He's looked awful this year.
Forgot about Okur. Not a bad lineup at all, just think that Murphy (who's not a defensive stopper but can hold his own) would help Al take more chances on both sides of the ball. I agree with you on Millsap. To branch off a little bit, I think Marcus Thorton out in NO would be perfect for that role on his team as well.
BTW, if you guys get your hands on Rubio footage let me know when he decides to actually score. He's looked awful this year.
BTW, if you guys get your hands on Rubio footage let me know when he decides to actually score. He's looked awful this year.
