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Can all those players, GMs and Phil Jackson be wrong?
TrueHoop reader Terence speaks for many when he writes:
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe in most recent GM and player polls Kobe ranked number one when asked who the best clutch player was? What does this mean? The majority of the GMs in the NBA are wrong? The people that get trusted by very powerful and wealthy owners to run their teams are completely out in left field? The players that go head-to-head with Kobe Bryant on a nightly basis are just misinformed and are not qualified to answer this question? Phil Jackson, arguably the greatest coach in NBA history, trusts Kobe enough to give him that same clutch shot every single time, despite the fact that Kobe "shoots way too much," and has a "judgment problem?" That coach Jackson must be one terrible coach, he's very lucky to win those 11 titles.
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.
Yet we get things wrong all the time anyway, for the simple reason that a lot more happens in the NBA than anybody can catalog in any objective way.
In that same GM survey, for instance, John Wall was a heavy favorite to beat Blake Griffin for rookie of the year. Kevin Durant was a slam dunk to win this year's MVP.
In that player poll, Chauncey Billups got the second-most votes as the preferred go-to crunch-time scorer. Billups is 3-of-27 with the game on the line over the past five seasons. Dead last in the NBA among those who have attempted at least 15 shots.
None of that means anyone is dumb. Instead, it means that reputation is a huge factor, and it's beyond anyone to remember and catalog 7,000 or so shots in your head.
And as for Jackson, he wants the same kind of hit-the-open-man team play every coach wants. We know this because back when he was free to speak frankly on the topic, he could not have been more clear.
"I sometimes think Kobe is so addicted to being in control that he would rather shoot the ball when guarded, or even double-teamed, than dish it to an open teammate," Jackson wrote in his 2004 book "The Last Season." "He is saying to himself: how can he trust anyone else? Well, he should learn to trust ..."
Jackson published that book in the interlude when he was not coaching the Lakers. That he doesn't talk that way is hardly bizarre -- it's admirable for a coach to keep his criticism of a colleague "in the family."
However, don't confuse Bryant's domination of the ball with Jackson's endorsement of the plan. In the same book, Jackson tells of his annoyance at Bryant's ball-hogging in crunch time. In one instance, he describes drawing up a play with multiple options, in crunch time of a 2004 playoff series against Houston. Bryant destroyed all the options; instead of setting a baseline screen for Shaquille O'Neal he ran straight to the ball. "With the twenty-four-second clock winding down," writes Jackson, "Kobe forced a long jumper, a horrible shot in the game's most critical possession. The ball did not reach the rim..."
Jackson also tells of marching, more than once, into Mitch Kupchak's office to demand that the Lakers trade Bryant. He writes things like:
"Kobe tends to hold on to the ball longer than necessary causing the offense to stagnate."
"He won't listen to anyone. I've had it with this kid."
"As usual, Kobe seemed intent on taking over."
More recently, Jackson's long-time assistant Kurt Rambis, when he still worked for the Lakers, was clear that the coaching staff preferred the team run their ruthlessly efficient triangle, with its passing and cutting, "at all times."
I see lots of evidence that Bryant dominates Lakers possessions in crunch time. But I see no evidence that it's part of Jackson's plan.
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Should stats even be part of this conversation?
Yes.
But not because stats are better. But because this is a tricky -- and at least in terms of sports, important -- question. We should answer this with the best evidence we can get our hands on. In my mind, the final analysis would come from video, which captures the full complexity of the game. But that video should be of good and bad plays. And that video should consider many candidates, including Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony, and the like -- not just the assumed king.
Remember when SUVs first came into existence? People went crazy for them. They were, it turned out, what a huge percentage of drivers felt they had been waiting for.
Malcolm Gladwell explains more than anything people liked how these big strong trucks, riding up high, slathered in airbags, made everybody feel safe. You go out there, on those crowded, scary roads, and very little can hurt you. Everyone just knew that. The SUV matched a picture in our brains: This is how a safe automobile feels.
Only it was a crock. There were real reasons, many having to do with design, why SUVs were actually surprisingly unsafe. A minivan, for instance, at the time of Gladwell's writing, was far safer. Gladwell cites safety statistics compiled by Tom Wenzel, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Marc Ross, a physicist at the University of Michigan, which found, essentially, that little nimble cars with good visibility -- the precise cars people were abandoning for SUVs -- were safer still.
How did we learn that? With a commonsense look at some stats, specifically by comparing the number of fatalities to the number of cars of a certain model on the road. A safe car is one you don't die in, right? That's useful.
Similarly, Bryant looks like a great crunch-time scorer. He has the right skills, the right demeanor, the right highlights, the right jewelry. But as it turns out, Bryant's clutch like an SUV is safe.
There are a lot of misleading things in this world.
And let's be clear: The numbers that doom Bryant's campaign as the king of crunch time are not really statistics. They're not formulas, or algorithms. They're really just counting -- both makes and misses for the player and the team.
If you're asking me to pick one guy to make a shot with the game on the line, there's nothing complex about peeking at the record to see how well he has done that job in the past. Every number in that chart is a real moment of NBA basketball, with ten players on the court, and Bryant in a Lakers uniform, rising, firing, and -- most of the time -- missing. These things really happened, and as much as you might want to ignore opinion, or theory, there's no real reason to ignore 79 misses, broken plays, a shocking lack of passing, a coaching staff eager for more team play, and an elite team that gets below-par results with the game on the line.
As long as your mind is open to all that, it has to be closed to the idea that Kobe Bryant is the king of crunch time.
With the game on the line
Trailing by one or two points, or tied, in the final 24 seconds of regular-season and playoff games since 1996-97, with a minimum of 30 shots. From Alok Pattani of ESPN Stats & Information.
Player Makes Attempts FG%
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
finally someone in the media writes about the myth of tobe in crunch time...
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