I'm completely swamped with work from my actual job (lab-chemist), and kind of in-between major projects for the site. So, I thought I would cobble together a fun little piece ranking the most "clutch" NBA players from the 2013 season. Clutch, being defined as the last 5 minutes of a game, with neither team ahead or behind by more then 5 points.
We all know about the clutch stats available at 82games and NBA.com, which provide a great record of everything a player does in crunch-time. Unfortunately, neither site really attempts to rank overall clutch play, so I decided to take a crack at it.
I'll be calling this the HDR (Hoop-Don-Rating), which is essentially Alternate Win Score (the best linear-boxscore metric) mixed with Defensive Rating (a defensive adjustment).
The final HDR rating is per-100 possessions (pace adjusted).
To qualify for the top 30, players had to play more then 75 total "clutch minutes" (basically the average or above).
DRTG = Defensive Rating
AWS48 = Alternate Win Score per 48 minutes
HDR per 100 = Hoop-Don-Score adjusted for pace
We all know about the clutch stats available at 82games and NBA.com, which provide a great record of everything a player does in crunch-time. Unfortunately, neither site really attempts to rank overall clutch play, so I decided to take a crack at it.
I'll be calling this the HDR (Hoop-Don-Rating), which is essentially Alternate Win Score (the best linear-boxscore metric) mixed with Defensive Rating (a defensive adjustment).
The final HDR rating is per-100 possessions (pace adjusted).
To qualify for the top 30, players had to play more then 75 total "clutch minutes" (basically the average or above).
DRTG = Defensive Rating
AWS48 = Alternate Win Score per 48 minutes
HDR per 100 = Hoop-Don-Score adjusted for pace
- LeBron James is the "clutchest" player in the NBA. In fact, the Heat as a team were pretty clutch last year, as evidenced by Chris Bosh, Ray Allen, and Dwyane Wade ranking in the top 30.
- To be fair, multiple teams had multiple players appear in the top 30 (CHI, SAS, MEM, NYK).
- Larry Sanders was apparently #2 in clutch-effectiveness. For the record, Carmelo ranked #57.
- Chris Paul was the 2nd best clutch player via AWS48, but his negative Defensive Rating pulled him down to #17. Sorry CP3.
That's all folks. Questions about methodology will be answered in the comments.
- To be fair, multiple teams had multiple players appear in the top 30 (CHI, SAS, MEM, NYK).
- Larry Sanders was apparently #2 in clutch-effectiveness. For the record, Carmelo ranked #57.
- Chris Paul was the 2nd best clutch player via AWS48, but his negative Defensive Rating pulled him down to #17. Sorry CP3.
That's all folks. Questions about methodology will be answered in the comments.