Minnesota Sports Forum

Here is a list of players performances who made 10 or more FGs in the last 5 minutes of a game when the game was within 5 points.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/plus/shot_finder.cgi?request=1&player_id=&match=single&year_id=2014&is_playoffs=N&team_id=&opp_id=&game_num_min=0&game_num_max=99&game_month=&game_location=&game_result=&shot_pts=&is_make=&shot_type=&shoHere is the link.

I have this sorted by eFG%, sorting by FG% has a degree of merit too IMHO.


Names that lead this list are a bunch of well known ones, Bosh, Davis, Parker, Ganobil, Horford, Pierce, Matthews, Liliard, James, Duncan......etc. (I specifically remember Parker killing us in the 4th when we played them this year, when we entered the 4th quarter with the lead)

Most very good teams have a person or 2 pretty high on the list. Indiana being the 1 exception (one of, if not the, best Ds in the league)

A good team in the West that doesn't really have a clutch scorer is GSW. When I learned that, I thought, "That makes sense". GSW are a VERY talented team, and I would think that they would be competing for a top 4 spot in the West, based on their talent. Instead, they are one of the teams that might not make the POs. Their lack of clutch scoring is a good explanation for this.......BTW GSW has better (slightly) clutch shooting as a team than the Wolves.


Here are a couple thoughts on the Wolves.

Love's FG% is .365 (which is 65 of 86 players that qualified) and eFG% .452 (which is 44 of the 86 players that qualified). He also accounts for a bit over 30% of all our clutch shots taken

The Wolves, as a whole, shot a FG% of .371 and a eFG% of .416. Obviously, this is not very good.

Martin and Brewer (accounting for 16% and 10% of the clutch shots taken, respectively) have the highest eFG% on the team by a pretty significant margin. In all 20 close games, Love has shots, Martin only has shots in 12 of them, Brewer 10 of them (some might consider that a good thing.)

In the Memphis game (like many others) we got outscored in the last 5 minutes of the game 14-7. That seems pretty common for us. If teams know that we are going to totally fall apart (a eFG% of .416 is totally falling apart in my book). Then they can game plan for it and use that info to their advantage, which it looks like they do.

Some have said that we are losing all our close games because of "luck"......it sounds to me that we are losing games because of a very low eFG%.

I view our inability to score at anything close to league levels, in the last 5 minutes of close games, as the primary hindrance to the long-term success of this team.



For any math geeks out there, i bet that one could put together a formula that strictly combines average margin of victory and some function of team clutch shooting and come up with a much better power rankings that Hollinger has. (Yes, I realize that is not saying much)

It just looks like it is poor clutch shooting that accounts for the discrepancy between average margin of victory and standing within a given conference.

But it could be partially luck due to sample size.

To exaggerate, if I take one clutch shot and miss, my eFG% is 0%. Does that mean I suck at clutch shooting? No, it would be ridiculous to make that claim on a sample size of one. What if I take 20 or 30 shots in clutch situations? Even that is not a real big sample size by statistical standards. You would almost have to look at a player across a couple of seasons to truly build up an adequate sample size to conclusively say a player is clutch or not clutch.

I think our poor performance in close games is some combination of bad luck, poor confidence, lackluster halfcourt defense, questionable coaching decisions, and the lack of a PG that can break down a defense off the bounce and score. What weight we assign to each of those factors is purely speculative, but it's simply not a single-variable problem.

It is not the size of your sample, it is how you use it.