Minnesota Sports Forum

Found this post by some one on the Rubechat forums. Very interesting.

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=MIN&opp_id=&game_num_min=0&game_num_max=99&game_month=&game_location=&game_result=&shot_pts=&is_make=&shot_type=&shot_distance_min=&shot_distance_max=&q4=Y&q5=Y&time_remain_minutes=5&time_remain_seconds=0&time_remain_comp=le&margin_min=-5&margin_max=5&c1stat=&c1comp=ge&c1val=&c2stat=&c2comp=ge&c2val=&c3stat=&c3comp=ge&c3val=&order_by=fg


Rubio and Barea have combined for 5 for 34 shooting in games decided by 5 or less points during the last 5 minutes of the 4th quarter. That is horrific. Rubio is 3 for 17 while the Barea is 2 for 17. Kevin Martin shoots a very good 48% while Love (37%) and Pek (41%) are very poor.

This shows the reason why we are losing these tight ones. We can't make shots when the games on the line and scoring production from both our PG's is appalling.

Barea's been terrible this year. That doesn't surprise me. Where are the people from the Memphis game thread that were okay with JJ playing instead of Ricky? Something about JJ being able to score better than Ricky and that's why he should be out there. What a joke.

Disclaimer: I am not trying to offend those people that dislike the concept of looking at facts to try to draw conclusions about the probability of future performances. Should you be one of those people, YOU WILL NOT LIKE THIS POST. Please move on.

Nice find. It sorta makes you appreciate Brewer a bit more.

This is telling us stuff that most of us already know. I think that most people know that Love, Pek, Rubio, and JJ have not scored well in clutch situation. When the majority of the team is pretty bad in clutch situations, we will lose close games.....hence the current record.

It is tough to say which is more important FG% or eFG% in this case......I am normally more inclined to go eFG%, and am in this case too.

As an interesting comparison here are the eFG% comparisons between clutch time performances and their season long performance. (Just looking at starters and JJ because they account for about 94% of all clutch time shots)

.............................Season eFG%.........Clutch eFG%
Love..........................523...........................452
Pek...........................533...........................414
Brewer.......................507..........................559
Martin........................487..........................556
rubio..........................391..........................176
JJ..............................466..........................118

Obviously, what stands out is that Rubio and JJ both suck big balls (technical statistical term). Also, over the course of the season Love, Pek, Rubio, and JJ are all significantly worse in the last 5 minutes of close games.

Does this mean that our "Big 3" are "chokers"? I hope not, none of them have been in winning situations in the NBA and they probably need to learn to win at this level. That will probably take more time than most Wolves fans would like. I am glad that we are in the process of putting together pretty good season (.500 ish). This season should be a critical building block in the development for these underperforming players in clutch situations.

I sorta wonder if the fact that Martin and Brewer have been on good teams in the past leads them to be better in the clutch......if that were the case though, we would expect much better from JJ.