The Legend has spoken.Originally Posted by MichaelMcNamara
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The Legend has spoken.
Is this a joke? For essentially his entire career, Kobe took the clutch shots on his team. Every defense knew he was going to be the one taking the shot. Most players in NBA history wouldn't even be able to get some of the shots off that he was able to do and he made plenty of them. Yes, he also missed many, but that comes with the sheer volume of attempts. That's the Mamba Mentality. He always believed a tough contested shot that he took was better than an open look by a teammate, and he was typically right. You can debate if that's right or wrong, but saying Kobe not being clutch is asinine.
And he didn't hit them nearly as often as people seem to think. Kobe did not shoot considerably better than any other star player in the clutch, and he certainly wasn't as effective in the clutch as the all time clutch greats like MJ. The fact that people believe otherwise is a testament to the success of the propaganda job surrounding the ''Mamba Mentality''.
People bought the hype on Kobe big time when in reality the best games of his career, and the most winning years of his career, are the ones which came when he dialled the ''Mamba'' shtick back hard and was willing to play within a team context where he wasn't the Whole Damn Show. Kobe playing second fiddle to Shaq or Kobe playing sensible team ball with Pau and Odom and Bynum >>>>>> The mid 2000s ''Black Mamba'' who took 30 shots a night.
Edit: edited for clarity
Edit edit: Also, I don't think clutch time play is nearly as important as most other people on this board seem to.
Last edited by Pelicanidae; 07-22-2021 at 06:11 PM.
Basketball.
I can attest to your honesty, as l know that Zion Williamson is your basketball god. And we all know how 'clutch' he has been thus far in his brief career.
So you don't think winning is important in this sport?
You somehow managed to follow up your Kobe take with a more mind boggling statement.
Man, I am old and I have never seen clutch time play be described as not nearly as important. It’s probably one of the most important parts of the game as the majority of NBA games come down to clutch play. Interesting thoughts for sure.
Yeah. The NBA is all about coasting until the clutch. It's why we would be in games and then lose at the very end. We have the talent to compete in an open game but once things tightened up in the clutch, our youth showed.
There isn't any part of Zion's game that would call for him to be a clutch shot maker......weird flex.
Also another opportunity for me to beat that dead horse and point out that Zion is 21......BI and Zo are 23. We need to stop comparing our young guys skill-wise to players in their prime.
BI, Zion, and CJ had a net rating of +3 when on the court together. BI and Zion had a +13.4, BI and CJ had a +13.2, Zion and CJ was just +5.4.
BI and Zion worked. BI and CJ worked. It was CJ and Zion and all three together that didn't work.
I'd recommend you go read the book Thinking Basketball by Ben Taylor, but to sum it up: if you need to be ''clutch'' all it means is that you didn't win the first 46 minutes enough. Points are points no matter when they're scored, and if you bury your opponent in all three of the first quarters, there's no requirement on anyone to be ''clutch'' in the fourth. Clutch time only ever happens when you have failed to dominate adequately enough earlier in the game. The book goes into detail on this phenomenon in detail and is honestly a pretty solid intro to a lot of modern basketball concepts, so I'd recommend it if you're new to analytic type stuff.
Yeah but that's my entire point. ''Clutch'' play is important precisely because teams are, frankly, unreliable and inconsistent. It's something that does not need to be valuable but gains artificial value because of team imperfection.
If you are a good team of consistent, high quality players, then clutch play becomes unimportant - partly because you just don't play in it often. Clutch time, as the NBA defines it, is when the score is within 5 points in the final few minutes. Well, the best teams just don't get into very many 5 point scrabbles at the end of games. They just win earlier in the match and then maintain the lead. The problem with the Pelicans this past year, for the most part, is that we blew the leads: in that circumstance, clutch became important because we sucked. But that's not a sign that clutch play itself is objectively valuable - we only got into clutch minutes because we failed earlier to maintain the lead - it's a sign that the Pelicans needed to be more consistent and execute across 48 minutes.
All of this means that while clutch play is valuable - because teams are not perfect and can be inconsistent - I don't think it's the be-all end-all that some others seem to. I don't think you should team-build around the idea of having tons of ''clutch'' execution at the cost of other things: build the best basketball team overall that you can and the better that you can do that the less important clutch play becomes.
Last edited by Pelicanidae; 07-22-2021 at 09:54 PM.
So the open layup that Zion misses with three seconds left in a game when the Pelicans are down by one is excusable because he hit 13 layups earlier in the game but not 14?
Okay!!!
Last edited by As I See It; 07-22-2021 at 11:07 PM.
Or how Jrue would just give the ball away to the other team in the late 4th quarter after having a decent game otherwise. Fun times. We haven?t had a clutch player since the CP3 days.
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Why haven't we signed anyone, yet?
Well i mean it would be very hard to build a team with two or more consistent clutch players. One would suffice. We just need one.
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Kinda missing the point.
The reason one missed layup or one turnover has an impact in the late 4th is because the score is close enough that you need production out of that possession of can't afford an opponent score.
If you're up 30 with two minutes left, one missed layup or a turnover doesn't matter. But being up big going into "clutch" time requires high tier consistent execution throughout the previous 46 minutes, which the Pelicans have traditionally been very poor at. I want to see that play improve, rather than hyperfocusing on the aesthetic of having a "closer".
Open layup? Are you referring to the full length pass that he threw up off balance as time expired?
That's not how basketball is played. NBA teams are filled with NBA talent. On any given night, a "bad" team can beat a "great" team. That's why playoff series are 7 games and not single elimination. You can't play with the same level of intensity for 48 minutes. It's impossible. Even in the finals, teams have lapses and teams make runs.
Most games will boil down to "clutch" situations, where teams lock in defensively and you need guys that can score against that to close games for you. This is not complicated. It's pretty obvious if you watch enough NBA basketball and stop reading silly books.
Truth. AD and LeBron can't even coast for a season and still hold up for the playoffs. They only won the previous season after they got the long covid break.
Again, you're arguing against something that I never said. At no point have I said that being clutch is bad or that you never need to win clutch minutes or that having the ability to execute in the clutch is entirely unimportant. What I'm saying is that ''being clutch'' is not the be-all/end-all of team design and that there are far more important things to worry about. Remember that I initially said
notI don't think clutch time play is nearly as important as most other people on this board seem to.
The Jazz had the best record in the NBA this season and guess what? They won 27 of their 50 games by more than 15 and only played 90 minutes of ''clutch'' time (According to the NBA's official stats) all year long.I think clutch time play is completely unimportant
The Bucks, who won the chip, also played under 100 minutes of clutch time all season.
What I'm saying is that being forced into clutch minutes where you are required to win a game in 30 seconds is a bad situation, and your best option is to avoid having to be put in that situation by winning the game early. And dominant regular season teams do that. They dominate and therefore do not get put into those uncomfortable circumstances as often as other teams.
Obviously no matter how good you are as a team, you'll have those nights where you can't hit the broad side of a barn, or where the other team can't miss, or someone will get injured, or there will be a sub-optimal matchup, and you'll get forced into clutch time. Obviously. I don't think any team has ever finished a season with 0 clutch minutes played. But the goal should be to minimise how often that happens, not to design your team around them.
This is not complicated. If you constantly find yourself in last minute scrambles for your life and can never just confidently beat a team, that's a problem.
Last edited by Pelicanidae; 07-24-2021 at 06:19 AM.
There's a lot of double talk in this thread. Seems like someone's 'clutch' is slipping.
We need another Dame rumor to get this thread back on the rails.
Damian Lillard is going to start next season in a Blazers uniform, is my take.
Contributor
Dame Lillard will play for the Pelicans.
In MyGM in NBA 2K22. It will be glorious until another defense perfectly swats down a pass he shouldn’t even see coming.
Lillard is my 2nd favorite Dame behind Judi Dench.
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