SinceGatlingWasARookie wrote:So where do you find crunch time data for the modern NBA?
Does crunch time NBA data exist for the mid 1980s NBA and where would I find it?
I never saw clutchness in Kobe. I saw Kobe take and hit very difficult shots. I also saw Kobe take and miss very difficult shots. Having a player like Kobe is good as long as Kobe is not depriving teammates of better shots. If the team offense failed at least the Lakers had a chance with Kobe shooting difficult shots.
What I saw with Dennis Johnson is not something that I would be able to notice on a player that I did not see a lot of. The only players that much of played for the 1980s Celtics, 1990s to current Warriors and the dominant Lakers, Spurs, 76ers, Jazz, Kings and Bulls in the playoffs during the years when they were constantly playing in the playoffs.Even my mid 1990s Rockets sample is too small for me to say anything about clutchness. Dennis Johnson is the only player that I am saying that I saw shot better in clutch situations than normal situations. Some of the greats seemed better in clutch situations but they were good enough shooters in normal situations that they did not stand out to me as clearly improving their shooting in the clutch situations like DJ did.
With Dennis Johnson, DJ seemed to like taking crunch time shots but DJ was a poor jump shooter. On the Celtics DJ deferred to his teammates as he should.
DJ was much ore efficient going to the rim. Teams would let DJ shoot long mid range shots because every other Celtic on the floor was a more efficient scorer.
Most of the guards in the NBA shot open mid range shots better than DJ did. Watching DJ shoot mid range shots looked like watching a player choking. What I am saying about DJ's long mid range jump shooting with the Celtics is that he resembled a choker except when the game was on the line at which point he looked like an average NBA guard shooting a open jumper that should not be given to an average NBA guard. You can't give open mid range jumpers to average NBA guards because they will hit at a high percentage (unless we are talking about the 1960s and earlier ). There are guys like Rajon Rondo who shoot poorly enough that you can let them shoot long mid range shots until they knock down a few in a row.
Shooting an uncontested mid range shot is like free throw shooting in that it is all about fine motor control. I say that Celtics era DJ's fine motor control on long mid range shots improved from being bad to being normal when it was crunch time. Because DJ's was not defended as if he could shoot he often hit late in game jumpers while the defenses had to make a great effort to defend DJ's talented teammates.
Where do I find data to prove or disprove my belief that DJ reliably hit clutch jumpers while being a poor shooter of non-clutch jumpers?
82games was the first place to have it. Here's an example:
http://www.82games.com/04LAL6E.HTM
And here's an example list of league leaders:
http://www.82games.com/0809/CSORT11.HTM
The NBA now provides sortable Player Clutch data too:
http://stats.nba.com/leaguePlayerClutch ... PerPage=25
I don't believe any data like this exists for DJ's era.
Back to DJ and your observations: If you're willing to go out and say "I totally believe that most of what people say for most players is BS, but DJ is the one guy out of all players I've ever seen that I noticed this", that does lend more weight to what you're saying. Not saying I'd simply accept that, but someone who is aware of a phenomenon of bias in a particular direction, who then typically doesn't have such bias, saying they see an outlier is precisely how I'd expect we'd start identifying outliers.
When you began by just talking like basically everyone else who talks like this though, I lumped you in with everyone else. That might have been the wrong thing to do, or it might not. No way for me to truly know.
You talking about a possible reason for DJ's improvement being LESS defensive opposition in the clutch due to his unusual circumstances is interesting as well. Makes sense in theory. When I talk of DJ, I don't do it from first hand memory as I was a kid in his Celtics era stuff, and even my memories of the stars are fuzzy. Hence, when I talk of him, I'm thinking more along the lines of when he was the star of a champion, which was also the era where he talked of choking in the Game 7 finals. Makes sense that things could be very different when he was reduced to being a role player.
Last note: While logically it makes sense to think of an open shot as being as easy as a free throw, that's not what we see. A pull up jumper, if being done correctly, should be exactly this circumstance. In general guys shooting those are much less effective than a guy who is set and waiting for a pass who then takes the open shot (if the pass is good).
Of course, a player can get set to accept a pass & shoot from midrange too, so I'm not saying that doesn't exist. Just that it's not simply about being open.
