More clutch? Reggie Miller or Larry Bird

[mdonnelly1989]

...

[theonlyclutch]

Clearly Miller:
- Raises game under playoffs
- Performs better under elimination: 25.5/3.2/2.4 @ 62.4% TS vs 23.5/11.2/5.7 @ 51.6% TS, on a slower paced era against far tougher defenses.

[pacers33granger]

Clearly Miller:
- Raises game under playoffs
- Performs better under elimination: 25.5/3.2/2.4 @ 62.4% TS vs 23.5/11.2/5.7 @ 51.6% TS, on a slower paced era against far tougher defenses.

I don't know if I'd say clearly. Reggie always upped his game in the playoffs and it's one of the reasons he's held in higher regard than his stats would tend to indicate. But Bird had elite stats in the regular season so it's hard to up your stats from that. Plus Reggie's clutch plays were almost exclusively shooting, where Bird's clutch plays were everywhere.

[eminence]

I'd say Reggie was more clutch. But it's all relative, even at his most clutch he still wasn't close to the player Bird was.

[Quotatious]

But Bird had elite stats in the regular season so it's hard to up your stats from that.

It's hard, but it's not impossible. Hakeem Olajuwon did that, for example (top 10 player of all-time just like Bird, so it's probably a more apt comparison than Miller). Olajuwon was really a better player in the postseason than he was in the regular season.

[Doctor MJ]

I'm going to refrain from voting because I don't really buy into guys being "more clutch". Choking is a legit thing, but if we're talking about two guys who don't choke, then any analysis we're doing is essentially just based on how each guys stats perform relative to the rest of the game, and there's a lot more going on there than simply "clutchness".

With that said, I think we can all agree that it's pretty amazing how Miller morphed into a different beast in the clutch. He played a role that you might think would be easy to stop in crunch time, and instead he became much more aggressive.

[Shot Clock]

I think they were both ice cold killers.

There are guys that don't really want the ball in that moment

Guys who want it but their just not able to perform like they think they can

Guys that want it and can still perform under that pressure. These two were in the last category.