Sedale Threatt wrote:First of all, this was more of a toss-off sentence, not really meant to be latched on to. I voted for Karl in the poll, and it should be crystal clear in my post that I respect his game and body of work. He was a great, great player.
Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to focus on you, I just found a tangent topic and ran with it, it wasn't mean to be a response to you in particular.
Beyond that, I suppose it depends on what your definition of clutch is. Are you specifically limiting it to a last shot situation? If so, then I agree that guards have much more freedom and ability to impact the game.
But clutch could also be viewed as how a player performs in a crucial game or situation. In that sense, it doesn't matter what position they play. You either play well and produce, or you don't.
For example, Tim Duncan's near quadruple double in the 03 clincher is in my mind the textbook definition of clutch.
Yeah but you're talking about a game against the Nets, so I find that one really hard to overvalue. His play in the '01 series against L.A. wasn't phenomenal, for example, because he was a turnover machine and quite foul-prone. Going 9/30 in the opener to the series the year after was another inauspicious moment for him and he went on to shoot about 42.5% from the field in that series, too, which included a 9/26 game as well. He was pretty ugly that series.
So is Olajuwon's overall body of work in the 04 and 05 playoffs. So is any number of the huge games Russell had during Boston's run of 11 in 13. And so on.
Olajuwon was one of the two centers I was thinking of, though Russell somehow slipped my mind and is definitely the third center I'd think of as clutch.
Just because they played a position that precluded much freelancing didn't mean their teams depended on them any less.
Which is precisely why I referred to 4th Q rebounding and scoring.
Those were the circumstances I was thinking of when I mentioned Malone's tendency to fade in the clutch (i.e., important moments). As you pointed out with Magic, just about every great player has had moments they'd rather forget. A more recent example would have been Kobe's stink bomb in the 04 Finals.
Yeah, Kobe's a clutch player but I don't think I've seen a player of his caliber play that badly in the Finals ever before.
For example, Utah's inability to win in either of their Finals appearances can be largely pinned on him. When he played well, the Jazz won (30 ppg, 50% FG, 77% FTs in four victories). When he didn't, they didn't (21.6 ppg, 45% FG, 64 % FTs in eight losses).
I think that's a pretty narrow proof. I think it has as much to do with how godawful Jeff Hornacek shot against the Bulls both years and how very linear their offense was and without significant scoring support for Malone.
They won and lost on the strength of Malone's scoring because he was making up for the rest of the team being Hornacek, Stockton and Bryon Russell... Jordan at least had another 20+ ppg scorer next to him and some roleplayers who could hit open shots.
In '97, Hornacek popped out the big-time bomb.
He was a 48/37 FG/3P% player in the regular season and he shot 37.9% FG and 37.5% 3P. Yeah, he hit his threes but he shot 38.1% from under the arc that series (and he was taking about 7 two-pointers a game, compared to about 2.7 3PA).
So that was a rather significant factor because the floor-spacing issue became a critical one.
The year after, he experienced a similar drop:
48/44 in the regular season, but he only managed to get up 9 3PA in the series and hit on 3 (33.3% 3P). He shot 50% but a critical part of his offense just up and vanished. And of course, Stockton's scoring average dropped over 5 ppg between the 97 and 98 Finals, making it even HARDER on Malone.
So you can't just look at his stats in wins and in losses to show that it was his fault, him determining if they won and lost.
Remember, Jordan played like donkey sphincter in the '96 Finals against the Sonics, shooting terribly by his standards (41.5% FG) but the Bulls STILL won in 6 because he passed, defended...
And got three other guys scoring in double-digits. Pippen averaged 20 ppg in the '97 Finals, then 15.7 in the '98 Finals... but Kukoc averaged over 15 ppg in '98 as well.
MJ had a LOT more help.
A lot of that had to do with the fact they were playing an absolutely fabulous team. I'm also aware that basketball is a team game, and one player can never shoulder the entire responsibility for defeat. But it seemed pretty clear to me that in the biggest games of his life, Malone simply didn't play his best.
As I was discussing above, it's not quite that simple.
I don't have any other numbers in front of me. But judging by the fact that his Utah teams went 16-18 in 34 playoff series, it wasn't an isolated incident.
I'd disagree, because his Utah teams suffered from the same weaknesses year in and year out; he didn't have another dynamic scorer beside him.
Ever.
The closest thing was Darrell Griffith.
Really, Utah was Malone, Stockton and then roleplayers (mostly shooters).
In the 80s, when he had a little more help, the pace was faster and inflating some of the stats and he had no prayer of going up against the Showtime Lakers, who were simply too talented, too deep and too good.
But let's stop and pause; in how many seasons did one of Malone's Utah teammates average 17+ ppg in the playoffs? Let's list off the occurences through the 97-98 season:
Thurl Bailey, 87-88, 23.2 ppg
John Stockton, 87-88, 19.5 ppg (11 games, POR, LAL)
John Stockton, 88-89, 27.3 ppg (3 games against GSW)
Thurl Bailey, 89-90, 21.0 ppg (5 games, PHO)
Jeff Malone, 90-91, 20.7 ppg
John Stockton, 90-91, 18.2 ppg (9 games, PHO, POR)
Jeff Malone, 91-92, 20.7 ppg (LAC, SEA, POR)
John Stockton, 94-95, 17.8 ppg (HOU)
Jeff Hornacek, 95-96, 17.5 ppg (POR, SAS, SEA)
Do you remember how that Seattle series went down? Utah lost the first two games and in those games, Hornacek shot 39.3% FG and 28.6% 3P (11/28, 2/7, totals).
So right away, they were in an 0-2 hole. In the deciding game seven, he went 3/10 and 0/1 from downtown... though Malone had a huge stinker in Game 7 as well.
On the series, Malone went for 27 ppg, 11.57 rpg and 4.5 apg on 47.5% shooting. In those first two games, which largely decided the series, he went for 26.5 ppg, 10.5 rpg, 4 apg on 47.6% FG.
Continuing...
Wait, but those are ALL the instances of a non-Malone player averaging 17+ ppg in the postseason on a Utah team from 85-86 through 97-98!!
You want to talk about coming up dry in the clutch, that's fine; he had some less-than-stellar moments, that's true.
But he also made something out of almost nothing on a regular basis. His teams were fairly top-heavy and lacked SIGNIFICANTLY in complementary firepower.
By contrast, look at Jordan's title years:
Scottie Pippen, 90-91, 21.6 ppg
Scottie Pippen, 91-92, 19.5 ppg
Scottie Pippen, 92-93, 20.1 ppg
Scottie Pippen, 95-96, 16.9 ppg*
Scottie Pippen, 96-97, 19.2 ppg
Scottie Pippen, 97-98, 16.8 ppg*
* These one's are a bit of a stretch but it's close enough and I didn't ignore anyone on the Jazz who were this close.
More importantly than just the volume of the scoring, however, is the TYPE of scoring.
Malone's primary helpers were Stockton and Hornacek, neither of whom were significant isolation scorers, nor especially athletic (in fact, where Stockton was mostly short and old, Hornacek had a physically bum knee and almost no athleticism to speak of).
Jeff Malone was a big scorer on some awful Bullets teams out in Washington and a very good mid-range shooter. He was a small guard who had a lot of leaners and scored well off of screens.
He was also a fairly weak defender.
My point is that Jordan enjoyed a considerably superior companion at his side offensively and guys who stepped up and could score; in the late 90s, during the second three-peat, he got a lot out of Kukoc and Pippen that Malone really didn't get and while Hornacek helped take the Jazz to the only three 60+-win seasons in Utah history, it didn't translate in the playoffs because the defenders on the Bulls were too much, that rotational defense put pressure on him to create for himself and he faded... and in that first series, plainly didn't make shots.
So again, I think it's very difficult to look down too hard at Malone and say "it's his fault for not stepping up in the clutch" when it was so much easier to lock in on him defensively because of how few threats their were around him by comparison. Pippen drew a double-team when he touched the ball; nobody Malone ever played with after Adrian Dantley was traded in his rookie season ever commanded a double-team; not Blue Edwards, not Thurl Bailey, not Jeff Malone, not John Stockton, not Jeff Hornacek...
None of those guys (at least not on a consistent basis).
Pippen was the go-to scorer on a team that went to the second round (losing to the eventual EC champion Knicks) WITHOUT Jordan and on a team that was 34-31 the year after before Jordan returned.
So I think you have to put these things in context before we speak of Malone and his performance in the clutch.
