Fantastic job Dipper, if I could give you 10 And1’s I would. I was a big fan of the Barkley shot charts but you went above and beyond with this Jordan post. Thank you.
The thing that really stands out to me in that post is the clutch performance. Jordan is already considered as the clutchest player in NBA history yet his clutch numbers look too good to be true. I’m just amazed at those team and individual stats in the clutch. Just to bring them up again…
78.3 PTS – 12.1 REB – 8.1 AST – 5.2 STL – 3.2 BLK – 1.8 TOV – 62.4% FG – 40.0% 3P – 88.4% FT
1v1 Defense: 15/55 (27.3 FG%)
Plus/Minus: +48.8
A per 48 line of 78/12/8 on essentially 60/40/90 shooting while being extremely careful with the ball (1.8 TOV) and also being an absolute menace on both help D (8.4 stocks) and man to man D (27.3% opp FG%). That is just insanity and his team performance of +48.8 pts per 100 backs it all up and proves how much of an impact Jordan had at the end of games. This kind of data backs up the Jordan clutch mythology and then some.
I decided to compare Jordan’s performance in the clutch during this time period with the best 2 year stretch of clutch play we’ve seen from LeBron and Kobe. Jordan played 242 “clutch minutes” during this incomplete sample over 3 years, which is roughly the same as a full 2 year span. I used “82games” clutch numbers with some help from BBRef to figure out the best 2 year stretch of clutch performance from both Kobe and LeBron.
I settled on 2008-2009 for Kobe and 2009-10 for LeBron, I believe this was the best 2 year streak of regular season clutch performance from either of these two players based on the stats.Here are what LeBron and Kobe averaged per 48 over their best 2 season stretch of clutch performance, with Jordan’s 90-92 stretch next to them for comparison….
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PER 48 CLUTCH STATS
Player PTS REB AST STL BLK TOV eFG% FT% +/- Mins
Kobe 54.4 8.3 5.8 0.9 0.3 3.6 .493 .883 22.5 279
LeBron 61.7 15.2 10.1 3.3 2.6 4.4 .572 .823 40.1 262
Jordan 78.3 12.1 8.1 5.2 3.2 1.8 .652 .884 48.8 242As great as Kobe is, he's a clear 3rd in this comparison like he is with most comparisons involving these 3. There's nothing bad about 54/8/6 per 48 on a very solid .493 eFG% (Kobe has a career .487 eFG%). The fact that his teams had a +22.5 plus/minus shows that Kobe had a really strong impact during these moments.
But LeBron and Jordan trump Kobe when it comes to both clutch scoring and clutch non-scoring. Jordan and LeBron could dominate the defensive end of the game during these moments, an underrated aspect of both of their "clutchness".
And when it comes to LeBron vs. Jordan, MJ does come out clearly ahead as good as LBJ was during these moments. MJ averaged 17 points more while shooting significantly better from the field. LeBron's clutch performance during these 2 epic Cavs years are historic and among the best we've seen in the 10+ years of data we have on clutch play, but Jordan's 90-92 run trumps it.
There could be some highlight bias but I feel like this would be less of a problem for "clutch" performance since it's more likely to have complete videos for these end of game situations. And even if there is a slight highlight bias that could make these numbers look a little better for Jordan, there's also the fact that he played in the playoffs for a big chunk of those 242 clutch minutes. It's much tougher to perform highly in the clutch during the playoffs. Kobe and LeBron's numbers are regular season only. So I think even if there is highlight bias, the playoff factor makes up for it.
Long story short... Jordan is considered the best clutch player ever and yet he was probably even more clutch than people think.
