Saturday, December 6, 2008

Clutch Scoring ≠ Fourth Quarter Scoring

I don't know if there really is such a thing as an athlete being 'clutch', or if it's just a matter of chance that some people happen to get lucky at key moments. In any event, looking at people's fourth quarter scoring numbers really isn't the way to measure clutchness. Nothing is less clutch than scoring a bunch of baskets when the outcome is already decided, and looking at the fourth quarter will give you an abominable fusion of garbage time and clutchness.

1 comment:

Justin said...

The real kicker is that good players, ones who potentially be "clutch" (though call me skeptical about the concept) will often sit in the fourth quarter of lopsided games.

What you'd need to do is look at some measure of fourth quarter scoring when the margin was small.