Photo by blmiers2 on Flickr
“Clutch” is a pretty hot topic on the basketball Internet these days and the reason is plain: inasmuch as there’s some kind of basketball war going down between the advanced stats-heads and the old school, it’s over this notion that when the pressure’s on, certain guys are going to make that key shot and certain guys are going to shrink. Exhibit A: Kobe Bryant. Exhibit B: LeBron James.
But this isn’t going to be something that’s in defense of either of these approaches, precisely, but rather a look at how the whole idea of the “clutch narrative” influences our understanding of the game as it unfolds. Let us take, for example, last night’s game between the Thunder and the Lakers, a game the Thunder came back to win 103-100, giving them a 3-1 lead in the best of seven series.
Now, after Game 3, a game which the Lakers won and in which Durant missed a long jumper that would have tied it, Bryant had some choice words about how he plays the game, as reported by Yahoo! Sports:
“I don’t give a [expletive] what you say,” Bryant told Yahoo! Sports late Friday. “If I go out there and miss game winners, and people say, ‘Kobe choked, or Kobe is seven for whatever in pressure situations.’ Well, [expletive] you.
“Because I don’t play for your [expletive] approval. I play for my own love and enjoyment of the game. And to win. That’s what I play for. Most of the time, when guys feel the pressure, they’re worried about what people might say about them. I don’t have that fear, and it enables me to forget bad plays and to take shots and play my game.”
Well, no one ever accused Kobe Bryant of being charming. And that’s not why people who love Kobe Bryant and those who want him to have the ball with the clock winding down think he’s great. It’s precisely stuff like the above quotes, which sound great after you win, but less good after you lose. And that’s sort of the funny thing about the whole clutch narrative because it actually isn’t predicated on results, despite its insistence on focusing on what really matters and not on numbers. The story of one player’s ability to make the tough shots overwhelms what we’re seeing in the moment.
Let’s take a look at Bryant in the fourth quarter of Game 4. Again, I’m not out to refute the idea that he’s clutch, I’m just trying to point out how the idea that he’s clutch—an idea that he himself reinforces with quotes like the above—dictates the way that we and he and his teammates understand his play.
In the above possession, Bryant backs down James Harden and takes a very difficult turnaround jumper that he misses. The Lakers are up 11 at this point with 8 minutes to go in the game. For future reference, it’s important to note that this appears to be a Bryant isolation play from the very beginning, with no activity intended to get any other teammate open or involved. His miss leads to a Jordan Hill rebound which he puts back up and in. (Note that a foul could easily have been called on Hill for clearing Kevin Durant out with his elbow on the rebound. Bryant didn’t draw the attention of the defense to allow Hill that rebound.) So Bryant takes the Thunder on on his own with a big lead, misses, and Hill cleans up the mess.
Three minutes later, with Oklahoma City having cut the deficit to 7, another iso is called for Bryant, again without any kind of secondary action to get teammates open. Bryant sizes Harden up and shoots over him, missing the shot.
Following a three on the other end to cut it to 94-90, Bryant doesn’t use the screen Gasol sets, but instead once again backs Harden down in almost the exact same play as the first clip above. Bryant once again takes a tremendously difficult shot but this time he makes it. But pay some special attention to commentator Kevin Harlan’s reaction: “OHH! What a shot by Kobe Bryant!” And that’s a story we understand as the game is unfolding: Bryant is taking command to stave off this Thunder run, taking and making the difficult shots, shots many players might shrink from. As he said the night before after the Laker win, “I don’t have that fear, and it enables me to forget bad plays and to take shots and play my game.” He missed that same shot earlier and made a poor shot choice the possession prior, but he can forget that and play his game. I’m less sure his teammates can forget it, though. Already, you can see reticence setting in when the ball comes to Bryant; it’s clear that it’s “Kobe time” now.
After the Thunder get it back on the other end, Bryant gets it at the top of the arc, takes the screen from Pau Gasol, gets chased over the top by Durant, and then tries to take Durant off the dribble. Durant keeps him in check and with the shot clock winding down he forces up a long jumper that misses badly. Again, the rest of the Lakers basically stop trying to get involved in the play once Bryant gets the ball. Gasol meanders into the paint and Metta World Peace drifts out to the three-point line, but no one’s really trying to get open and why should they? It’s Kobe time.
With the score still 96-92, Bryant takes Steve Blake’s screen (which Durant easily handles), then drives the lane, missing the shot as he runs into the teeth of the Thunder defense. If you look at this still, you can see that Blake, World Peace, and Gasol are all open:
But they’re not going to get the ball. We don’t expect it and they don’t expect it. And this is one of the interesting things about this narrative about Kobe being clutch. In the above interview he said “If I go out there and miss game winners, and people say, ‘Kobe choked, or Kobe is seven for whatever in pressure situations.’ Well, [expletive] you.” But he’s not shooting game winners here—his play is actively driving the game towards a situation where he will have to hit a game winner. And if he does, he’ll be the one who took on the pressure, who doesn’t give a [expletive] what you think about how he plays.
With the Thunder down by two, Durant gets the ball with Bryant defending him. This is a good matchup for Durant with his back to the basket since he’s got a couple inches on Bryant. He backs him down, Bryant reaches, Durant spins baseline and Gasol can’t close out. It’s a smart, savvy play that shows off Durant’s growing comfort with his back to the basket. It’s a much better shot than the one Bryant pulled off over Harden and yet there’s no reaction from the commentators. Durant’s play was just good basketball, while Bryant’s was a circus shot that reinforces the story about his stone-cold clutchness. But now the game is tied and what does Bryant do? He takes the quick screen from Gasol and launches a three that clanks off the back rim.
Here’s the key possession that decides the game, where Gasol turns the ball over on a bad pass:
Now I’m not absolving Gasol of blame here; he makes a bad play when he gets the ball by trying to throw that pass. But there’s also been nothing in every play leading up to this one that would make anyone believe Bryant’s going to give that ball up. Any other player getting doubled up like that might pass out of it, but Bryant’s already shown in previous possessions that he’s taking it on himself to score. Maybe Gasol was ready for the pass in something more than just a pro forma way, but his reaction and decision to pass seems to indicate that maybe he was taken a little off guard.
And what’s his reward for turning it over? Bryant’s misplaced trust in him is revoked on the next possession. With the Thunder up 101-98, Bryant again takes a screen from Gasol but it’s just clear there’s no way Gasol is getting the ball again, not even with this much space:
A few more Bryant misses and that was all she wrote. Bryant went 2-10 in the fourth and his postgame comments were considerably less cocky. “It was a bad read on Pau’s part,” he said. “Pau has got to be more assertive; he’s got to be more aggressive.” Apparently he’s not as quick to forget his teammate’s bad plays as he is to forget his own.
But in the end, this game doesn’t prove that Kobe’s not clutch anymore than the win in Game 3 proves that he is. The numbers say one thing, the hordes of admirers (many of whom are smart basketball coaches and analysts) say another. But whether you believe Kobe’s rep as a closer is deserved or not, the rep itself can become a dangerous thing in a situation like Game 4. When he starts forcing shots as he did in the fourth quarter, he believes in it, the commentators believe in it, the crowd believes in it, but worst of all, his teammates believe in it. The force of that belief in that moment is stronger than numbers and weirdly, not even failure seems to be able to shake it.
There’s a reason why the numbers will never convince a true believer in Bryant’s clutch credentials and that’s because clutch for them is not an accumulation of shots made versus shots taken but an article of faith. The argument against it is like Smerdyakov’s reasoning in a debate from The Brothers Karamazov. In the book, there’s a newspaper story about a Russian soldier being captured and forced “on pain of agonizing death to renounce Christianity and convert to Islam.” He refuses and is killed gruesomely, but Smerdyakov can’t understand why this should glorify the soldier’s faith.
“[I]t is said that if you have faith even as the little as the smallest seed and then say unto this mountain that it should go down into the sea, it would go, without the slightest hesitation … If at that moment I were to say unto that mountain: ‘Move and crush my tormentor,’ it would move and in that same moment crush him like a cockroach, and I would go off as if nothing happened, praising and glorifying God. But if precisely at that moment I tried all that … and it didn’t crush them, then how, tell me, should I not doubt then, in such a terrible hour of great mortal fear?”
To Smerdyakov, miracles should provide evidence that proves faith, but a true believer doesn’t see the failure of the mountains to move according to his or her belief as evidence against their faith anymore than those who believe that Bryant is clutch think missing shots is evidence he’s not. It’s both the beauty and the difficulty of faith, both its strength and its weakness.
And so one side puts its faith and heart into it, believing it’s the most important part of a player’s basketball DNA while the other side tries to show that it’s an illusion, a phantom, something that misleads us in our understanding. Heck, maybe the greatest trick the devil ever pulled wasn’t convincing the world he didn’t exist, but convincing us that clutch does.
