Any basketball fan worth his hops loves watching a close game in the waning minutes. A task for us number crunchers to investigate, is which players excel when games are on the line?

Please note that we are defining clutch moments in a game as:
the last five minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime when neither team has a lead of more than five points.

1) Field Goals Attempted
"Hold on," you're saying, "I don't rank great clutch shooters by who takes the most shots!" Well, actually the number of attempted shots in crunch time is an important indicator of a player's pressure ability. The great ones (and some of the not so great ones) want the ball in the endgame, but we can also find a fair number of guys who jack it up without a thought in the early stages of a game but suddenly are passing the rock when it matters the most.

Field Goals Attempts per 48 Minutes Player Team Clutch All  Bryant LAL 35.2 23.5  Richardson GS 34.7 24.5  O'Neal IND 30.3 26.7  Francis ORL 29.9 21.9  Cassell MIN 28.9 21.3  Marbury NY 28.3 18.9  Webber SAC 27.9 26.4  Iverson PHI 27.8 27.2  McGrady HOU 27.8 24.4  Gordon CHI 27.7 25.5

The top ten here are all ready to step up and take the make or break shot. While the cynic would say that the best way to get a reputation as a clutch scorer is to take a lot of shots (after all, you are bound to make some of them), the fact these guys can take so many shots indicates that the coaching staff and their teammates do to some extent believe they are the go-to guys, and more importantly, they can create their own shots. Three players on this list increase their FGA per 48 by more than nine shots (and are the NBA "leaders" in that area) -- Bryant, J-Rich, and Marbury.

Notable players who have shied away from taking the clutch shots, or at least deferred to teammates, include Chris Bosh (-10.9 fewer attempts per 48 minutes), Troy Murphy (-10.3), Emeka Okafor (-9.1), Josh Howard (-7.7), Mo Peterson (-7.5), Ben Wallace (-7.0), and Amare Stoudemire (-7.0).

2) Points Scored
All right, we've had the appetizer, let's turn to the main dish: points scored per 48 minutes of clutch floor time. Some guys do it from outside, some drive the lane, other take a pass and dunk it. The best also get to the line for some charity stripe points. It all counts!

Points Scored per 48 Minutes Player Team Clutch All  Bryant LAL 46.3 32.4  Gordon CHI 45.5 30.3  Francis ORL 43.5 27.6  O'Neal IND 43.1 33.5  Nowitzki DAL 42.7 32.2  Ginobili SA 41.6 25.7  Wade MIA 41.4 29.6  Richardson GS 41.3 28.2  Nash PHO 39.5 22.4  Stoudemire PHO 38.9 34.8  Hughes WAS 38.1 27.6  Arenas WAS 37.5 29.9  Rose TOR 36.2 26.0  Redd MIL 36.1 28.6  Cassell MIN 35.3 24.3  Marbury NY 34.9 25.3  Stackhouse DAL 34.8 24.3  Iverson PHI 34.3 34.4  Boykins DEN 33.8 22.5  Kidd NJ 33.5 18.1  Smith NO 33.3 19.1  Randolph POR 33.2 26.0  Billups DET 33.2 21.5  James CLE 32.9 30.0  McGrady HOU 32.0 28.8

We've listed the top 25 scorers and the names that make the grade read like the proverbial who's who of the NBA. These numbers it might be added are not 'pace adjusted' so some of the run-and-gun teams help their players a little in this kind of look. There at the top of the list is the player who would win a fans poll of "most clutch"...yes, Kobe. Of course as we alluded to in the first table, the number of shots taken has something to do with the number of points you score, and Bryant's .337 FG% in the clutch this season, doesn't exactly scream "best!" to us. Let Kobe have his due though, he does score more points per minute in the clutch than any other player this season, although Ben Gordon, who looks like a shoe-in for the sixth man award, is challenging for the top honors and could pass Bryant by year end. Most of these players are perimeter types with excellent abilities to create their own shot, drive to the hoop, hit the three pointer, and when all else fails, draw the foul. In terms of which players increase their scoring output the most from normal minutes to clutch minutes, it's Nash (+17.1), Ginobili (+15.9), Francis (+15.9), Kidd (+15.4), and the aforementioned Gordon (+15.4).

The players who saw their scoring rates decline the most, include Troy Murphy (-15.7), Joe Johnson (-13.3), Mohammed with NY (-13.2), Mike James (-12.0), Bogans (-11.6), Bosh (-11.5), Mihm (-11.0), Kirilenko (-10.7), Wesley with HOU (-10.5), and Brand (-10.2).

3) Effective Field Goal Percentage
The casual NBA fan would probably stop the analysis with points, but we are NBA stat junkies. That and we don't think pure points per minute gets at who is ultimately the best crunchtime scorer. A selfish player who elects to take all the shots (even ill-advised ones) might put up some numbers without actually helping his team.

Best Effective Field Goal % Player Team Clutch All  Stoudemire PHO 80.0% 56.6%  Griffin MIN 72.2% 44.8%  Atkins LAL 72.0% 53.3%  Evans SAC 70.0% 50.2%  Terry DAL 69.2% 58.0%  Gooden CLE 68.8% 50.5%  Marshall TOR 68.1% 55.8%  Williams MEM 66.7% 50.5%  Bowen SA 66.7% 52.4%  Haywood WAS 66.7% 56.4%

Well, this is a suprising list -- particularly the presence of the three-point specialists, who apparently stand behind the line and wait for the go-to guy to make his move and then kick it out to them for an open shot. Some of the sample sizes are tiny, but it does look like NBA teams are catching on to how effective an open three-pointer can be (if the ball is in the right hands). Since defenses tend to focus so much on the star clutch performers, it makes sense that the supporting characters could get good looks -- and probably should be given more opportunities!

The guys who increase their shooting the most in the clutch are Stoudemire (+23%), Evans (+20%), Boykins (+20%), Atkins (+19%), and Gooden (+18%). On the other hand, the players with the biggest drop-off in clutch time accuracy are Mike James (-33%), Joe Johnson (-33%), Troy Murphy (-31%), Battier (-30%), and Deng (-30%). Again the shot attempts are very limited though in many cases.

4) Foul Drawing Ability
Field goal percentages are not the complete story either. The tough inside players earn a lot of their points the hard way: drawing a usually punishing foul and converting the free throws.

Foul Drawing on Shot Attempts Player Team Clutch All  Bosh TOR 39.1% 20.1%  Stoudemire PHO 39.0% 23.0%  Collins NJ 38.9% 15.4%  Haywood WAS 33.3% 22.6%  Ratliff POR 30.0% 17.4%  Foyle GS 30.0% 9.6%  O'Neal MIA 29.5% 23.3%  Ginobili SA 28.6% 15.4%  Odom LAL 26.7% 15.3%  B.Wallace DET 26.7% 16.0%

It used to be that Shaquille was the runaway leader here thanks to hack-a-Shaq in action, but with his lesser role on offense in the clutch this season with Miami, a number of other players getting perhaps a dose of the "O'Neal treatment" have pulled ahead. It's also likely a big factor is the guys who don't take shots often other than on follow-ons to offensive rebounds get hacked a lot. Smaller players not afraid to go into traffic are a rarity this season although not in past years, so Ginobili gets kudos for his excellent foul-drawing, and he is of course also very reliable at the line.

5) Free Throw Shooting
You can't look at foul drawing without a similar review of which players could brush aside the noise, the pressure, the fans waving strange floppy souvenir things, and calmly sink clutch shots from the line.

Free Throw Shooting Player Team Clutch All  Stojakovic SAC 95% 92%  Iverson PHI 92% 83%  Okur UTA 91% 86%  Rose TOR 91% 85%  Croshere IND 90% 88%  Billups DET 90% 90%  Hamilton DET 90% 90%  Maggette LAC 89% 86%  Redd MIL 89% 85%  Nowitzki DAL 88% 86%

We set a minimum here of 20 attempts, and Peja's 19 of 20 is the high mark at this stage. You think it helps Detroit to have two guys who don't miss down the stretch? All of the leaders were solid free throw shooters to begin with. Some players who have been better at the charity stripe in the crucial moments include Duncan, Iverson, Boozer, Wade, LeBron, Hughes, Odom and Kidd. However, the numbers lack statistical significance in most cases, so we are better off looking to put together a multi-year study to determine clutch free throw shooting.

Perhaps more interesting is which players falter: Gasol, Andre Miller, Simmons, Grant Hill, Bibby, Jefferson, Atkins, Yao Ming, and Stackhouse have been noticeably worse under pressure this season.

6) Who is the best Clutch Scorer?
The number that many NBA sabermetricians are fond of, namely a player's points per possession, is something we could present to try and answer this question. An accepted formula for calculating possessions amounts to Field Goal Attempts minus Offensive Rebounds plus Turnovers plus Free Throw line trips earned. However there is some inherent unfairness in this scheme on many levels (i.e. a bad pass costs you but an assist gets you nothing, giving free possessions to prodigious no-shoot offensive rebounders, not differentiating between whether the player created his own shot or was fed a 'gimme' dunk, usage levels and skill curves, etc) that have us refraining from taking this step at this moment.

Instead, we will be rolling out more articles on other areas of clutch play in the next few days, to better answer the real question of importance -- which players make the biggest difference in helping their teams win down the stretch of tight games -- to produce our take on who are the NBA's top clutch performers.

Also see the Clutch Players, part II article.