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?

First up are the shooters. Please note that in all cases we define clutch moments in a game as those in the fourth quarter or overtime when neither team has a lead of more than five points.

1) Effective Field Goal Percentage
The casual NBA fan would probably start and stop any analysis with points scored, 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.

Effective Field Goal percentage is better than a straight FG% since it adjusts for three-point shots using this formula: eFG = FG Points / (FGA x 2)

# Player Team FGM FGA FG% eFG% 1 Miller IND 13 27 48% 72% 2 Kirilenko UTA 19 31 61% 66% 3 Ming HOU 19 29 66% 66% 4 Armstrong NOH 20 40 50% 64% 5 Dampier GSW 14 22 64% 64% 6 Johnson IND 16 30 53% 63% 7 Williams MEM 11 23 48% 63% 8 Taylor HOU 21 34 62% 62% 9 James BOS 20 43 47% 62% 10 Houston NYK 34 63 54% 60% 11 Lenard DEN 11 23 48% 59% 12 Wesley NOH 17 37 46% 58% 13 Jamison DAL 18 31 58% 58% 14 Stoudamire POR 20 42 48% 57% 15 Bell UTA 25 50 50% 57% 16 Stojakovic SAC 25 52 48% 57% 17 Richardson LAC 12 23 52% 57% 18 Radmanovic SEA 14 33 42% 56% 19 Hughes WAS 25 47 53% 55% 20 Rose TOR 14 31 45% 55% Minimum: 20 FGA

What do you know! Legendary clutch shooter Reggie Miller has the highest eFG so far in the 03-04 season, at a whopping 72%. Amazingly, all of Reggie's made buckets have been 3's. The Pacers have a number of good options in crunch-time: PG Anthony Johnson is #6 in the league, and Artest is #21 at 55%. While Jermaine O'Neal has only hit 39% of his clutch shots, he's clearly drawing the defense and leaving the outside shooters open. Andrei Kirilenko shows up in yet another stat leader category, adding fuel to his MVP credentials. He has also hit 23 of 27 clutch time free throws (85%) and drawn fouls on over 22% of his shot attempts. Yao Ming has shown a nice touch in critical moments, although he doesn't get the ball enough (but does draw fouls on 31% of his attempts).

What we're seeing in the table above though is that it's dominated not by the top 20 scorers overall, but more the second and third options on teams, who benefit from the defenses being so focused on the go-to guy that their are open shots available. Stoyakovic does crack the top twenty and currently ranks as the league's #2 scorer overall, and league #15 Houston also maintains an excellent "in the clutch" eFG percentage.

2) Points per 100 Possession
The number that many NBA sabermetricians are fond of is a player's points per possession. An accepted formula for calculating possessions amounts to Field Goal Attempts minus Offensive Rebounds plus Turnovers plus Free Throw line trips earned. We believe there is some inherent unfairness in this scheme on many levels (i.e. a bad pass costs you, an assist gets you nothing...or giving free possessions to prodigious no-shoot offensive rebounders) that we will be correcting with our own full scale algorithms later on. For now though, we'll stick with the convention.

We'll claim a foul on top-rated Chris Bosh -- sure he's a phenomenal talent, but his numbers in this arena are inflated due to some mighty work on the offensive glass, collecting 21 O Rebounds. Kirilenko gets our vote for top offensive clutch player to this stage of the season.

Under-rated Larry Hughes has been one of the few bright spots for the Wizards this year, while Stoyakovic has the most free throws made without a miss at a perfect 24 for 24.

Zach Randolph is certainly making a case for All-Star status this year, and his clutch play has him as the #10 most efficent offensive player.

Shaq hasn't been up to the level of last year's best clutch player label, but despite a 46% eFG number, since he's doing reasonably well at the line and gets fouled so often he's still a solid option down the stretch.

Finally with this setup you really want to give some extra credit for assists, and we can't overlook Nick Van Exel's incredible 15 assists to 1 turnover performance thus far.

Next time we'll come back with the other side of the coin! A look at the top defensive "in the clutch" players...