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 we'll look at the scorers, in various categories. 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) 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 33.3 27.4  Rose CHI 29.8 23.0  McGrady ORL 29.0 29.8  Pierce BOS 28.1 24.9  Iverson PHI 26.9 27.0  Allen MIL 26.7 23.1  Houston NY 26.7 22.8  Webber SAC 26.6 26.5  Mashburn NO 26.5 23.1  Billups DET 25.4 18.1

Kobe's numbers are a little inflated since Shaq was missing early on. Still, the top ten here are all ready to step up and take the make or break shot. Most prominent in the "ready for prime time" brigade is Chauncy Billups, whose field goal attempts per 48 minutes increased the most of any player in the league when the game was on the line (Rose was #2, Bryant #3, and 4th quarter wonder Earl Boykins was #4). Players who took far fewer shots include Nesterovic, Cliff Robinson, Ilgauskas, Hamilton, Wesley and Brad Miller.

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  McGrady ORL 37.7 39.4  Bryant LAL 37.3 35.0  O'Neal LAL 36.3 35.1  Billups DET 35.6 24.8  Allen SEA 34.9 28.7  Rose CHI 34.6 26.4  Marbury PHO 34.2 27.0  Pierce BOS 33.8 32.0  Nowitzki DAL 33.6 31.2  Duncan SA 33.1 28.8  Iverson PHI 32.8 31.5  Francis HOU 31.2 24.9  Arenas GS 31.2 25.3  Houston NY 30.6 28.7  Webber SAC 30.5 28.5  Garnett MIN 30.4 27.5  Jordan WAS 30.3 26.3  Allen MIL 30.3 28.8  Malone UTA 30.1 27.6  Mashburn NO 30.0 25.7  Boykins GS 30.0 22.2

We've listed the top 20 scorers (okay, top 21, we wanted to give Boykins his due) and the names that make the grade read like the proverbial who's who of the NBA. Two of the top three guys being Lakers makes you realize why Los Angeles has held the championship trophy aloft in three of the past four years -- crunch time scorers are a necessity in the playoffs, and not many teams have the luxury of having two such complementary inside-outside giants. Of course, the Lakers have now added the #19 clutch scorer of last season, Karl Malone, to the mix. It will definitely be something to figure out for Phil Jackson/Gary Payton -- who gets the ball in the late stages. Billups shows up big here too, foreshadowing some of his playoff feats, particularly against the Sixers. And Michael Jordan still had a little of the magic left for Washington.

Who's missing? No Nets (Kidd was #34), Pacers (O'Neal was #32), or Blazers (Anderson best at #35 with Wallace #42). Of course, it's another study in itself to determine whether teams are better off having one clear cut go-to-guy or sharing the ball among several capable scorers.

Which players raised their scoring averages the most? Billups, Rose, Terry, Boykins, Alvin Williams, Marbury, Gill, Francis, Snow, Allen.

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  O'Neal LAL 56.9% 57.4%  Nowitzki DAL 56.1% 51.4%  Terry ATL 54.8% 49.5%  Marion PHO 53.9% 50.0%  Nash DAL 53.5% 51.4%  Garnett MIN 53.4% 50.8%  Redd MIL 52.6% 55.9%  Snow PHI 51.5% 45.6%  Robinson ATL 50.6% 46.8%  Marbury PHO 50.6% 46.7%

Shaq remains the best in the league at putting the ball in the basket at a high rate. The competition's catching up with him and Nowitzki posted some nice crunch time numbers. Terry's stats are boosted by some hot three point shooting, and some other notable shooters moved into the top ten. On the other side were the players whose offensive touch seemed to fail them in the crucial moments. Oftentimes it's a case of simply trying to do too much -- feeling a need to take the game over yourself can lead to forcing bad shots.

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  O'Neal LAL 32.9% 21.9%  Gasol MEM 20.2% 17.2%  Miller LAC 19.5% 14.1%  Duncan SA 19.5% 16.2%  Francis HOU 19.3% 14.7%  Artest IND 18.5% 15.7%  Wells POR 18.2% 11.8%  Snow PHI 17.6% 14.2%  O'Neal IND 16.4% 15.3%  Brand LAC 16.3% 14.5%

Ah yes, hack-a-Shaq in action. It is all quite logical in light of O'Neal being the top effective Field Goal percentage player and at the same time a mediocre free throw shooter (58.5% in crunch time during the regular season). Smaller players not afraid to go into traffic show up well in this category (e.g. Francis, Miller, Snow, Wells) and those types are usually very reliable at the line. The "unstoppable" post-up powerhouse types also get their share of calls.

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  MillerR IND 100.0% 89.4%  Marion PHO 94.1% 85.1%  Nash DAL 93.5% 91.2%  Terry ATL 92.9% 88.7%  Boykins GS 91.7% 86.5%  Brown NO 91.2% 83.6%  Allen SEA 90.9% 92.0%  Butler MIA 90.2% 82.7%  Miller IND 90.0% 82.7%  Piatkowski LAC 90.0% 82.8%

We'll confess to rigging this a little -- we had set the minimum attempts to 20 free throws, but dropped it a notch when we saw Reggie Miller was a perfect 19 for 19 in the clutch. All of the leaders were solid free throw shooters to begin with. Perhaps more interesting is which players falter: Antoine Walker, Chris Webber, David Robinson, Gary Payton, Nick Van Exel, Ilgauskas, and Lamar Odom are some of the players whose charity stripe shooting was noticeably worse under pressure.

6) Points per 100 Possessions
Finally we come to the number that many NBA sabermetricians are fond of, namely 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 algorithm. For now though, we'll stick with the convention.

Points per 100 Possessions # Player Team Clutch All 1  Nowitzki DAL 129.3   114.0   2  Marion PHO 126.2   111.2   3  O'Neal LAL 123.7   122.3   4  Snow PHI 119.4   96.6   5  Redd MIL 116.2   120.2   6  Brand LAC 115.9   118.7   7  Williamson DET 113.9   104.8   8  Nash DAL 113.1   106.1   9  Garnett MIN 112.6   111.1   10  Billups DET 112.1   105.9   11  O'Neal IND 110.7   109.1   12  Lewis SEA 110.2   108.2   13  Malone UTA 109.7   100.5   14  Marbury PHO 109.5   92.6   15  Stackhouse WAS 109.4   96.9   16  Duncan SA 107.6   110.1   17  Jamison GS 107.5   107.7   18  Terry ATL 107.4   94.0   19  Mobley HOU 107.3   100.3   20  Cassell MIL 106.9   103.4   21  Boykins GS 105.5   102.6   22  Abdur-Rahim ATL 104.4   108.2   23  Francis HOU 103.2   98.6   24  Williams TOR 102.7   94.3   25  Robinson ATL 101.7   92.9   26  Van Horn PHI 101.5   108.5   27  Gasol MEM 100.8   111.0   28  Hudson MIN 99.1   93.9   29  Wells POR 97.5   90.6   30  Miller LAC 96.9   89.0   31  McGrady ORL 96.8   108.1   32  Jordan WAS 96.4   92.6   33  Sprewell NY 95.6   89.8   34  Wallace POR 95.6   106.0   35  Webber SAC 95.0   92.3

While we are hampered by the limited amount of time players were in clutch situations by our definitions, consequently yielding small sample sizes in some areas, when all things are considered a strong case can be made for Dirk Nowitzki as being the best clutch scorer during the regular season last year. Nowtizki doesn't take as many crunch time shots as some, because Dallas has so many other options, but his effective field goal percentage was #2 in the league, he hit 88% of his free throws, he could drill a three-pointer when needed, his points per possession was tops, and the Mavs certainly won a lot of games. Yet for us ultimately the choice remains the same as it has been for some time: Shaquille O'Neal. Free throw shooting aside, no one comes close to scaring defenses like Shaq, and there are key areas where he rates head and shoulders above Nowitzki -- when the shot clock is running down, Nowitzki was only a 43.3% effective shooter compared to Shaq's 54.5%, more of Shaq's baskets are unassisted, meaning he creates his own points more often, and finally when you need the unstoppable shot, the power slam, there's no one even close (19% of O'Neal's clutch shots are dunks, half of them unassisted). There are other fine players, and it will be interesting to do this same exercise looking at the playoff stats, but for now go with the player who is the class of the league. But then, you didn't need all these stats to tell you that!