Is LeBron James a clutch player ?

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Is LeBron James a clutch player ?

  • Yes

    Votes: 3 16.7%
  • Yes, but Not in the Playoffs

    Votes: 1 5.6%
  • No

    Votes: 14 77.8%

  • Total voters
    18

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If you vote yes, you are just being a contrarian who doesnt watch the games
 

I'll be in the Bar..With my head on the Bar
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Just heard on the radio...He is 0-10 on game winning shots in playoff games.
 

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It all depends how you define "clutch"... I would say making a 3 with 30 seconds left to tie a game is as clutch as it gets. I would also say single handedly leading your team (the cavs) to an nba final is as clutch as it gets. But most would argue being clutch is only defined by game winning shots which is just silly. They would rather a player go 1-15 in a game with that 1 being the game winner.
 

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Not even close, IMO. He cannot shoot very well and to me, that is one of the main criterion of being a clutch player.
 

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Clutch or not, of the 450 players in the NBA, he is the best, and would be the #1 pick of 95% of GM's if they were starting a team today.
 

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Kinda unfair to say he definitively isn't clutch yet.

He is only 27. He has only been on a good team 2 years of his career (Those Cle teams he absolutely carried, including to the finals with 48pts in game 5 @Det in 07)

Can't we wait 3-4 years to decide on this?
 
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Is LeBron James “clutch”? As Game 4 showed, the answer is complicated

Boston Celtics, Eastern Conference Finals, LeBron James, Miami Heat | Comments
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LeBron James had some good and bad moments down the stretch of the Heat’s loss in Game 4. (Damian Strohmeyer/SI)

It is simultaneously the most fascinating and tiresome debate in the NBA: Is LeBron James “clutch”?
First, the entire concept of “clutch” is overblown for two reasons:
1. The first 45 minutes of an NBA game matter. Focusing only on “crunch time” is arbitrary and ignores the fact that every possession is meaningful. If your favorite team lays an egg on defense in the first half, that matters, even if it rallies in the second half.
2. There is a great deal of randomness in “clutch” statistics over the long haul. Sort the data by individual player or team, and you’ll see that year over year, these things swing wildly. Paul Pierce is monstrously clutch one season and a choke artist the next — by the numbers, anyway. The Lakers were shaky in the “clutch” last season but emerged as the league’s best clutch offense this season — right up until they went off the rails against the Thunder in the second round of the playoffs.
Where is the hard truth here? Is there any?
The same confusion can make it hard to judge individual “clutch” performances, an unfortunate obsession among NBA fans and talk-show pundits. James missed a potential game-winning shot in Game 4 on Sunday in Boston and threw several passes that appeared to be of the dreaded “hot-potato” variety. A certain subset of fans will thus brand the performance as “unclutch.”
The great and horrible thing about basketball is that it is complicated. What appeared to happen on a key possession might not be what you see once you take the time to re-watch the same possession three and four times. These judgments are important, in that they inform our collective evaluation of a player and play a part in deciding his place in NBA history.
With this in mind, here’s my attempt to do a play-by-play evaluation of LeBron’s performance in “crunch time” of Miami’s Game 4 loss. We’ll start with his miss with 3:17 left in the fourth quarter:
The Heat run a James/Dwyane Wade pick-and-roll, which they leaned on more than ever in Game 4. The plays draws a favorable switch, with the small and hobbled Ray Allen taking on LeBron. James does what all the screamers ask of him: He blows by an overmatched opponent, drives to the rim and tries a difficult attacking shot over a rotating defender (Kevin Garnett). It misses, mostly because the Celtics are barely guarding Miami’s weak-side players, allowing Garnett to rotate early. James might have been able to thread a pass to Mario Chalmers in the left corner, but it would have been a tough play.
Next Miami possession: James posts up Mickael Pietrus, draws an immediate nonshooting foul and makes two free throws. Ho-hum. Does it say something that Miami plays through James in the post for big chunks of crunch time?
The Heat did so on the next possession, and here is where the critics find fault with James:
This is a straight-up isolation for James. He faces up, holds the ball for about two seconds, backs down Pietrus and then turns toward the defense in the middle before kicking the ball to Chalmers. Should James turn and go immediately, driving baseline on Pietrus and into certain help? Maybe. Does he do what he does because he’s “afraid to shoot” or “quaking in the moment”? Given what came before and after, it’s hard to make that argument.
Let’s bottle that and move on to the Heat’s next possession, an entire narrative arc unto itself:
There are two moments here that crystallize the complexity of both LeBron’s skills as a player and his crunch-time record. The first is right here, when Udonis Haslem secures an offensive rebound and kicks the ball to James:
In real time, I bet you shouted: “Attack the basket!” The Celtics’ defense appears to be in a bit of post-rebound chaos, and James has a tiny window in which he might be able to blow by Pierce. He decides to pull back and call for a Shane Battier screen, out of which he passes to Chalmers for a three-pointer.
Is that a “tentative” play or a smart one? It might be both. A more aggressive scorer probably would have gone at Pierce. But James has never been that sort of player, in “crunch time” or otherwise, and a careful look at that photo reveals that Boston’s defense is not as scrambled as it looked at first glance. Garnett, in particular, is lurking on the right edge of the paint, ready to pounce on any potential LeBron drive.
On to the pass to Chalmers: It certainly looks tentative, because LeBron has drawn Rajon Rondo on a switch. But freeze the play and you see what James sees:
Garnett is ignoring Haslem again, patrolling the right side of the lane for a potential drive. And Haslem, sensing he has to do something to remain relevant, nails Ray Allen with a back screen that springs Chalmers in the right corner. Chalmers is so open precisely because Garnett is sagging into the lane on LeBron duty.
Garnett can barely contest the shot. It is a clean look. So: Did LeBron make a “weak” play or a smart one?
The Heat rebound Chalmers’ miss. That leads to LeBron’s basically standing around on the right wing, with Garnett on him, as Wade and Chalmers do crazy things:
It’s easy to look at this and say that James did not want the ball here, except that on the start of this nutty trip, he attempted a wide-open corner three. LeBron attempted only 19 corner threes in the regular season, per NBA.com’s stats tool.
It’s amazing how much information this one possession contains. How do we even evaluate it?
LeBron finished regulation by making a monster game-tying three-pointer with 37 seconds left and passing to Haslem for a buzzer-beating heave. We can all agree, I hope, that the first is a pretty obviously successful clutch play. The second is a failure, but is James to blame? Here’s the play:
Boston does well to force James far beyond the three-point line on the catch, and as you can see, Garnett leaves Haslem the moment James receives the ball and finds that same spot on the left elbow. James is going to face a wall of defenders wherever he goes, and so he tries to create something else. It didn’t work.
On to overtime, which LeBron starts with this miss:
The book on LeBron — a book that is often accurate — is that he gives up the ball in crunch time the moment he sees a help defender coming. But here, he waits out Garnett’s help and launches a contested mid-range jumper. If there is a sin here, it is one of selfishness and a lack of creativity.
The “hot-potato” passes return on the next possession:
James draws Garnett on a switch via a Haslem pick-and-roll, a major thing, because it removes the Celtics’ only big help defender for any potential drive. But LeBron shows no interest in going that route, instead kicking the ball — twice — to Wade against Marquis Daniels. The play ends with a Wade miss and LeBron calling for the ball 28 feet from the basket, at the top of the arc, as if he were Kyle Korver.
There are legitimate questions to ask here. You would like to see LeBron make a threat of his driving ability against Garnett. You would also like to see Wade do a little more against Daniels.
LeBron looks frightened of the moment, but he took a jumper 30 seconds ago and attempted two straight to end regulation. He’s about to foul out of the game by barreling over Pietrus in an attempt to establish early post position. These are not things players do if they are afraid to shoot or get fouled, right? Is it possible that James’ fear, to the degree it exists, comes and goes? I have no clue.
It’s also important to note that James can create offense for others without even touching the ball. It’s a skill that doesn’t vanish in crunch time, provided James is willing to exploit it. On Miami’s next possession, the attention he demands rolling to the rim on a pick-and-roll with Wade draws Garnett from Haslem, allowing Haslem to blow by Garnett for a dunk:
Next: The alleged good and bad on LeBron, again all combined in one possession that ends with a Chalmers miss:
The critics: “LeBron passed the ball from the post to the three-point line right way! He’s a wimp!”
Maybe those critics are right. But in their rush to focus on the pass, they will miss LeBron’s aggressive cut from the top of the three-point arc down into the paint. It’s not the type of cut a player makes if he would prefer not to touch the ball in a scoring position. After the catch, James immediately reads that Chalmers’ man (Rondo) is behind him in the paint, meaning Chalmers must be open for a corner three — among the most efficient shots in the game.
So which is it: wimpy or smart?
And finally, before James’ departure, he gave us a shot that is both aggressive and tentative at once:
James once again draws a favorable match (with Daniels) on a switch via a pick-and-roll with Wade, and he posts up Daniels immediately. He catches the ball and instantly turns for a weird little push shot, the weirdness of which is clearly motivated by Garnett’s looming double team.
It misses short. There were lots of other options — a pass to Haslem, a turnaround jumper along the baseline, an attempt to pump-fake and draw a foul, or even holding the ball and seeing what the defense does in response. Are those better options than this shot?
Nine years into James’ career, we’re still getting a handle on whether he is “clutch.” We’ve seen him play enough big games that we can probably draw some conclusions:
• He melted down in the 2011 NBA Finals, and badly. He did not want the ball very often and was mostly content to float around the perimeter. It was ugly and strange, and it was also distinct from LeBron’s more run-of-the-mill “clutch” failures — the same sort that Wade suffered on Sunday.
• He will go through bouts of clear and obvious tentativeness, possessions on which he passes too readily. But he is such a clever passer that those passes will often be productive in ways even seasoned viewers will miss on first watch, as some dishes were in Game 4. We saw this as well during Miami’s Game 2 loss against the Pacers. He is never going to be an unconscious “crunch-time” gunner on the level of Wade or Kobe Bryant. Sometimes his team will be better for that, and sometimes it will be worse for it.
He will still score points, especially when his jumper is falling (ask the Bulls and Celtics about last season’s playoffs), and he has shown a willingness to work the post, crash the boards, cut to the rim and generally put himself in position to score or get fouled. These things are happening, but sometimes you have to look for them.
Is LeBron James “clutch”? The debate will rage on, because his record is complicated.


http://nba-point-forward.si.com/2012/06/04/lebron-james/
 

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Shouldn't be allowed to us Lebron and clutch in the same sentence.
 

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Going to play devils advocate here, but how many players who are not shooters are considered clutch? I am having a hard time thinking of any.... it seems like they have to have a jump shot shot to be in the clutch category?
and not that the 4th qtr is 'clutch' but wasnt it just season or 2 ago Lebron was avg 12pts in the 4th?
 

J-Man Rx NFL Pick 4 Champion for 2005
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Clutch or not, of the 450 players in the NBA, he is the best, and would be the #1 pick of 95% of GM's if they were starting a team today.

I'm not so sure that 95 % would choose LeBron over Durant. Durant seems to take over games. Also Durant shoots free throws at a high percentage which is critical to winning close games. I'm from Oregon and have been a Trailoblazer fan and can't believe that We passed on Michael Jordan for Bowie and now We passed on Durant to take Oden ?
 

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