Harden scores a lot of points in the clutch, but his percentages are not that good. He's 3rd in points in the last 5 minutes of close games, but shoots 42.9%. Of course that's better than a lot of guys, like Durant, George, and Curry.
Harden is the best driver and scorer to the rim in the final moments. You know how the team doesn't set up the best solid and legal picks for the drive for Lin. Well they have to concentrate on making it easier for Harden to get to the rim or get a good open shot.
This is filtering by points, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Someone could be in a lot more situations that qualify as clutch, be terribly inefficient and can rank high. Have to have some other filters and maybe also look at FG%. With filters of min 3 GP, 1.5 FGA avg., and 15 min+, the top guard picks (FG% obviously skewed toward PFs/Cs) are Tony Parker and then Lebron James. Harden drops closer to #15 total, but out of wings, he's #8. TP and LBJ is where it's at. On nearly 2 FGA avg. (Harden is 2.2), TP is scoring at a 63% clip! LBJ is 52% on 2.5 FGA. Of course, points still matter as Harden shoots a lot of 3's and takes a lot of FTs in the clutch. Trying to figure out the best way to get the best notion of clutch, but don't know if I have the time to mess around on the site haha. I know that's what nba.com and some other sites (and even espn) uses to define clutch, but I feel like that is not what most fans think of when you ask whether a player is clutch or not. While it dwindles down the sample size quite a bit, games where a team is down by 3 (so 1 possession) in the last minute (filter of GP at least 10), you actually get Kemba Walker as #1 haha, but otherwise it's then Kyrie, LBJ and Harden. %'s are atrocious though... Interestingly enough, under this setup, if I do it by FG% and >0.4 FGA (arbitrary cutoff but wanted to get rid of those 0.1 FGA people with 100%'s), TP again is the top wing and 2nd overall. So Harden seems pretty clutch, but is aight on efficiency and his efficiency drops quite a bit as the game gets closer. He relies on FTs and 3's to generate his 'clutch points'. TP, surprisingly as Spurs always fly under the radar, is probably my pic for most clutch player just based on his overall performance under multiple filters. So quietly clutch...
He already has 2 gamewinners. 3 if you include the clutch 3 he hit against the Spurs with a minute left to tie it up.
