Mavs fans do. I do because I live here. I remember the last game of the season like it was yesterday. If the Mavs beat the GSW then the Clips would make the playoffs and get the 8th spot. If the Mavs lost then GSW would get that spot. Avery chose to rest his players in that game and the rest is history. I and some others felt he should have played them and attempted to spank the GSW out of that 8th spot so they could get the Clippers because the Warriors OWNED the Mavs that season. It was ridiculous.
we don't know how impressive an 82% TS% is unless we see the leaders. When you factor in FTs, I'm sure there are many guys off the charts in the last minute...like a Nash type who gets the ball when up and just gets fouled a lot.
yeah, but it gets seriously skewed in the last minute, because some guys are only shooting FTs to preserve wins.
You are right. But it's usually the players who handle the ball (PG, SG, SF) that get fouled at those situations. Yao was our best FT shooter, but he seldom got the ball because he's just not fast enough and didn't have good handles. I don't have the numbers. My guess would be that Dirk doesn't shoot a lot of intentional foul shots for the same reason. I am no Mavs fan and don't watch a lot of their games in the regular season. But I have to admit that Dirk has been among the top elite players in this year's playoffs. It's amazing how Kobe hasn't made one single clutch shot in the whole playoffs and people still say, "I'd give Kobe the ball if I needed one shot to win the game." Reputation and past glory (or chokiness) so often skew our perception.
As a german I´d have to say... I never considered him a clutch player. More a guy that plays really well the whole game but passes the ball at the end. Having said that - he`s playing phenomenal playoffs this year! If he can finish it off and finally win a title we can talk again about him being a clutch player.
Easy, Remember, FTs don't count as FGAs. I'm pretty sure Nowitzki and every prime-time player gets way more FTs per minute in the last minute than any other time of the game. I'd be willing to bet it is a factor of 2 or more FTs/min in the last two minutes than any other two minute span. In fact, I will bet that the leader in clutch time TS% is greater than 100%. Think about that for a second.
Imagine if Dirk and Dwight were on the same team? They would own the league. Dwight was at his best with Rashard at the 4, now imagine Dirk there instead. Since this is apparently now the era where the best players team up instead of compete against each other, I think I'd like to see Dirk and Dwight take down LBJ and Wade.
Again, if you are talking about intentional fouls at the last minute of games, the big men usually don't get the ball, and therefore would not be the ones that go to the FT line a lot. If you are talking about in general, the elite players get fouled more in crunch time, then yeah, you are probably right simply because they are the go-to guys. I don't think teams foul more in those situations. It's just that the usage of elite players goes up in crunch time. But then, their shot attempts would go up too. In other words, there is no reason the FT:FGA ratio would go up. Unless you are thinking about them being more aggressive going to the basket?
i don't know what time and score parameters this article used, but a quick glance at 82games.com's clutch stats (5 minutes, +/- 5 points) would indicate that fta/fga definitely go up, but it varies from person to person. kobe and rose who would almost certainly be the "intentional foul" guys on their team were only around .5 fta/fga, but lebron, ginobili, billups are very close to 1 fta/fga and kevin martin is actually slightly over 1. however, that doesn't change the fact that getting a TS% of 82.5 is hard and going over 100% on any significant number of possessions is extremely hard. you have to hit all of your 2's, 2/3 of your 3's, and 88% of your ft's (or some combination thereof) to get to 100%. and even a huge number of free throws and making them all still requires ridiculous shooting from the field to do it. for example, in game 1 against portland (which appears to account for a lot of dirk's "clutch" points), using under 5/within 5 clutch parameters, dirk took 3 shots and hit 2 and took a whopping 7 free throws and hit them all for 12 points and still only got a TS% of 98.7%. it would appear he took 6 more shots and 7 more free throws for the other 13 points, for a TS% of 71.6% in non-portland game 1 clutch situations.
