I think if could have been 3 rings in a row as LB would have been retained despite the Cavs and NY papers tampering and I think we would have gotten by the fake Heat team and Mavs that year.

Agree here...case in point last night in game between the knicks and the Trailblazers. the Knicks had literally 5 chances to win that game in regulation, as they blew a six point lead with less than 90 seconds as Jamal Crawford came down and shot 5 straight long jumpers/bricks instead of driving or passing to Zack for a possible and one sitution. Yep you guessed it, they lost in OT as Crawford continued shooting before Nate robinson decided to take a few higher percentage shots by penetrating. Yeah Zeke trusts Crawford to take that shot, but if you are off, find somebody else....or a decoy.

Maybe I can settle this.

In the playoffs last year, in the 4th quarter or overtime, with less than 5 minutes left and neither team ahead by more than 5 points...

Here is how Ginobili got er done.

64% of his FGA's were jumpshots and he shot an eFG of 21%. Nasty.
35% were in the paint and he shot 50%.
So, overall, just 31.8% FG% in crunch time.
He drew fouls 21% of the time.
Did he drive and kick? Not really. 2 assists and 5 turnovers.

Here is what Parker did.

58% of his FGA's were jumpshots and he shot an eFG of 64%!
42% were in the paint and he shot 60%
He also drew fouls 20% of the time.
3 assists 2 for 3-pointers and 1 for a dunk) and 0 turnovers.


In last year's playoffs, Parker was the man in crunch time. Great balance between draining jumpers and driving. He wasn't really getting fouled a ton, but he was converting when he got inside.


Duncan? He was good too.
57% of his crunch-time hoops were in the paint and he shot 50% of them while getting fouled 26% of the time.


What about the Pistons?

Sheed was a horror show.
He took 26 crunch time shots in the playoffs last year. Unfortunately for us, 93% of them were jump shots and he hit an eFG of .269. Zero offensive rebounds in 32 chances. He did get fouled a lot (I'm assuming he was in the post for those...30% foul drawing).

What about Mr. Big Shot?

Chauncey lived up to his nickname.
78% jumpers at a .571 clip.
22% inside at .500.
18% foul drawing.
13 total crunch time shot attempts


Other Pistons:
Rip shot .583 on 14 attempts/ got fouled 1 time
Prince was 1 for 7 = .167
Webber was 5 for 5 = one hundred percent baby
McDyess was 1 for 2
Delfino was 0 for 1
Hunter was 0 for 1


After looking at all of this, my conclusion is that Sheed is not very clutch, yet he takes a disproportionate number of the shots in crunch time.

69 total FGA's during crunchtime in the playoffs last year for us and Sheed took over 33% of them... and of course bricked most of them. A 7 footer on the 3-point line... of course you're going to be open dude. All that talk about saving his body from the banging of the regular season? Well, habits are hard to shake in crunch time.

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"I don't think MC is going to allow us to shoot as many jumpers." Tayshaun Prince.

Recall, it was the JUMPER from Outlaw that sent the game into overtime, as the Knicks cut off Roy's driving lane (as most defenses will do to guys not named Kobe, Lebron or DWade) and he had to kick it to Outlaw- who's been pretty clutch for those guys this season. Reality of the matter is that to win a close ball game a player has to be able to hit a clutch jumper or 2 or 3 down the stretch to win close ball game, even a contested J - with a hand in the face.

I just want to add one more player to the "clutch" analysis.

Lebron James.

I didn't know this would be the case, but after looking at his numbers in the playoffs last year, I have to conclude that LJ was the clutchest of them all. But even Lebron took mostly jump shots.

Shooting:
72% of his crunch time shots were jumpers... and 85% of those were self-created (i.e. not assisted). He shot .577 on those shots. Incredible average since his average on jump shots this season is only .388. We got bamboozled by a hot shooting Lebron.

Driving:
He got into the paint 28% of the time and shot .600 from there.

Getting fouled:
He got fouled 20% of the time, which is in line with other crunch time starts, including Chauncey. He only made 16 out of 25 free throws.

Passing:
But the real key is his assist to turnover ratio of "undefined". I'm assuming that a great number of his assists were after he started driving. He had 14 assists and 0 turnovers in crunchtime.

All in all, he took an incredible number of crunchtime shots, 54. Pavlovich and Hughes each got off 13 shots. Ilgauskas 11. And it looks like they made the right decision calling Lebron's number over and over.

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"I don't think MC is going to allow us to shoot as many jumpers." Tayshaun Prince.

????? The Pistons lost in 2005 with LB at the helm.

Somebody please define "clutch" for me.

I understand "choke" perfectly well, but the idea that players become better than usual during key moments seems suspicious as all hell. I believe that they react to the defensive schemes that are played, and no more.

Yeah but I was taking into consideration you and buddha's previous post that if Sheed had done his job defensively in game 5. against Horry.....we would have won that one and the next with LB

If LB had left McDyess in the game with 4 fouls in Game 7 instead of benching him in favor of smallball (to finish the game with 4 fouls) at a point when we were up what? 8, 9 points?, we would have won the series, too.

There's plenty of blame to go around and LB himself certainly isn't blameless.

That said, I'd take Brown over Saunders any day of the week and twice on game days.

Yeah, there are lots of teams thinking "what-if", though....