LeBron James has been a lightning rod for criticism throughout his NBA career, and some of it has been well-deserved. His willingness to defer to others at crucial moments in games in the interest of making the right “basketball play” has led to talking heads suggesting that he is not a clutch player.
After last Friday night’s loss to the Toronto Raptors, where James had a chance to tie or win the game for the Cleveland Cavaliers late in the fourth quarter and missed a shot, ESPN’s Marc Stein came out with the following nugget.
Late LeBron miss in Toronto left him 5-for-47 over last 10 seasons on game-tying or go-ahead FGs in last five seconds of fourth quarter & OT
— Marc Stein (@ESPNSteinLine) February 29, 2016
That 10.6 success rate is roughly half the league-wide rate (22.6 percent) in the same situations over the same span. For a further, individual comparison, Kobe Bryant is 13-for-48 (27.1 percent) on those same clutch shots over the last 10 seasons. So Bryant, even in decline over the last few seasons, has been almost three times as clutch as James over the last decade.
For those that want to dismiss James as a star who shrinks from big moments, the numbers show his lack of success when his team needs him to come through. Stein found it, as anyone could on Basketball Reference.com, and I assume he was offering it as simple fact without malicious intent. There’s definite proof that James fails a lot in crunch time, but I would also point toward the volume of shots he takes in those situations as proof he does not necessarily shrink in critical moments.
