12-31-2021, 11:13 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-31-2021, 11:13 AM by BackToSquareOne.)
(12-30-2021, 04:20 PM)mavsluvr Wrote: Mavs were tied for 11th last season in clutch games, going 18-15. Iirc, this got better as the season wore on, and the Mavs were considered good clutch performers when the playoffs rolled around.
"Clutch time" is defined as the last five minutes of a game when a team is leading or trailing by five points or fewer.
In overtime games, the last five minutes of regulation count, as well as all overtime periods.
This is an NBA definition. If you would like to examine them a little further, separate stats are kept on these periods. For example, you could find them under Clutch Stats on nba.com.
Thanks for the answer. I didn't find the Clutch stats pages too useful as I couldn't figure out how to extract a list of a single team's clutch games from that page ... but that's almost undoubtedly a lolBTSO thing.
I did, however, hack through the Mavs game pages and that was quite interesting. It certainly is true that the Mavs have recently lost to the Nets, Lakers and, latterly, Kings in extremely close late-game situations in the last couple of week.
Moreover, to have any serious thoughts I think one would have to do some scripting and really look across the whole league and several seasons. Nevertheless, just looking at the 'clutch' games the Mavs have been involved in this year the main determinant of who wins the game appears to be who was leading with 5 minutes to go. (Which really shouldn't be a surprise, I suppose.)
Admittedly, I didn't get much feel for creation/lack-of-creation (for Mavs and opponents) so far, so this could well be an important factor, particularly in "really" close games. (I don't have a definition of that. Maybe something to do with lead changes in the the last 5 minutes - or one possession games??? fwiw, nba.com let's one sort the 'clutch' stats with 5 replaced by any number from 0-4.)