"Clutch"ness is overrated

I have wanted to rant about this for a long time, so I apologize in advance if you read the anger that I felt while writing this post. Saying that a player is "clutch" is one of the most worn-out cliche expressions in all sports. It's supposed to be high praise to be known as clutch, because that implies that an athlete has performed well in the plays or game situations when the outcome of the competition is most directly affected. I am willing to accept that there is some legitimacy to this, but much less than most people think. Quite frankly, I want to pull my hair out of my head 99.99995% I hear it used in the context of sports journalism.

Sports, just like everything else, are subject to chance. Shots are made and missed, balls are caught and dropped, and contests are won and lost by the best and worst players/teams. Presumably, everyone within the area of top-level collegiate and professional sports is capable of performing well, and absolutely no one is perfect. The mediocre players/teams are separated from the good and great ones by looking at how they perform over a number of games/matches/situations. Specifically, a good player/team is, by definition, expected to prevail more times than a mediocre one in any given competition, provided that there is a big enough sample size.

One problem with the concept of "clutch" is exactly that: sample size. "Clutch" situations refer to those that have a directly causal impact on an important outcome, whether it is a single game, match, tournament, series, or championship. Games and seasons are long, so these moments are rare and brief by comparison. If you've ever learned anything about probability or statistics, you know that playing with sample size can drastically affect the conclusion you draw by analyzing a set of data. My point is that wacky stuff can and does happen in these relatively infrequent "clutch" situations, and people read too much into it.

Take Robert "Big Shot Bob" Horry, for example, who has been a mediocre-to-respectable basketball player over the course of his NBA career. What separates him from most mediocre-to-respectable players is that he has made game-winning shots in playoff contests, that have led to his teams advancing past their opponents, and eventually winning seven NBA titles. What most people find so amazing about this guy is that he can be so average during the regular season, or in quarters 1 through 3 1/2 of playoff games, and yet have the composure to sink a game winning three point shot, seemingly out of nowhere. This leads people to believe that there is something in his blood that gives him the propensity to literally become a better player when the game is on the line. Many people would even argue that he is more "clutch" than Michael Jordan, who was always great at making shots, no matter when it was during the game or season. I don't have the stats on this (does anybody know where to find them?), but I wouldn't be surprised if Horry has a better success rate when taking potential playoff game-winning shots than does Michael Jordan, who took a lot more of them.

With all due respect to Horry, whose long, successful career, amusingly enough, includes winning one more championship than Jordan, it is absolutely ludicrous to even entertain that he has been better than Jordan at any second or in any situation of any game ever. If I'm a coach with both men on my team, and my team is down by two with six seconds to go, I don't care if Jordan has the flu, a broken leg, Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, I'm getting him the ball ten times out of ten. Being the better shooter and all-around player, his chances of making the shot on any given attempt is much higher. What's that you say? Jordan is clutch too? Well, I guess you're right. To make my point stick, I'll even put Horry on the same team as Dirk Nowitzki, a great scorer throughout his career who has been ridiculed for the last few years about choking in big moments. Nowitzki is unquestionably the more talented scorer, because he performs better over a larger sample size, and I'm giving him the ball.

There is one more thing I want to say in response to all this clutch talk. Everyone wants to hate on A-Rod, because his career playoff numbers are noticeably less impressive than those during the regular season (which, I should note, are pretty damn impressive). First off, the concept of sample size should let him off the hook. In the playoffs, you play a maximum of nineteen games, compare to 162 during the regular season. Which is a better indicator of your value as a player, April-September, or October? Not only that, but in all of this hype over "clutch"ness, people seem to forget that you have to perform well in order to get to a pressure situation. It was A-Rod, with his .400 on-base percentage, 45 HR and 130 RBIs, who carried your team on his back so that you could make playoffs in the first place! As far as I'm concerned, he should be able to take off the whole month of October if he wants to (Yankees fans, maybe this is the solution? No? Then, please, shut the fuck up.).

I'm not denying that some people are more chemically predisposed to remain steady under pressure, and others are more likely to panic. I wasn't a biology or psych major in college, so I have no idea what's responsible for this. There are examples of this everywhere in life; some doctors can treat people in life or death situations, and some can't. The ability to perform especially well under pressure is highly valuable in sports, as well as society. However, many people want to hype up its importance, when, in reality, it is secondary at best. Lest you get it twisted: without Hakeem, Shaq/Kobe, and Duncan/Ginobili/Parker, Robert Horry isn't winning shit. Take A-Rod out of the heart of the Yankees lineup right now and they're a fourth (or fifth?) place team that's not sniffing the playoffs, so don't tell me he that he's a liability in the postseason. To even consider that David Tyree would be the MVP of Super Bowl XLII because of one "clutch" caught football (that he almost dropped) is nothing short of an insult to the Giants' defensive line, who played its ass off for the entire game, holding Brady in check.

One of you all out there in my internets fan base needs to send this as a memo to sports writers and broadcasters worldwide. Because, to be honest, next time I hear that A-Rod sucks or that Robert Horry is a first-ballot HOFer, it might just drive me to commit violence. (No, that's not a threat, just a warning; disregard at your own risk.)