JK47:
Asking LeBron to become a Karl Malone-style post-up player is a bit like asking Jimi Hendrix to play bass.

Hendrix often recorded the bass parts for his albums, actually.

A post game would help, but LeBron passed up many perimeter shots that good post players like KG and Pierce would take in a heartbeat. He had the same game when he averaged 30ppg four years ago and almost single-handedly brought his team to the finals a couple of years back. The problem with LeBron in these finals was between the ears, much more than with any holes in his game.

Not sure I totally agree. If that’s the case, then what do we call MJ developing a potent post game? Obviously he was a few years older at the time and it was done more out of necessity / dwindling athleticism than anything else. But there were times in that series where LeBron had Kidd, Barea and / or Terry on him, and he either a) played hot-potato, b) tried to drive with varying degrees of success, or c) settled for the outside jumper. Saying he should “develop a post game” is not the same thing as saying he should somehow “become” Karl Malone. Nor does it mean he needs to have McHale or Olajuwan-esque skillz. It simply means he should recognize that a) he’s liable to be an inch or two taller than any perimeter player guarding him, b) significantly stronger than said player, and c) able to jump higher than said player. A baby hook and a turnaround J — that’s it. He develops those two things, it’s a total game-changer. Unfortunately, I’m not sure he really cares at this point.

Frank: my point wasn’t actually that this particular study was so awesome – just that league-wide studies that show no obvious “clutch” or “hot hand” importance don’t necessarily mean that such things don’t exist.

Yeah, also fair enough. I had sort of thought about that. I just couldn’t let the opportunity pass. I’ve been thinking a lot about the difficulty of predicting and ascribing cause recently as it relates to sports, and this would an opportunity to use it and get back a little for saying I was improperly using stats previously.

Frank: And again – the article asserts that Mavs are a clutch team, year after year, and much more so than would be expected. That suggests that there may be something to the argument.

This is a causation problem, too, though. If players come and go and they are still “clutch”… do they consistently find clutch guys, or is their some organization culture that breeds clutchness?

Frank: But again, absence of an easily explainable reason doesn’t mean that that reason doesn’t exist.

Absolutely, but the opposite is sort of confirmation bias. Just because something happened, doesn’t mean the explanation is what you think it is. The Mavs made it out of the 1st once in 4 seasons prior, losing 4-1 in the 2nd. They win… and suddenly they were clutch all along? Maybe, maybe not.

Meanwhile – if Mark Cuban is paying real statisticians real salaries to come up with the stuff that was written about in that article, and presuming these are all smart people who have many many many more resources than any of us – - my guess is that simple statistics don’t bear out any “clutchness” but that if you do more sophisticated analysis (ie. with Synergy film/breakdowns, Sportvu tech, etc.) that something does come through.

And again – the article asserts that Mavs are a clutch team, year after year, and much more so than would be expected. That suggests that there may be something to the argument. maybe it’s not Jason Kidd, but the combination of Terry and Nowitzki. Or Terry + Nowitzki + Chandler. Or not. But again, absence of an easily explainable reason doesn’t mean that that reason doesn’t exist.

So… again… prediction and causation are the tough part of statistics. Observation is the easy part. The article gets at some interesting points… but it doesn’t come close to showing causation or explaining how to predict clutch performance.