Kobe isn’t really good in the clutch

Frankly, I don’t think this is even debatable.

Bryant also doesn’t look particularly clutch if you judge him by Berri’s advanced stats. In the service of our clutchness study, the economist narrowed the scope of his Wins Produced per 48 minutes metric to players who have logged at least 100 minutes of clutch time. After breaking down the past three regular seasons, Berri discovered that Bryant was 17^th among qualifiers in WP48 Clutch in 2009-10, fourth in 2008-09, and 21^st in 2007-08. (In all three seasons, Bryant’s WP48 Clutch number was an improvement over his standard WP48, meaning that by this measure, he performed better in the clutch than in regular game situations.)

Berri’s numbers, however, don’t include the part of the season where legends are made: the playoffs. According to that 82 Games study of game-winning shots, Bryant and LeBron James are tied with the most playoff game-winners (four) from 2003 to 2008. Considering that small sample size, we need more data to figure out if The Closer closes out NBA playoff games. To that end, I contacted Wayne Winston, a professor at Indiana University and a former consultant for the Dallas Mavericks. To evaluate a player’s performance late in games, Winston used an adjusted fourth quarter plus-minus rating, which (as defined by 82 Games) “indicate[s] how many additional points are contributed to a team’s scoring margin by a given player in comparison to the league-average player over the span of a typical game.” In this case, Winston shortened the span from a typical game to just the fourth quarter. Over the past four seasons—including the 2009-10 playoffs and Game 1 of this year’s NBA Finals—Bryant has excelled late in games, but he isn’t the best closer in basketball. According to Winston’s calculations, that title belongs to LeBron James, who has a fourth quarter plus-minus rating of +21. Dwyane Wade is second in the league at +12 and Bryant is tied for third with Tim Duncan at +11.