A closer look at Kobe’s clutch

The Lakers questionable moves and Kobe’s possible injury woes this season had some of us looking into the Lakers fate. While I was in the midst of doing research for that I decided to take a closer look at a common theme for Kobe fans: Kobe is clutch and wins when it matters. Henry Abbott has written about how this is not true several times. A while back I even wrote why this doesn’t matter. However, I decided to use Youtube to actually apply the eye test to some of Kobe’s greatness and look over every “clutch” (final 24 seconds of the game) game winning/game tying shot in Kobe’s playoff career. For perspective Kobe has taken 26 “clutch” shots in his playoff career and connected on a grand total of 7 of them. It gets worse. The Youtube test for Kobe’s playoff clutchness 2000 Game winner in game 2 against Phoenix - Takes a terrible game winning shot in a series that’s decided in 5 games. Verdict: Kobe clutch! (or lucky, take...