KG Passes Bird on Scoring List. Is He More Clutch than LB..Better Than Duncan?

[PierceMVP08]

Duncan is more comparable to Bird than KG is to Bird.  Duncan and Bird were the main men on multiple championship teams.  You can compare KG's numbers in big games with the other two, and you can even compare fourth quarter numbers.  But I've seen Bird and Duncan do a hell of a lot more in the closing minutes of playoff games than KG throughout their careers.

Confirmation Bias, you've seen more big moments because both had more opportunities.

I've also seen KG afraid to shoot at the end of games for the first 2/3 of his career.

Prove it.

Anecdotal claims of players being "afraid" don't hold much water with me.

Clearly there is no way to prove other than what you view with your own two eyes.  Although there must be a reason why a much larger portion of fans have seen him afraid to shoot in big moments than have seen him come up big. 

From what I can tell, it's an urban legend that nobody really wants to let go of.  I use as one piece of evidence the 2008 championship run, where I spent a lot of time on message boards (both general and Celtics-based) and got to see this up close and personal.  No matter how you may feel about Garnett's career, there is no argument against him coming up huge, repeatedly, in the big games/late games of the championship run of 2008.  I mean, I almost hope somebody challenges me on it again so we can really go through every game if you like and I can show you just how often he was a rock in those situations.

But the problem is, even then, when Garnett came up big it was ignored and when he came up short it was magnified beyond anything I've ever seen.  It's like people decided that KG isn't clutch, and then proceeded to ignore anything that didn't confirm that view...even if that meant ignoring almost everything that happened for an entire postseason. 

The peak of ridiculousness came on the Sons of Sam Horn board, where they had a running thread called "Is Kevin Garnett a Phony" where they proceeded to rake him over the coals for the entirety of the run.  The climax came in Game 5 of the Pistons series, where one poster adamantly insisted that Garnett shrunk late in that game despite KG leading all scorers with 33 points, leading all Celtics with 10 4th quarter points, and hit the 2 game-clinching free throws with 2 seconds left in regulation.  That was the point that clinched it for me: for some, no matter what Garnett does or the bodies of evidence to the contrary, KG will just always be considered unclutch. 

But in the face of all this I think it's even more clear that uninformed public opinion doesn't make something true, even if a lot of other un-informed people believe it.

Admittedly he has come up big before... However he is not a player you would ever categorize as clutch.  He does not have that swagger or confidence down the stretch of games that you need with a guy like that.  At least with Paul or Ray you know you are getting up confident shot, not one that he is being forced to put up.  At least that's the feeling I get. 

If you're looking for a game where he stunk in the '08 playoffs, look at game 5 (i think) where even he said he was terrible.  Also at the end of the tight games in Atlanta, he wanted no part of a crucial shot.  He may put up huge numbers throughout the course of a game, but late, he would rather pass it up.  Again, he's one of the greates of all time, but not an all time closer.

[drza44]

Prove it.

Anecdotal claims of players being "afraid" don't hold much water with me.

Clearly there is no way to prove other than what you view with your own two eyes.  Although there must be a reason why a much larger portion of fans have seen him afraid to shoot in big moments than have seen him come up big. 

From what I can tell, it's an urban legend that nobody really wants to let go of.  I use as one piece of evidence the 2008 championship run, where I spent a lot of time on message boards (both general and Celtics-based) and got to see this up close and personal.  No matter how you may feel about Garnett's career, there is no argument against him coming up huge, repeatedly, in the big games/late games of the championship run of 2008.  I mean, I almost hope somebody challenges me on it again so we can really go through every game if you like and I can show you just how often he was a rock in those situations.

But the problem is, even then, when Garnett came up big it was ignored and when he came up short it was magnified beyond anything I've ever seen.  It's like people decided that KG isn't clutch, and then proceeded to ignore anything that didn't confirm that view...even if that meant ignoring almost everything that happened for an entire postseason. 

The peak of ridiculousness came on the Sons of Sam Horn board, where they had a running thread called "Is Kevin Garnett a Phony" where they proceeded to rake him over the coals for the entirety of the run.  The climax came in Game 5 of the Pistons series, where one poster adamantly insisted that Garnett shrunk late in that game despite KG leading all scorers with 33 points, leading all Celtics with 10 4th quarter points, and hit the 2 game-clinching free throws with 2 seconds left in regulation.  That was the point that clinched it for me: for some, no matter what Garnett does or the bodies of evidence to the contrary, KG will just always be considered unclutch. 

But in the face of all this I think it's even more clear that uninformed public opinion doesn't make something true, even if a lot of other un-informed people believe it.

Admittedly he has come up big before... However he is not a player you would ever categorize as clutch.  He does not have that swagger or confidence down the stretch of games that you need with a guy like that.  At least with Paul or Ray you know you are getting up confident shot, not one that he is being forced to put up.  At least that's the feeling I get. 

If you're looking for a game where he stunk in the '08 playoffs, look at game 5 (i think) where even he said he was terrible.  Also at the end of the tight games in Atlanta, he wanted no part of a crucial shot.  He may put up huge numbers throughout the course of a game, but late, he would rather pass it up.  Again, he's one of the greates of all time, but not an all time closer.

Yes, KG missed some big free throws at the end of Game 5 when the team was winning 3 - 1 in the series.  He then responded by absolutely punishing the Lakers in Game 6 while leading one of the biggest romps in playoff history.  Game 5 was also sandwiched by game 4, in which KG played a huge part late in the biggest comeback in NBA Finals history.

No player goes PERFECT in late game situations, but that seems to be the standard that Garnett is held to.  I've pointed out several times in the past that KG led the Celtics in 4th quarter scoring over the playoffs while shooting over 50% from the field. 

82games.com tells us that KG also led the Celtics in field goals made in crunchtime, also at a higher percentage made than his any of his other teammates. 

KG also took and made the only game-winning shot with under 30 seconds left that the Celtics had that postseason. 

Yet, we came out of those playoffs with Pierce getting re-confirmed by the majority as a clutch performer while KG was still questioned in that aspect, perhaps even moreso.  There's something wrong with that, and "but a lot of other people think so" isn't really a validation for the point being correct.

[drza44]

You also seem to forget that Pierce was just as big a part of the 08 title as KG, if not more important.  There are those, Bill Simmons included, that think Pierce was the best player on that 08 team.  Maybe not the best over their career, but for that year Pierce was.  So you can't really make the argument that when KG finally got players around him, he won.  It's not exactly the case.

I think this sentiment here is a huge part of the reason that KG receives short shrift from many Celtics fans.  Paul Pierce had been here for a decade and was the entrenched fan favorite, and KG came in and won the accolades and got a lot of credit for turning the team around.  That irritates some Pierce fans, and there has been push back.  I even get it to a certain extent.

And it was exacerbated even more by Cornbread Maxwell stating before the season started that KG was better than Bird.  Even those Celtics fans that weren't offended for Pierce's sake were offended for Bird's, and again KG's accomplishments/production in a Cs uniform has been held under the microscope by Celtic fans even with the ironic situation that the success of the team is tied to KG's success.

I could re-make Garnett's case for his importance in 2008 overall, but that isn't even the point I'm after here.  And frankly, the case pretty much makes itself anyway.  But the bigger issue in the context of this thread, to me, is that in order for KG to get historic-level shine that would mean that a) we have to admit that he really was the engine in '08 (not palatable for Pierce fans) and b) we have to consider that if Garnett could engine a championship squad in his 30s, then maybe he really WAS that good before but was held back by a comedy of errors/bad luck/ineptitude in Minnesota...which would mean that maybe he really should be mentioned with the best, including Bird.  Again, not something that is palatable to most Celtic followers considering that to many Garnett isn't a "REAL" Celtic anyway...he's just a Timberwolf that happens to now wear green.

[Fan from VT]

...because the quotes are getting so long, i'll start anew.


I absolutely have to agree with drza44. 99% of the time, "clutchness" is one of 2 things: either heavily heavily circumstance and situation dependent (selection/sample size bias, as in players on teams that happen to make it far due to the entire team makeup have more chances at important clutch moments than those stuck on irrelevant teams) or heavily heavily confirmation biased: the narrative about player X is that he's clutch, so any instant of "clutchness" confirms the preconceived notion while any incidents that refute the notion get quickly forgotten. This also happens vice versa, where a player is determined to be "unclutch," and all evidence to that point is kept in the public consciousness while contrary evidence is thrown out.


Essentially, people, but ESPECIALLY media personalities, construct their sports experience through a narrative, and most people don't like that narrative to change. This is what is responsible both for inaccurate reputations as well as drastic swings in opinions. Example 1: Kobe is extremely clutch. Every highlight buzzer beater he makes is held up as proof of this fact. Yet any stats show that, in crunchtime, if the ball is in the air and you bet he misses everytime, guess what, you come out ahead. There have been other players more clutch than Bryant. However, he has two benefits: 1) playing next to Shaq during his early years when his narrative was being constructed, and 2) having had that narrative constructed early, the parts that support said narrative receive disproportionate attention than those that refute the narrative. Example 2: KG. One of the greatest players of all time, stuck on a terrible team with a terrible GM that lost the aid of any first round pick for 5 years. Put him next to Shaq from 1995-2004, see what happens: a very, very different narrative. He undoubtedly becomes a key player on a team that wins several titles, as he and Shaq complement each other perfectly with inside-outside from the 4/5 spots on both offense and defense...seriously, who scores against a frontline of young Shaq and young KG? He even gets a "clutch" rep as he puts up his near triple double numbers in a few winning game sevens rather than losing game sevens due to an atrocious supporting cast. From then on, any time he has a big moment, this is then further proof of his greatness and his failures are brushed under the rug, instead of having failures blown up as proof of collapse and successes swept aside.