Some people love being the hero, always want to put the nail in the coffin or bring their team back into the game in one poccesion. This almost always ends up hurting the team when you try to do it the easy way. Playing good smart basketball one possession at a time is almost always better. One of my biggest problems with Lebron James on the court is that he always falls in love with the 3pt shot at the end of close games. This essentially bails out the defense and doesn't force them to stop him from getting to the rack, one of the hardest things to do in all of Basketball. After watching last nights loss to the Bulls and seeing Lebron throw up two horrible 3's late in the close game I decided to look up the numbers. 82games.com is a great website that shows you 'Clutch stats'. Clutch is defined as '4th quarter or overtime, less than 5 minutes left, neither team ahead by more than 5 points '. They then avg out however you perform to 48 minutes.
According to 82games this year Lebron has made exactly 0 shots from deep in clutch moments. During that same time he has attempted 3.5 3's per 48 minutes. This number is sure to go up after last night's misses. He is also avg 24.4 FTs per 48 minutes in clutch and hitting them at 90%. This is only about 2/3 of a year on a brand new team, it might be an anomaly from looking at too small sample size or just adjusting to new setting, so lets look at last year. He shot .34% from deep, while better then 0%, it's not a shot you want him taking. He also attempted a league leading 14.9 3's per 48 minutes of crunch time. The biggest head scratcher of all though is while shooting a great amount of 3's at a horrible percentage Lebron had a great overall fg percentage of .488% and attempted league leading 26.1 FTs per 48 minutes while making 80%. You have to wonder, why does he keep settling for the 3's when everything else he does is so efficient?
So while it is good his attempts have gone down, when he will learn and stop trying to be a instant hero.
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