Clutch Player of the Year

Last year, I wanted to bet this award, but they didn’t have any odds up. That changes for this season, as both Fanduel and Draftkings have odds up (I am aware that Fanduel doesn’t have these in every state).

It’s really, really tough to bet this before the season, as we are guessing as to who will be more clutch. Hopefully, they will keep the market open as the season goes on, but for now, let’s try to get a best guess at what sort of player may win the award.

For starters, let’s look at what happened last year. Below, are the final voting results, and the tweet from the NBA congratulating De’Aaron Fox:

The NBA highlighted in its tweet how Fox led the league in points, made go ahead shots, and also his shooting percentage. Using the voting results, and NBA.com’s clutch stats (which is games with 5 with 5 minutes left), I came up with a basic rating of where players should have finished that matches up pretty closely with the results last season (same top 5, but order for 3–5 is slightly different). My rating takes into account points per game in the clutch, total points in the clutch, field goal percentage, and games in the clutch won. Basically, it’s a measure of how you scored in clutch games and how often you played (and won)in them. Based on my estimates, here is who would have finished top 5 over the previous 5 seasons, and also who finished top 5 last year:

This mostly matches up with what we would assume: DeMar, Lillard, Paul, Kawhi, and LeBron have all been considered some of the best clutch players over the last few seasons.

A few other things stick out to me from this chart:

1. Nikola Jokic finishes high basically every season over the last 4 years. We know he is amazing in the clutch, but he would never get true consideration for this award in most circumstances since he will be a clear MVP favorite.
2. DeMar DeRozan has been very clutch for the Bulls the last two seasons: but he has had the ball in crunch time for every team he has been on. In the 3 seasons he didn’t make top 5, he would have been 7th two of those years.
3. Lillard only finished in the top 5 a single season. He would have finished 6th in 2019/20, and 7th in 2017/18, but he hasn’t been as high on a year to year basis.
4. Fox would have likely been the youngest winner, at 25. DeRozan was 32, Lillard was 30, Paul was 34, Kawhi was 27, and LeBron was 33.
5. Every player who won played for a team over .500, and the average was right around 60%, or 49 wins. Only one “winner” was more than 3 wins away from this number.
6. The following players have 3 or more top 10 finishes over the last 6 seasons: Derozan (5), Harden (4), Embiid (4), Jokic (4), Kyrie (4), Lillard (3), Beal (3)
7. I went back even further, and 10 of the last 11 winners would likely have “received votes” in the top 10 before they won. This means that while it is possible the winner comes out of nowhere, more likely they have had clutch moments in the past. Some players who have decent odds, like Booker and Edwards, have never had a clutch season where they have been in the top 10 (Edwards has never averaged more than 3 ppg in the clutch, which was a barrier I used to cull prospective nominees).
8. Unsurprisingly, the last 6 winners have made all NBA and been an all star the year they won. Seems like a given, but combined with the above, means the overall field is narrower than it may first seem.

So, who should we bet this year? We are looking for someone who will be a team’s go to option in the clutch, have a decent amount of clutch opportunities, and play for a team that’s going to win around 49 games: so be good, but not incredible. Even though this is guessing at who will be good in the clutch this season, when I looked over the odds, two players stuck out to me as being guys whose odds are way too long for their clutch track record.

My bets:

DeMar Derozan, +6000, .35u, FD (would bet it at +3000 on DK also, at .25u): These odds are absurd and way too long. DeRozan finished third last season, would have won the year before, and has been top ten for most of the last 6 years. No other award finalist in a reward you could repeat (6th man, MVP, DPOY) is listed at lower than 20:1. I am definitely concerned about the Bulls winning enough games, and DeMar didn’t make all NBA last season, but DeMar finishing top 10, barring injury, feels like a lock, and top 5 seems pretty good also. If the Bulls do have a better season than expected, this will be the likely reason why, and he will win the award. I’d bet this down to +2000.

Joel Embiid, +2500, .15u, DK: With or without Harden, Embiid has had a crunch time burden over the last 6 seasons. The main thing holding him back will be games played, but if he stays somewhat healthy and doesn’t win MVP, he would meet most of the things we are looking for: around 50 wins, around 30 years old, and consistently placing high on the leaderboard.