re: Chris Paul, the choke artist

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Chris Paul, the choke artist

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Winner: Chris Paul, Clutch God

What Paul did to Memphis last night, making four of his last five shots,(The only miss was a heave to beat the shot clock after a jump ball.), should be illegal. (So should some of the nutty shots Jamal Crawford made over Jerryd Bayless in the first half, actually.) Paul did this to the Grizzlies in the 2012 playoffs, and this regular season he shot 16-of-33 (48.5 percent) in the last three minutes of games in which the scoring margin was three points or less. Among 66 players who attempted at least 20 such shots, only nine shot a better percentage than Paul, and only one of those (Al Jefferson) did so on as many attempts. The concept of "clutch" is notoriously finicky; a team that comes out as "clutch" under one set of time-and-score parameters might appear mediocre or downright chokey if you play around with the factors. A player who scores in crunch time one season might toss up bricks the next. But Paul has been a consistently above-average clutch player, and his teams have almost annually scored at ridiculously efficient rates, especially given that league-wide efficiency tends to drop on crunch-time possessions. What a player.

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