Trey Burke is still clutch

There is a certain level of confirmation bias going on when people call a player "clutch." One of the most "clutch" players of all time, Michael Jordan, said this: "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed..." 

People don't remember those failures, only the successes. However, that is not saying that he didn't hit more game-winning shots than others, but people forget about the failures, and focus on successes, because they support the point of a player being "clutch."

Feeding a player who is statiscally more likely to hit shots makes that player clutch? Consistent shooters are consistent, regardless of time or place. MJ still had off nights where he missed a game winner, had seasons where he couldnt pull out that playoff series. 

David Tyree made arguably one of the clutchest catches in recent sports during that giants/pats super bowl. Is he now clutch? Cause he was out of football in a season or two after despite being in his prime age. 

Remember when Lebron "wasnt clutch", or how everybody asks is Eli/Flaco/Stafford/Dalton/Romo/(insert QB who has won some games and lost other ones) elite? 

Is Peyton "Clutch" or Brady or Brees or Luck or Wilson? Those are just good QBs who are consistently good. Clutch is just a narative tool used to describe people and characterize how they play. 

Can you name any Superstars who consistely have poor 4th quarters of games? or any under the radar players who have a distinct uptick in performance in the 4th? I can't, because its never consistent. Players can get "hot" at the end of a game and if it happens in the playoffs or in the superbowl we call them "clutch" but its just flukey. 

because people were freaking out about the guy who was the better player. It's the same reason Derek Fisher and Steve Kerr were clutch. There are countless times that Horry did NOT get the ball. The vast majority of the time.  Parker, Ginobili, Duncan got the ball first.  Rasheed Wallace freaks and leaves Robert Horry open. Ball rotates and there it is...

People trusted these guys to be in at clutch time because they were good players for those situations (i.e., they could hit an open shot). They are RELIABLE complementary players - not just in the clutch, but always.

Yes - Miller and MJ and Lebron ARE "merely" good shooters. They didn't have better numbers in the clutch over their career.

"The vast majority of people fail when the pressure is on" -- something you just made up. 

I'm sure there are cases where some guys can't handle the stress or thrive in it, but the majority of people are who they and we make up narratives to justify randomness.

My two best games as an all-conference high school basketball player were when I was sick as a dog with the flu.    They didn't contain 'clutch moments' like last second shots because we blew the teams out, mostly due to my own early barrage.  These were both outings like 15-18 in the first quarter and then finish with 22-26 because I'm sitting in the 2nd half or even in the locker room.

There is something that the studies miss or can't account for.   Those were scenarios where I personally didn't want to think about anything, I just wanted to get out, play hard, win game, go home, sleep.   Other games that didn't go as well, I may have felt a lot better, or maybe simply thought too much about the opponent I was playing or the shot I was taking.    Those 2 big flu games, I didn't care what the circumstances were, who the opponent was, or which one of them had the misfortune to guard me.

Maybe its the adverse condition, the sickness, or in Horry's case, the pressure, that will make someone thrive.   I don't understand it either, and I'm sure it has something to do with confidence, but I'm also sure there is a component of "not thinking too much".

Could you provide a link to the studies you mention that do show a hot hand?  I saw one based on baseball recently, but it was so methodologically flawed as to be useless.  I'd be interested to take a look at others.

Also, on another note, I absolutely hate the raw arrogance of statments like this: "I've never met anyone who has played a lot of competitive sports who doesn't KNOW that his confidence affects his performance."  I've played sports my entire life, from the playground as a kid to various different rec leagues now as an adult.  I would play sports every night for hours if I had the time & opportunity.  I don't believe in clutch, because I've never seen it show up in a methodologically sound study, and I've never seen it put points on the board.  I've seen a good shot put points on the board.  I've seen bad decision-making take points off the board.  I've never seen clutch, I've never seen momentum, I've never seen "mentality".

That's the great thing about sports - the raw purity of it.  Does your thing put points on the board?  Then I want it.  Does it take points off the board?  Then I don't want it.  Does it have no effect on the score?  Then I'll ignore it.

But don't tell me that oh, if I had just played sports, I'd know.  I've played my whole life.  I know.  Stop condescending.

In sport psychology, we are constantly discussing the shortcomings of studies trying to research "clutch" or, on the flip-side, "choking." We can do our best to try to mimic the situations in a laboratory setting, but in my opinion, we still don't do a good job of localizing the actual phenomena discussed.

For example, in a study of choking, researchers might use a novel task, such as throwing a ball in to a bucket, or a learned skill such as free throws. Then, they will introduce some sort of stress stimulus (usually time pressure, but also things like cameras and monetary rewards for performance, to increase the pressure.) Then, when they don't perform as well as before, they say they "choked."

Well.... no. They just reacted differently under pressure-- choking is much more multifacted and complicated than that. So researchers find these things, and ascribe popular words to them, like clutch, or choking, when really what they found was a pressure-induced performance decline. 

A better option is studying it in the field, but there are so many other things going on that it would be impossible to control for everything. This is one of the ongoing discussions in sport psych, with everyone trying their own little changes to the research studies.

In my professional opinion, we would be much better off forming theories to fit the evidence, as opposed to trying to illicit "clutch" or "choking" performances for the sake of popular understanding of these complicated phenomena.

/rant

Nobody said confidence doesn't matter. The question is if it fluctuates enough from person to person when pressure is applied to be deemed significant. Some people might not feel the pressure at all, other might feel it but have it not alter their confidence, reaction times, or any other aspect of their performance at all. Some may be affected, but it's not significant enough to be proveable.

Otherwise, you make great points about the studies not being 100% definitive. I should correct my statement to say MOST studies show that the clutch stuff is BS. 

Someone earlier brought up human nature and one thing that is consistently found in many areas, including sports but going way beyond to religion and many other relms -- it's human nature to ascribe a rational explanation for things that we can not explain. This is the foundation of religions going back to ancient times. You don't have to watch a lot of sports to hear announcers saying absolutely non-sensical things as ways to explain what just happened. Sometimes there is no explanation needed, the thing just happened.

The argument for this boils down to "I don't believe the scientific evidence".  Which, OK - sometimes science is wrong or too primitive to be meaningful - but most of the time it's right, IMO.

Anyone who watched Vinnie Johnson play and tries to deny the existence of streak shooting needs their head examined.  If he hit a few shots in a row you might as well forget it, he was giong to be unstoppable.  Didn't matter if you guarded him or not, he was just going to light it up.

On the flip side, if he missed his first few shots, you might as well pull him out of the game, because he was going to be useless. 

This pattern repeated itself so often over the course of his career that it was almost a joke.  The Portland Trailblazers were the last butt of this joke when Vinnie nailed down the 2nd of the PIstons back-to-back titles by single-handedly destroying them in the 4th quarter of Game 5 of the NBA Finals in 1990.  He could have been shooting blindfolded.  Didn't matter.  Everything he put up was going to go in.