Top-rated sportsbooks offer the opportunity to invest in NBA futures, one of which is the now annual NBA Clutch Player of the Year.
This is still seen as very much being a new award. It was awarded last year for the first time. The first-time recipient was Sacramento’s De’Aaron Fox. It wasn’t a close call: he received 91 out of a 100 first-place votes.
One key to betting on the award is to ascertain why he was such a clear-cut winner. Clearly, he demonstrates at least many of the criteria that a player should fulfill in order to receive this award. But could there be other criteria? How informative can a one-player data sample be?
Before we really talk about how to bet on who will receive the award, we need to consider whether we should perhaps refrain from investing much money in choosing who will receive this award, because it is such a new feature of the NBA betting sites.
It turns out that we can make the newness of the award into an advantage for ourselves as bettors. I aim to establish that Fox’s triumph provides us with abundant guidance for our endeavor to bet on who will receive the next award.
Is a Small Data Sample a Problem?
Skeptics might say that it is best to refrain from betting on who will win the Clutch Player of the Year award because there is only a one-person sample. However, I disagree with this claim because history is not as helpful as it might seem.
This is particularly true of longer history when we take different decades into account. Different decades comprise different eras of basketball. Playing styles change, as do, similarly, the public’s perception of what constitutes a good basketball player.
Definitions –such as of the ‘valuable’ in MVP or of the ‘improved’ in MIP (Most Improved Player)– might change over time, as do ways of perceiving realities.
Without a history to look to, we are forced to concentrate on the present moment, and this is a good thing, as we are liberated from distractions of periods of the past that are irrelevant to this one.
Dissecting The Award Winner
We should look at De’Aaron Fox’s season in order to determine what criteria we should consider a Clutch Player of the Year to satisfy.
The worry is that we can’t determine what exactly led to Fox winning the award because we can’t establish whether the good things that Fox accomplished contributed to his general reputation as a good player last season or contributed specifically to his receiving the award.
Yet, this worry, too, is invalid because a lot of other players besides Fox were considered for the award. After all, he didn’t receive all of the first-place votes. Moreover, there were second and third-place votes cast.
While Fox was the clear winner, Jimmy Butler, DeMar DeRozan and Jalen Brunson all received significant respect from voters for their clutchness.
Dissecting Fox’s season last year, insofar as it contributes to his receiving the award, requires identifying the things that he did better than Butler, DeRozan, and the other top candidates.
Clutch-Time Scoring
What Fox did better than Butler and the rest is score more clutch-time points. Fox led the NBA in this category.
This category, clutch-time scoring, encompasses the final five minutes of regulation, as well as overtime. These latest stages of a game only count as clutch time when the team leading the game is up by five points or fewer.
Fox’s 194 clutch-time point total blasted his competition, just as he blasted his competition in the Clutch Player of the Year voting. It’s not just that he scored a lot of points. He was highly efficient, even more efficient than he was outside of clutch time. So, his clutch-time success was not a mere consequence of his higher usage. He perceptibly became better in this most difficult highest-stakes game phase.
His enhanced performative ability in close games helped his team tremendously. Partly because of its high win percentage in close games – which it owed largely to Fox – Sacramento earned a #3 seed.
So, we see why Fox easily won the award: he scored more, was more efficient and helped his team more than other candidates.
Making Distinctions For Future Years
What do we do when a player isn’t such a simple case for the award?
This is what we have this year: Steph Curry has been easily favored but has also arguably been overrated as a candidate for the award. While he dominates the clutch-time scoring category, he isn’t as efficient – in terms of overall field goal percentage – as other players, and his team isn’t as successful as other teams.
With Curry favored and yet not so convincing – certainly not as convincing as Fox was – there is no reason to bet on him. There is no value in Curry as the favored choice to win the award.
Other players with more successful teams and with stronger efficiency numbers deserve a closer look.
An underrated aspect of this discussion is home versus away. Unlike Curry’s Warriors now, Fox’s Kings maintained their close-game success on the road, which is impressive because of the hostility they faced in road venues.
At more attractive odds, someone like Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander deserves a close look, even more so than the less efficient DeMar DeRozan of Chicago and even more so than Milwaukee’s Damian Lillard, whose efficiency and close-game success level on the road are both relatively disappointing.
While Gilgeous-Alexander will need to score more clutch points in order to win the award, the Thunder have some difficult opponents coming up.
Scouting the schedule leads us to expect him to have clutch-time opportunities to take advantage of. Because future odds change over time, you want to look at players with attractive odds as a preemptive move, anticipating that their odds will improve.
For your best bets, Gilgeous-Alexander is your best option.
NBA Pick: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander – Clutch Player of the Year (+2000) at BetOnline (check our BetOnline Review)
