Top Stories

How clutch are the Celtics compared to other playoff teams?

Boston delivered in clutch time in Game 1 vs. Brooklyn after finishing 29th in clutch play during the regular season.

Jayson Tatum hit just one shot in the fourth quarter of Game 1 on Sunday — the game-winning layup as time expired.

Jayson Tatum delivered the first game-winning shot of the 2022 NBA Playoffs on Sunday, executing a flawless spinning layup at the buzzer that lifted the Boston Celtics to a Game 1 win over the Brooklyn Nets. The execution of that final sequence is the epitome of clutch play, one that will be replayed for years to come and has already been etched in Boston’s lengthy history books.

 

When we look at clutch stats, the default parameters are when the score is within five points in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime. Here are the top 10 players in total clutch points throughout the 2021-22 regular season:

RANK PLAYER TEAM MIN PTS FGs 3Ps FTs
1 Joel Embiid PHI 147 158 47-100 (47.0%) 11-24 (45.8%) 53-69 (76.8%)
2 DeMar DeRozan CHI 130 157 46-86 (53.5%) 2-4 (50.0%) 63-71 (88.7%)
3 Nikola Jokic DEN 141 145 46-93 (49.5%) 2-11 (18.2%) 51-64 (79.7%)
4 Trae Young ATL 116 125 35-82 (42.7%) 10-29 (34.5%) 45-51 (88.2%)
5 Ja Morant MEM 108 119 34-81 (42.0%) 4-14 (28.6%) 47-57 (82.5%)
6 Kevin Durant BKN 113 109 37-89 (41.6%) 8-28 (28.6%) 27-29 (93.1%)
7 Reggie Jackson LAC 124 107 33-75 (44.0%) 8-24 (33.3%) 33-41 (80.5%)
8 LeBron James LAL 145 105 35-91 (38.5%) 11-43 (25.6%) 24-35 (68.6%)
9 Jayson Tatum BOS 142 97 29-78 (37.2%) 2-25 (8.0%) 37-39 (94.9%)
10 Gary Trent Jr. TOR 152 96 27-63 (42.9%) 14-33 (42.4%) 28-32 (87.5%)

Tatum ranks ninth on this list with 97 clutch points over the course of the season but did not shoot the ball with high efficiency from the field and especially from 3-point range. Tatum was able to draw fouls and shot his free throws extremely well to help land him among the top 10 clutch scorers of the season.

In fact, Boston posted the second-lowest win percentage in games that featured clutch play during the regular season as they finished just 13-22 in clutch games.

If we look at clutch play compared to where teams are seeded in the playoffs, the Celtics are a huge outlier. The other three teams that finished as the top two seeds in their respective conferences – Phoenix, Memphis and Miami – all ranked in the top five in clutch win percentage during the regular season. Of the eight teams that have home-court advantage in the first round, Boston is the only team that finished below 12th in clutch win percentage.

RANK TEAM RECORD WIN% +/- PLAYOFF SEED
1 Phoenix Suns 33-9 .786 107 West 1
2 Memphis Grizzlies 21-11 .656 45 West 2
4 Chicago Bulls 25-16 .610 56 East 6
5 Miami Heat 23-15 .605 18 East 1
6 Milwaukee Bucks 24-17 .585 39 East 3
7 Dallas Mavericks 22-16 .579 -11 West 4
8 Toronto Raptors 26-19 .578 39 East 5
9 Denver Nuggets 23-17 .575 7 West 6
11 Golden State Warriors 23-19 .548 10 West 3
12 Philadelphia 76ers 24-21 .533 12 East 4
13 Minnesota Timberwolves 20-18 .526 4 West 7
14 Brooklyn Nets 22-20 .524 36 East 7
17 Atlanta Hawks 18-20 .474 -27 East 8
19 New Orleans Pelicans 14-18 .438 -22 West 8
20 Utah Jazz 17-23 .425 -11 West 5
29 Boston Celtics 13-22 .371 -25 East 2

Of course, those rankings cover the entire season, and Boston really turned things around after the calendar flipped to 2022. Since Jan. 1, the Celtics went 34-12 for the third-best record in the NBA, and the best in the Eastern Conference, trailing only Phoenix and Dallas. However, during that time, Boston was still just 7-8 in clutch games, ranking 17th in the league over that span.

But watching the closing minutes of that Boston-Brooklyn Game 1, you would not believe that the Celtics were the 29th-ranked (or even 17th-ranked) clutch performing team in the NBA this season. After seeing their 11-point lead to open the fourth quarter turn into a five-point deficit with five minutes to play, the Celtics outscored the Nets 13-7 down the stretch to earn the win.

On paper, Brooklyn was a superior clutch team compared to Boston during the regular season; the Nets finished 22-20 in 42 games that included clutch time and outscored its opponents by 36 points in 163 clutch minutes (the Celtics were minus-25 in 166 clutch minutes). Brooklyn also has the top clutch scorer in the series as Kevin Durant (109) finished with 12 more clutch points than Tatum (97) despite playing 29 fewer clutch minutes this season.

But we keep separate stats for regular season and playoffs for a reason. Can Boston continue to write a new clutch narrative as the postseason continues, or will they regress back toward their regular season mean?

Latest