In sports, high-powered incentives separate the clutch performers from the chokers. At least that’s the usual narrative but can we really measure clutch performance? There’s always a missing counterfactual. We say that he chokes if he doesn’t come through when the stakes are raised. But how do we know that he wouldnt have failed just as miserably under normal circumstances? As long as performance has a random element, pure luck (good or bad) can appear as if it were caused by circumstances.
You could try a controlled experiment, and probably psychologists have. But there is the usual leap of faith required to extrapolate from experimental subjects in artificial environments to professionals trained and selected for high-stakes performance.
Here is a simple quasi-experiment that could be done with readily available data. In basketball when a team accumulates more than 5 fouls, each additional foul sends the opponent to the free-throw line. This is called the “bonus.” In college basketball the bonus has two levels. After fouls 5-10 (correction: fouls 7-9) the penalty is what’s called a “one and one.” One free-throw is awarded, and then a second free-throw is awarded only if the first one is good. After 10 fouls the team enters the “double bonus” where the shooter is awarded two shots no matter what happens on the first. (In the NBA there is no “single bonus,” after 5 fouls the penalty is two shots.)
The “front end” of the one-and-one is a higher stakes shot because the gain from making it is 1+p points where p is the probability of making the second. By contrast the gain from making the first of two free throws is just 1 point. On all other dimensions these are perfectly equivalent scenarios, and it is the most highly controlled scenario in basketball.
The clutch performance hypothesis would imply that success rates on the front end of a one and one are larger than success rates on the first free-throw out of two. The choke-under-pressure hypothesis would imply the opposite. It would be very interesting to see the data.
And if there was a difference, the next thing to do would be to analyze video to look for differences in how players approach these shots. For example I would bet that there is a measurable difference in the time spent preparing for the shot. If so, then in the case of choking the player is “overthinking” and in the clutch case this would provide support for an effort-performance tradeoff.
8 comments
Comments feed for this article
December 15, 2010 at 9:33 pm
JP
Unfortunately the double bonus always come after the single bonus, and is therefore closer to the end of the game when points become more important in a sense.
I guess you could restrict the sample to double bonus attempts outside of last 10 minutes of a game.
It would be interesting to construct a panel and look for evidence of ‘learning to be clutch’.
December 16, 2010 at 1:52 pm
jeff
on your first point: true but regular shooting fouls occur throughout the game and are two shot fouls.
December 15, 2010 at 10:43 pm
Sean
The college 1-and-1 follows fouls 7-9 rather than 5-10.
December 15, 2010 at 11:05 pm
jeff
thanks for the correction. (i was at a women’s ncaa game today and i thought it was after 5 but i guess i wasnt paying close attention.)
December 16, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Anonymous
players get tired though
December 17, 2010 at 2:56 am
danny
The first shot of a one-and-one the player has to be prepared to rebound or defend. In that regard it would be better to compare to the second shot of the double-bonus.
December 17, 2010 at 9:09 am
jeff
indeed
December 20, 2010 at 12:27 pm
rd
I guess you weren’t convinced my paper settled this subject? 🙂 (if you saw it)
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1624975
Anyway, yes very good point that pressure should be higher on front end of 1 and 1.. but lots of factors modify pressure .. eg whether shot was taken in last minute of game or next to last minute.. i’m not sure using 1 and 1 is fundamentally different