Clutch

I recently came across a great article in USA Today by Staff Writer Josh Peter on Indiana Pacer's star player Tyrese Haliburton ("Tyrese Haliburton NBA Postseason heroics renew debate: Does 'clutch' play exist?").  The Pacers (my favorite professional basketball team growing up) are currently playing the Oklahoma City Thunder for the NBA championship.  The Thunder are the clear favorites to win, making the Pacers the underdogs (see my recent post "There's no need to fear..." for what it means to be an underdog).  They are playing much better than anyone expected, and most experts didn't think that they would actually be playing in the NBA Finals.    And now, they are leading the series two games to one!  With just a few exceptions, Haliburton has been outstanding throughout the play-offs, and his "clutch" shooting has been a big reason why they are playing for the championships.

Peter asked the question, "Does 'clutch' play even exist?"  It's an age-old debate that has actually been studied extensively.  The quick answer is that there is probably no such thing as "clutch performance", where athletes excel under pressure.  The cognitive psychologist and author Dan Ariely wrote an article for Huffington Post several years ago ("The irrational side of corporate bonuses"), in which his team conducted a series of experiments (covered in greater detail in his 2011 book, The Upside of Irrationality) to answer this question.  Ariely collaborated with Racheli Barkan and former Duke University men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski ("Coach K").  They asked a group of professional basketball coaches to identify "clutch players" in the NBA (most of the coaches agreed about who was and who was not a "clutch player").  They next watched and analyzed game footage from twenty of the most crucial games in an actual NBA season ("most crucial" was defined as a game that ended with a point difference of 3 points or less).  They analyzed how many points the "clutch player" scored in the last 5 minutes of the first half of each game, when the pressure to perform was relatively low.  They compared each player's points in the last 5 minutes of the first half with the number of points scored in the final 5 minutes of the game, when the pressure to perform was much higher.  They also analyzed "non-clutch" players as a control.

Non-clutch players scored more or less the same number of points in the final 5 minutes of each half.  However, the clutch players scored a lot more points in the final 5 minutes of the game versus the last 5 minutes of the first half.  On the surface, those results seem consistent with "clutch play".  However, when they looked further, they found that these clutch players took a lot more shots during the final 5 minutes of the game compared to the last 5 minutes of the first half.  In other words, they didn't actually improve their ability to score, they simply had more opportunities to do so!

One study doesn't prove anything, particularly one that hasn't been published and subject to the peer review process.  However, Ariely's and Barkan's findings are consistent with other published studies in both professional basketball (see "Home certus in professional basketball?" and "Performance when it counts?"), FIFA World Cup football (soccer) (see "Nerves of steel? Stress, work performance and elite athletes"), and major league baseball (see "Clutch hitting revisited").  The next logical question is whether these findings translate to business and medicine.  "Clutch performance" in sports is one thing, but how do leaders outside of sports work under pressure?  Is there such a thing as "clutch performance" in the business world?

I suspect that what's true for professional athletes is true for the rest of us.  There's probably no such thing as "clutch performance" for leaders, at least on a consistent basis.  For a related topic ("choking under pressure"), please see two of my posts in the past on the inverted U hypothesis and one of my all-time favorite Ted Lasso quotes, "Be a gold fish!"

I'd love to hear your opinion on this, so feel free to leave a comment!