Warning: Completely unrelated to SF story incoming.

Recently, my friend posted a video of Stripfighter the Dan player beating Daigo Umehara in an online match on his facebook page.

To which I say, big whoop.

Everyone loses. Even Daigo.

But what really grinds/ground? my gears was that in the comments, somebody said, “This can’t be Daigo. Daigo said that he uses his friend’s account to play online. This must be his friend, not Daigo.”

Now, I’m a stats guy. I love crunching numbers, facts, percentages. I hate perpetuated stereotypes or myths such as; “Daigo doesn’t ever lose a game in Street Fighter. IT’S DAIGO!”

This is Street Fighter. People lose; that’s the only way you get better. Don’t make excuses for Daigo, I’m sure he doesn’t make excuses for himself.

Anyway, back to my main point.

The biggest myth that I hate is KOBE BRYANT IS THE MOST CLUTCH PLAYER IN THE NBA.

Now, for those of you that don’t know, I’m a huge basketball fan and a even bigger Laker hater. And I detest Kobe Bean Bryant with every cell in my body.

When I bring up the stats that back up my point about Kobe being vastly overrated in the clutch, and that too many highlight clips of his makes have somehow brainwashed the public into states of selective amnesia about his misses, I get a lot of counter-arguments.

Such as:

“Oh the GMs and head coaches all universally pick him as the guy they’d want taking the last shot. You know more than a NBA GM?”

“Kobe wants the ball more than anyone else. Nothing can stop him in the clutch.”

“Look at this top ten clips of his gamewinners KOBEISTHEBESTKTHANX”

Hmm. You mean the same NBA GMs who picked Kwame Brown and Michael Olowokandi first in the draft?

The same NBA coaches who voted Kobe on the all-defensive first team over Tony Allen, Wade, Sefelosha, and CP3?

Look I’m not saying I know more than NBA GMs, coaches and players. I’m just saying that sometimes they can be pretty blind to some obvious things.

Such as the cold, hard stats.

For example, Kobe Bryant is a beautiful 36/115 on game-winning/tying shots in his career. And 26.1% in the playoffs.

Compare him to his modern counterparts. Carmelo shoots 47.7 % and Lebron shoots 41.7% in the playoffs with a much higher assist rate than Kobe.

About the only consistent thing about the “Kobe is clutch” myth is that nothing will stop him from firing up a shot in the clutch, even his open team-mates.

So I carry on with my Kobe-bashing ways, happily pointing out the disparity in his efficiency ratings compared to the guy he’s most often compared to; Michael Jordan.

It’s easy to simply bring up career shooting percentages, PER ratings, Defensive Efficiency ratings and make Kobe look bad next to MJ.

But I’ve always wondered, as I argued day after day with Laker fan after Laker fan, if the “clutch” myth extended to MJ as well.

Maybe he was just as overrated as Kobe. Maybe his numerous highlight videos have also brainwashed the public.

Maybe the clutch statistics will be just as damning to MJ as they are to Kobe.

The problem with MJ is that he played in the pre-internet era where a lot of advanced metrics were simply not available.

But fear not! The good folks over at Chasing 23 have taken the time to go over all the old game tapes and manually put together the information.

I have waited a very long time for this.

Michael Jordan: Game Winning Shots

Check it out.

….Okay yeah MJ shoots 56.3% on playoff game winning/game tying shots.

Maybe one day I can have a spirited argument over SF with the stats from GYT.com!