Decision making for basketball clutch shots: A data driven approach

Abstract

Decision making is considered one of the most important aspects for winning a basketball game. In the final minutes of the game (clutch time), these decisions become even more crucial. In particular –who shall take the final, game-winning shots? While some coaches believe it is the team’s star, others may prefer the ‘clutch’ player (who seemingly performs better in clutch time), or the ‘hot’ player who was having a great game that night. In this work we study policy making in clutch minutes. Specifically, we introduce different policies for choosing the shot-taker (for example, according to field goal percentage). Then, we compare the policies and rank them to create a policy hierarchy, which serves as a decision guide for the coach. We show that when our recommendations are implemented (i.e., the highest ranked player takes the shot) the success rate is significantly greater: 51.2%, compared to 41.3% in commonly taken clutch shots. Furthermore, our results indicate that players who excelled in past clutch shots are more likely to succeed, independently to their performance in the current game.