Quote:
Originally Posted by dlb
This is the kind of reasoning that comes from people who have never actually played a competitive sport or game. People who do engage in such activities (and especially people who coach them), do recognize that there is such a thing as a clutch situation and that some players do tend to perform better in those situations. The one example that comes to mind most quickly is from basketball, where James Worthy actually played better in the playoffs than in the regular season.
However, coaches tend to believe that clutch players do not have the ability to turn it up a notch when the game is on the line; they have the ability to keep themselves under control when they have to make a play. In short, if you're taking the three pointer in the last second when your team is down two, the key to succeeding is not to raise your level of performance, but to be so well trained that you go through your normal routine to take your best shot, rather than hurrying or otherwise caving to the pressure.
So, a clutch player is not necessarily one who raises his level of play when the game is on the line. He's the one who maintains his level of play when everything depends on him. Anybody who has actually played a sport, especially a team sport, understands this.
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That's swell. And if it was true, the evidence for it would exist.
The evidence doesn't exist, so it is either misperception on your part, or it is a product of longing for such a phenomena and inventing it in your head as a response.
Not that you have any idea about how much or how little I have been imvolved with competitive sports, but it such involvement or the lack of the same, has nothing at all to do with simply looking at the numbers and drawing the proper conclusion.
This is not really a critical argument, is it? If the fun of sports for you is in perceiving clutch performances, then have fun, that's the whole point of following the sport...to be entertained. However, I am not going to place dlb's perceptions ahead of reality in crafting my outlook on it. It is a matter of basic sense and in most other such situations, you would not be making so nonsensical an argument. If I claimed that Soandso was one of the greatest homerun hitters of all time, and you looked at the records and saw that Soandso hit 50 homeruns in a ten year career, you would trust the numbers, not my perception of Soandso as a great slugger....is that not right? You abandon this basic common sense when it comes to this clutch thesis. And then you lecture me for not abandoning my own senses and joining you in what the numbers say is a false perception.
The emperor has no clothes here. If you wish to perceive a jeweled robe, do so. I decline to join in your fantasy.