Probably a cop out, but I'd lean towards a Justice Stewart stance on clutch; "won't try to define it, but I know it when I see it."
Which is actually fine - many such moments exist and are totally apparent in those moments.
We see a player rise up on the biggest stage in the biggest moment. And we say, “man, that was clutch!”
But that’s merely a point in time, not a perpetual state of being.
Making a list of guys who’ve been clutch according to any set of metrics assigned only serves that point; a look at the past. That’s what I meant earlier that by creating lists like this, it implies a projection forward. Like, we *expect* the players on that list to be clutch in the future because they have been in the past.
On the other hand, we can look back at a player’s career - say, Joe Montana, and say, “wow he was clutch!” based on the total body of work.
But even then, everyone would have to agree on the definition of “clutch”. Pretty sure we don’t have a quorum there.
Probably getting a bit meta here haha, but this is kind of where I was heading with my Eli comment. The more I thought about defining clutch, the more I thought it's not something driven by individuals but rather by circumstances. So individual moments will provide the opportunity for an athlete to either achieve or fail, where if they achieve we'd say they are "clutch", but without the proper circumstances, we could just as easily say they are just performing at a high level. Look at another player always associated with being clutch, Jordan, and look at lists of his clutch moments. Almost all include his game 5 of the 97 playoffs. Why was it clutch? Because he had food poisoning. That was a very specific circumstance that brought about the moment, more so than his play. He played like he usually does, just did so through adversity.
So, to me at least, it feels like circumstances need to be stacked against someone to be considered clutch. So while someone could have the ability to be considered clutch, if they are rarely put in dire circumstances, they rarely have the opportunity to add a check mark to their clutch tally. Looking at it this way, it could also explain why we see Tua and Cousins pushing up this list. Players who have higher instances of bad coaching, bad defenses, bad game scripts/play calling, and as some people pointed out even those individual players own prior mistakes; these are all necessary circumstances that have to be in place to give someone an opportunity for a clutch movement. When you're on a well coached team, with a great defense, who are typically holding leads in games, you don't really have these clutch opportunities. You're practically expected to perform and close out games. I dunno, just another way to look at it I guess.
