Saying someone is clutch has become a very cliched term in the NBA, and most recently, LeBron James has been derided for being unclutch and disappearing in crucial situations.

Tonight's game would seem to support that, as James had a team worst +/- stat of -24 for the night. While I dont particularly like the stat, it is good for telling if someone is extremely good or extremely bad, and apparently, in the biggest game of his career (By far), LeBron was flat out awful.

So what is being clutch? Is it hitting a lot of gamewinners? Is it being the best player on the winning team that consistently wins games by a small amount? Frankly, at this point, I dont really know what it is, and would like to ask everyone out there for some thoughts/advice on the matter.

Just for a few random and somewhat interesting tidbits. A few days ago, the GMs did their annual "who would you like to have the ball in the closing moments of a game with a score differential of +/- 3." In other words, who would you want to make the game-tying or game winning shot. Every single year for the past 5 years or so, Kobe Bryant has won by a landslide, and this year was no different. I know fans normally vote based on reputation, but I would think GMs would be smarter. The reason I say this is that Kobe was not particularly clutch this year. In fact, in my opinion, he was downright awful, taking way too many 3s (and inevitably missing most) , disrupting the offense, and most crucially, commiting a large amount of TOs. Several different games, he never even got a shot up, because he would turn the ball over. If that is the case, then why is he the most clutch player? 

A few years ago, I remember that Chauncey Billups came in 2nd in the same voting, when he was 2-23 or something like that in such game-ending situations. He is not a great like Kobe, so why all of the confidence?

In my opinion, "being clutch", is rubbish. You always want to give the ball to your best player, and for most of the past 5 years, IMO, Kobe has been the best player in the league. LeBron has always been given the ball, and he has always seemingly never come through. Why?

So that is my question to you: what is clutch? 

Be sure to write your response, not just answer the poll. Thanks.