Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant and the Top 5 Cold-Blooded Assassins in the NBA

The cold-blooded assassin. It's as difficult a thing to define as there is in the NBA. It seems simple at first: Who's going to take a shot with the game on the line? 

The thing is that's too easy and too difficult at the same time. If you ask me, and I have one player to take that shot, I'm going with Carmelo Anthony. 

But what if it means one player to carry your team though a postseason? Then Carmelo Anthony falls below a number of other people. In spite of having made it to the postseason every year of his career, he's gotten past the first round only once. 

What if it's a player to take over a game? A player to win a championship? Suddenly everyone would vault Dirk Nowitzki to the top of that list, or near it, though a year ago you would have been laughed at if you had breathed his name as "clutch." 

What of defense? LeBron James had much made of his meltdown last year in the Finals, but in the postseason, during clutch time, he had a otherworldly 84.9 defensive rating and a net rating of 19.2. Does that count for anything?

Then what about the postseason and regular season? How much do you account for both? One series can really skew perceptions in the postseason.

Derrick Rose had the second-best clutch stats in the NBA postseason before the Miami series, and in fact even afterwards still had averaged 10 points more per 36 minutes and had a higher clutch field-goal percentage than James (41 percent to 40 percent).

Was he "more clutch" than James?

Or, if we're going to judge by how a player went out, can we call Kobe Bryant clutch at all? He scored just 15.3 points per 36 minutes and shot 25 percent in the clutch, while having a net rating of over minus-75.

The problem when you focus too much on the postseason is you end up with extremely small sample sizes that skew things dramatically. A full season worth of stats tends to even things out. A player playing injured doesn't have his stats warped so enormously. 

In the end, all of these things matter. Can you hit the game-winner? Can you take a game over? Can you do it on both ends of the court? 

I took the time to look up a number of players and see how they compare in a number of different areas including all of the areas above, taking into account postseason success and failure as well as regular season factors. I also took into account how they affect other parts of the game such as rebounding and passing. 

I have no magic formula because I simply don't think one exists. There are other shades that come into play. Regardless of what some of us know about how many game-winners Kobe has missed, there probably isn't another player in the NBA teams would like less to see the ball in their hands with the game on the line. 

Following are the top five assassins in the NBA and why they are on my list. As for Anthony? He started off as the top on my list, but in the end he didn't make it. 

If you have one shot to make, he'd be the the one to make it, but his clutch scoring average between his two clubs last year was just 14th in the league. He averaged just 9.3 boards and one assist per 36 minutes so his impact elsewhere was minimal. His net rating was minus-1.65. 

Other players were more impressive. Here they are. 

5. Kevin Durant

Last year the Oklahoma City scoring champion led the Thunder to the Western Conference Finals. During the regular season, in the clutch (less than five minutes to go and the score within five) he averaged 33.1 points per 36 minutes, sixth in the NBA. 

He also stepped up things on the defensive end, holding a defensive rating of just 95.1 in the clutch and a net rating of 19.6.  

In the postseason he performed well enough for the first two series, but his numbers weren't nearly as good. He averaged just 26.3 points and shot 44 percent in the clutch, while his net rating was minus-21. This can be a bit misleading, though, as he had the best stats going into the Dallas series. A big part of this is that a 52-minute sample size is easily skewed. 

Last night, Durant hit his third game-winning shot, and the first he hit with his team behind. He hit the previous two with the score tied. 

4. Derrick Rose

Last year, with less than five minutes in the game the game the Chicago Bulls were a plus-137. That is more than three times better than any other team in the NBA. Derrick Rose was the major reason why. 

Rose, with 35.8 points per 36 minutes, had the second-best clutch scoring. He added 7.8 boards and 7.3 dimes, giving him a total stats line of 50.9, the highest of any player in the NBA. 

Additionally, and less heralded, he cranked up things on the defensive end, yielding a defensive rating of just 95.4 and a net rating of 19.42. 

Rose also twice hit a game-tying shot, and also twice hit the game-tying free throw. He didn't get his first game-winner until this year, though, when he hit the winning shot with just over one second on the clock. 

During the postseason, while Rose struggled during the first part of the game, until the Heat series he was dominant in the clutch. Even with the Heat playing suffocating defense to end the Bulls run, Rose's overall clutch-time performance in the postseason was impressive for a first deep postseason run. 

Rose shot 41 percent from the field (48 percent before the Heat series) and averaged 34.9 points and 4.5 assists. All in all, Rose accounted for nearly 85 percent of the Bulls' clutch-time offense in the postseason. 

While he was eventually shut down, he, like Durant, did more than enough to earn his way onto this list. 

Both players are superstars. They are the first two players to take advantage of the "Rose Rule" in the new CBA. They both hit their first game-winning shot with their team down less than a week apart. They are both noted for their leadership and humility. One is the reigning scoring champ. One the reigning MVP.

On top of that, they are only a week apart in age. 

It almost goes without saying that in a few years, these will be the top two names on this list. For now though, there are more experienced assassins. 

3. LeBron James

LeBron James has been unfairly criticized as a "choker." The reality is that he's hit 18 game-winning shots in his career. Last year he had the third-best scoring total in clutch time, averaging 33.9 points per 36 minutes. 

Additionally he was a plus-12.1, averaged 8.4 rebounds and 3.7 dimes. But yes, it was in the postseason that he really came up clutch. 

Prior to the Finals, he was enormous, the reason being the Heat were in the Finals is not just because of what he did on offense, though he did come up big in several games on that end. It was the defense that did it for them. 

His defensive rating in the clutch was 84.9 and it was LeBron who took the toughest defensive assignments. It was he who was the main factor in shutting down Derrick Rose and getting the Heat past the Bulls. 

People are to quick to snap to the last series and delete everything that happened before that. Yes, James had a bad Finals, and yes, that's why he's third instead of higher. That does not undo the positives, though. 

Essentially, if your argument comes down to him only getting to the Finals, there should only be one player above him, as there was only one team that went further. 

2. Dirk Nowitzki

Dirk Nowitzki's parents were quite prescient. A dirk is an assassin's weapon. 

Last year in the playoffs, Nowitzki was an absolute beast, shredding through the greatest players playing today, one after the other: Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant and then LeBron James and Dwyane Wade were left in his wake. 

His clutch-time numbers in the postseason were utterly insane. He was plus-52 per 36 minutes. He averaged 47.5 points and 7.9 boards. He shot 54 percent. His offensive rating was 141.35 and his defensive rating was 69.75. 

That means that more than twice as many clutch-time points were scored by the Mavericks than by their opponents in the clutch while Dirk was on the floor. 

Dirk is an assassins weapon. 

1. Kobe Bryant

Kobe's exploits may be the the most overrated and the most underrated at the same time. When it comes to him, people make of him what they want to, but the bottom line is this: No player in the history of the NBA has hit more game-winning shots (27). 

Over each of the last four years, Bryant has been either first or second in clutch-time scoring. Last year he led the NBA with 37.4 points per 36 minutes. 

And, oh yeah, he has five golden rings. 

Say what you want about him, but he's been the league's most cold-blooded assassin.