That "clutch" word is about as valued a term you will find in the NBA. LeBron James has never held it. Kobe Bryant has it but even he still fights off the doubters. Michael Jordan definitely had it. But who else? Who else in the modern NBA can really claim it as part of their identity?
Roy, at that point, was starting to develop that reputation. It was two days before my 25th birthday. I had written for this site less than a year and only in a moonlighting capacity. I was just starting my second season; Roy was just starting his third.
"Are you clutch right now?"
Roy laughed. Not at the question, which happens all the time and isn’t as awkward as you might think. It was a happy laugh, as if it was exactly the kind of question he had grown up hoping that he would be able to answer and because this was probably one of the greatest days of his life. He was less than an hour removed from his feat, his face still flush with adrenaline.
"I believe in myself," he began, before continuing to explain that he always asked McMillan for the ball late in games. And then he delivered the line that stood out to me at the time so much so that I underlined it for emphasis in the transcript.
"I am more calm in those situations," Roy said when asked if his pulse picks up when the stakes get higher. "I’m relaxed."
I remember him saying those words, despite how straightforward they read after the fact, as much as I remember the shot itself. He said them while looking straight into my eyes without equivocation and without an iota of braggadocio. This wasn't bragging; this was stating scientific fact. Here he was, a 24-year-old talking to a 24-year-old, and he sounded like a wise expert in the black arts of performing under pressure explaining his patented approach to a slack-jawed child.
