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Having done law at LSE, Vijievan transitioned into the world of sports journalism through a fast-track diploma course with the Press Association. After completing that, he did an internship at 90min, before joining the Snack Media team on a full-time basis.
Initially starting off as a writer for FootballFanCast, Vijievan became assistant editor of the site and weekend editor of This is Futbol. After a few years working across both sites, he took up the role of assistant editor to the exclusives project at GiveMeSport, speaking to a number of top journalists like Fabrizio Romano and Christian Falk on the latest transfer news across European football.
Now taking on the role of evergreen editor, Vijievan is responsible for longer-form content based on everything from the Premier League to international football. Outside of that, he's also passionate about cricket and the NBA.
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Few moments in sport match a shot that settles a game in its dying seconds, and the NBA has produced more of them than most.
From Game 7 buzzer-beaters to title-clinching jumpers in the Finals, the league's history has been shaped by the players who wanted the ball when it mattered most.
Some built their reputations on a single unforgettable moment, while others delivered time and again across entire careers. Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Damian Lillard turned the late-game dagger into a trademark, and a newer generation led by Tyrese Haliburton has carried that tradition on.
But who ranks as the most clutch player in NBA history? Here are 15 of the very best.
They don't call you 'Mr. Big Shot' for nothing. Chauncey Billups bounced around the league early in his career before finding a home with the Detroit Pistons, where he became the composed leader of one of the most unlikely title-winning sides of the modern era.
His defining moment came in Game 5 of the 2004 Eastern Conference Semi-Finals against the New Jersey Nets, when he launched a shot from just in front of half-court with 2.9 seconds remaining to force overtime. The Pistons eventually lost that game in triple overtime, but won the next two to take the series.
Detroit went on to stun a star-studded L.A. Lakers side in five games in the NBA Finals, with Billups named Finals MVP after averaging 21 points and a series-high 5.2 assists while shooting 47.1% from three-point range.
Stephen Curry changed the game with his long-range shooting, and that range has made him one of the most feared late-game threats the NBA has ever seen. No defence is safe once the Golden State Warriorsstar crosses half-court, and his willingness to pull up from well beyond the arc with the clock winding down leaves opponents with impossible decisions.
His most famous dagger came against the Oklahoma City Thunder in February 2016. With the scores tied at 118 in overtime, Curry rose from 38 feet with 0.6 seconds remaining and buried the game-winner, his 12th three-pointer of the night, which tied the NBA single-game record. He finished with 46 points.
Curry's late-game credentials were formally recognised when he won the NBA's Clutch Player of the Year award for the 2023/24 season.
Dirk Nowitzki's 2011 playoff run stands as one of the great clutch campaigns in NBA history. The Dallas Mavericks legend repeatedly dragged his side back from the brink, never more memorably than in Game 2 of the NBA Finals against the Miami Heat.
Trailing by 15 points with just over seven minutes remaining, Dallas looked set to fall 2-0 behind. Instead, Nowitzki scored the Mavericks' final nine points, capping the comeback with a left-handed layup with 3.6 seconds left to seal a 95-93 win and level the series. He did it all while playing with a torn tendon in his middle finger.
The Mavericks went on to beat LeBron, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in six games, with Nowitzki named Finals MVP. His one-legged fadeaway was near impossible to guard at the best of times, let alone in the final minutes of a tight game.
Kawhi Leonard has never been one for words, and his biggest moment needed none. With Game 7 of the 2019 Eastern Conference Semi-Finals between the Toronto Raptors and the Philadelphia 76ers tied at 90, Leonard got to his spot ahead of Ben Simmons and rose over the outstretched arms of Joel Embiid as time expired.
The ball bounced four times on the rim before dropping through the net, sealing a 92-90 win and the first buzzer-beater in Game 7 history. Leonard had scored 13 of Toronto's final 15 points before that shot.
The Raptors rode that momentum all the way to the franchise's first championship, with Leonard named Finals MVP for the second time in his career, having first claimed the award with the San Antonio Spurs in 2014.
Few players have ever strung together a run of late-game heroics like Tyrese Haliburton did in the 2025 playoffs. The Indiana Pacers point guard settled game after game in the dying seconds, starting with a driving layup with 1.3 seconds left in overtime to close out the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round.
He followed it with a go-ahead step-back three with 1.1 seconds remaining in Game 2 against the Cleveland Cavaliers, and a buzzer-beater to force overtime against the New York Knicks in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals. He then topped the lot with a 21-foot pull-up with 0.3 seconds left to win Game 1 of the NBA Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
That Finals run ended in heartbreak, with Haliburton tearing his Achilles in Game 7, but few players have packed so much clutch shot-making into a single postseason.
As much as Kyrie Irving has caused controversy off the court, there's no doubting the talent the Dallas Mavericks point guard has. The player LeBron James insisted was the most gifted he had ever seen in the NBA, has come up with some big shots over his career, not least in the 2016 NBA Finals against the Golden State Warriors when he hit a game-winning three-pointer in Game 7 with less than a minute remaining.
With some of the best handles the league has ever seen, Irving has always been able to get to his spot whenever needed, and his ability to find crafty finishes when driving into the paint has always kept opposition defenders guessing. His 21-foot game-winning floater with his weaker left-hand against the Denver Nuggets in March 2024 was about as ingenious as you can get.
When you think of shots that defined an entire era, then Ray Allen's three-pointer in Game 6 of the NBA Finals between the Miami Heat and the San Antonio Spurs is right up there. With the Heat down by three and the shot clock off, LeBron would first miss a three-pointer to tie the game, before Chris Bosh would muscle in and steal the rebound.
Bosh would then find Allen in the corner, who would promptly nail his shot from beyond-the-arc, tying the game and sending it to overtime. The Heat would then come out on top and send the series to Game 7, which they would eventually win to claim the NBA championship.
One of the biggest shots in NBA history, a whole Finals series completely flipped in the space of a few seconds. Never mind Allen's clutch efforts with the Boston Celtics — instead, he will be forever remembered for that shot against San Antonio.
One of the greatest shooting guards in NBA history, Reggie Miller, made it his mission to send opposition fans in tears - you only have to ask Knicks fans how they feel about him to know the pain and suffering Miller caused them during the 1990s. Nothing perhaps better reflected that then when he exploded for eight points in just nine seconds against the Knicks in 1995 in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals.
Just three years later, Miller would knock down a huge three in the final seconds of Indiana's Game 4 clash against the Chicago Bulls in the Eastern Conference Finals to tie the series at 2-2. All in all, in his final nine seasons in the NBA, Miller would make 142 three-pointers in crunch time, 54 more than the next closest player in that same period.
The logo himself, Jerry West, made a huge name for himself with the way he operated during the clutch. His shot from 53 feet in the 1970 NBA Finals still brings back fond memories for those lucky enough to have seen it in person. The only player to win an NBA Finals MVP award despite playing for the losing team — he did so for the Lakers in 1969 after averaging an unbelievable 37.9 points, 7.4 assists and 4.7 rebounds against the Boston Celtics in a seven-game series — West was a playoff machine.
He still holds the NBA record to this day of averaging the highest points per game in a playoff series, managing 46.3 PPG in the 1965 Western Division Finals against Baltimore. At the time of his retirement in 1974, he also held the records of the highest playoff scoring average of 29.1 points per game, and most points in the playoffs with 4,457.
Every time the playoffs came round, you just knew Kobe Bryant knew that it was showtime. The Los Angeles Lakers legend invariably stepped up his game when the spotlight was at its brightest, and demanded the ball in the toughest of situations to help his team over the line. Armed with his famed 'Mamba Mentality', Bryant would hit numerous game-winning shots, not least in the 2000 Western Conference Semi-Finals against the Phoenix Suns and the 2008 Western Conference Finals against the San Antonio Spurs.
According to an ESPN report back in 2011, Bryant had been the overwhelming pick over the previous six seasons during NBA.com's annual general manager survey that had the question 'Which player in the NBA would you want taking a shot with the game on the line?'.
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