I think the big point that the general NBA fandom and the media don't seem to grasp, is that in the grand scheme of things, man-defense is insignificant.
Positional versatility and ability to lock-down offensive players are nice to consider, and probably a lot of what coaches and voters look at. However, again, just as on offense, basketball is a 5-on-5 game, and there's a difference in being a good 1-on-1 defender (which is what most people think about when they put Lebron in the DPOY rankings), and being a good 5-on-5 defender (which is where Lebron's true value lies, something that's being completely overlooked).
Bill Russell is the greatest defensive player of all time. He anchored a Celtics defensive dynasty, whose average DRTG was as far from the #2 ranked defense over the time period, as the difference between the first and last ranked offenses of the same era. Think about that for a second. Take a look at the current team ORTG and DRTG rankings, and imagine a team with an 84.4 DRTG (a full 12.8 PPP better than Philli's #1 ranked defense).
Yet man defense was never his focus. He alllowed Chamberlain to average 30/30 against him. Why? Because he never entered the game set on stopping Chamberlain. He knew that getting caught in that battle of egos wouldn't necessarily mean anything at the long term and team level. What was important was to force the entire team to take the worst shots possible, and if that meant forcing Chamberlain to take a large volume of shots, then so be it. The goal is to hamper team efficiency by playing excellent help defense, not individual efficiency by man defense.
This is where Lebron's value lies. The problem is, people only think of defensive anchors in the "shot-blocking big man" mold, when, in truth, there are two types of defensive anchors. Those who block shots at the rim, and those who cause havoc on the rest of the floor, where the actual majority of NBA shots are taken.
Both of these types of defensive anchors can have similar levels of defensive impact on a team at the peak level, and its no wonder that the best defensive players of each defensive eras (Russell, Hakeem, and Garnett), functioned as BOTH types.
Again, I'll bring up what drza mentioned in the thread on the PC board (thread regarding Deng's value to the Bulls) that Lebron's been up there with the top defensive big men in Engelmann's 08-11 RAPM study. He also mentioned that we've seen evidence before of great defensive Small Forwards being capable of having this kind of impact on the defense, without being dominant shot blockers.
drza wrote:On the '04 - '09 Ilardi study, Artest (+5.1 on defense), right in a group with Ben Wallace (+5.2), Tim Duncan (+4.8) , Ratlif (+4.6), and Camby (+4.2). Battier (+3.9) and Kirileknko (+3.5) weren't far behind.
Similarly, in Englemann's '08 - '11 study LeBron (+3.7 on defense) was right there with Dwight Howard (+4.0), Duncan (+3.9), Josh Smith (+4.1) and Andrew Bogut (+4.2). And in that study Deng was +3.0 on defense, not far behind.
So, again, Lebron fits into this "defensive roamer" mold; he's the same type of defensive player that guys like Pippen and Artest were, for starters. We've seen his ability to have ridiculously high impact on the defensive end, as his later Cavs teams were always near the top of the league defensively (with Varejao being the only other adequate defender, his front line in 2010 was 33 year old Jamison and 37 year old Shaq for God's sake). We continue to see that effect here in Miami now, and for him to be given the DPOY award this year wouldn't be a travesty at all. It's perfectly justifiable if you make the effort to do the research.
