SweaterBae wrote: You can't score without the ball, and there's a reason that the highest efficiency offenses are frequently the best offensive rebounding teams(see the Greg Oden Trailblazers). Literally the only way you can guarantee the opponent can't score is if they don't possess the ball.
I don't really want to have a semantic argumenet which is why I included that qualifier for clarity. I'm talking about a players ability to defend, his capacity as a defender, his proficienty at defending his man and playing help defense. When I say Jokic isn't a "good" defender , these are the aspects of his game that I'm criticing
I mean you're picking and choosing your own definition. Defensive rebounding has been a core component of how defensive players have been judged for decades.
So when people say x is a great defender, they’re factoring their ability to rebound? I think some of you are being disingenuous at this point.
Regardless, this is the part of his game I’m talking about
DimesandKnicks wrote: I don't really want to have a semantic argumenet which is why I included that qualifier for clarity. I'm talking about a players ability to defend, his capacity as a defender, his proficienty at defending his man and playing help defense. When I say Jokic isn't a "good" defender , these are the aspects of his game that I'm criticing
I mean you're picking and choosing your own definition. Defensive rebounding has been a core component of how defensive players have been judged for decades.
So when people say x is a great defender, they’re factoring their ability to rebound? I think some of you are being disingenuous at this point.
Regardless, this is the part of his game I’m talking about
Sweater is right, though; defensive rebounding is a component of defense. You cannot extract it because of the direct impact it has on a defensive possession. It isn't the same as contesting shots and other stuff, but it is specifically a defensive act.
SweaterBae wrote: I mean you're picking and choosing your own definition. Defensive rebounding has been a core component of how defensive players have been judged for decades.
So when people say x is a great defender, they’re factoring their ability to rebound? I think some of you are being disingenuous at this point.
Regardless, this is the part of his game I’m talking about
Sweater is right, though; defensive rebounding is a component of defense. You cannot extract it because of the direct impact it has on a defensive possession. It isn't the same as contesting shots and other stuff, but it is specifically a defensive act.
Cool. And I already conceded with another poster that clearly his rebounding is a significant boost to his teams defense and is probably why his advance stats are so hi. But when I say he’s a bad “defender” I’m talking about his ability to defend his man and his ability to help. This is what most people I know would call defense. While a players ability to corral a rebound is generally used to evaluate a players ability to rebound. I don’t think I’m reinventing the wheel here
DimesandKnicks wrote:Cool. And I already conceded with another poster that clearly his rebounding is a significant boost to his teams defense and is probably why his advance stats are so hi. But when I say he’s a bad “defender” I’m talking about his ability to defend his man and his ability to help. This is what most people I know would call defense. While a players ability to corral a rebound is generally used to evaluate a players ability to rebound. I don’t think I’m reinventing the wheel here
I hear you, but it's still relevant to defensive impact. And at some point, starts to mitigate issues with his shot defense. He is a smart defensive player who positions well and has active hands. He doesn't have the foot speed to be Rudy Gobert and yeah, at some point, one has to recognize that he isn't an elite shot defender, nor is he a guy who forces a ton of turnovers, for sure. That's sort of a given. But there are other components to defense beyond stocks, so to speak.
He was tied for 8th in the league in deflections per game, for example, and he is a high-end defensive communicator, both of which are very helpful to team defense. No one will ever confuse him for a DPOY contender, no doubt, but there are elements of his defensive game which are well above average and those which are not. It's worth treating them as discrete traits instead of lumping them all together, lest we pull the same issues one finds with IQ versus Gardner's theory of intelligence, you know what I mean?
DimesandKnicks wrote:Cool. And I already conceded with another poster that clearly his rebounding is a significant boost to his teams defense and is probably why his advance stats are so hi. But when I say he’s a bad “defender” I’m talking about his ability to defend his man and his ability to help. This is what most people I know would call defense. While a players ability to corral a rebound is generally used to evaluate a players ability to rebound. I don’t think I’m reinventing the wheel here
I hear you, but it's still relevant to defensive impact. And at some point, starts to mitigate issues with his shot defense.
I already said this in the bold. It doesn’t mitigate his issues with what you’re calling his “shot defense”. He’s still not a good “shot defender”.
He was tied for 8th in the league in deflections per game, for example, and he is a high-end defensive communicator, both of which are very helpful to team defense. No one will ever confuse him for a DPOY contender, no doubt, but there are elements of his defensive game which are well above average and those which are not. It's worth treating them as discrete traits instead of lumping them all together, lest we pull the same issues one finds with IQ versus Gardner's theory of intelligence, you know what I mean?
He’s bad at the most important thing you want your C to do which is protect the rim..along with a lot of other aspects of defense that I’ve already mentioned.
A PG isn’t a “good” defender if he’s a good post defender and shot blocker but he’s a cone on the perimeter
DimesandKnicks wrote:He’s bad at the most important thing you want your C to do which is protect the rim..along with a lot of other aspects of defense that I’ve already mentioned.
A PG isn’t a “good” defender if he’s a good post defender and shot blocker but he’s a cone on the perimeter
Rim protection is still really only one component of defense, even for a center. And it hasn't really impact Denver's defense enough for you to be hard-selling this. They play him big minutes and were still a top 8 defense. And what's killing them in the Minny series isn't dribble penetration or points in the paint, it's 3pt shooting and Ant being ablaze from literally everywhere.
So as far as persuasive arguments, you'll find some success arguing that he isn't a high-end defender for sure. But he's still a net-positive on that end of the floor. "Not elite" and "not good" are not the same thing.
DimesandKnicks wrote:He’s bad at the most important thing you want your C to do which is protect the rim..along with a lot of other aspects of defense that I’ve already mentioned.
A PG isn’t a “good” defender if he’s a good post defender and shot blocker but he’s a cone on the perimeter
Rim protection is still really only one component of defense, even for a center. And it hasn't really impact Denver's defense enough for you to be hard-selling this. They play him big minutes and were still a top 8 defense. And what's killing them in the Minny series isn't dribble penetration or points in the paint, it's 3pt shooting and Ant being ablaze from literally everywhere.
So as far as persuasive arguments, you'll find some success arguing that he isn't a high-end defender for sure. But he's still a net-positive on that end of the floor. "Not elite" and "not good" are not the same thing.
lessthanjake wrote:These are your entirely subjective opinions on how to weigh Jokic’s strengths and weaknesses, and your conclusions are contrary to the data.
If the data is DRAPM than its **** data. Tristan Thompson was one of teh 100 worst defenders on a list of nearly 2,000 players and Deshawn Stevenson was in the bottom 50.
If career DRAPM says someone was a bad defender, maybe they just were a bad defender on average over the course of their career, and your eye test is wrong? Did you think of that? Like, if over an huge sample size, they had a very negative impact on their teams’ defense, then it is very likely that they were, on average, a bad defender. And I gave you more data than just raw DRAPM anyways.
And, by the way, while Jokic isn’t really the prime example of this, actually yes, good defenders do often get “hidden” on bad offensive players. This is because basketball players are not video game players with fatigue toggled off. They have a finite amount of energy they can expend before their performance decreases—even for the best conditioned players. So when you have a player that has to carry the offense, their team often tries to conserve their energy on that side of the ball by “hiding” them on defense. And opposing offenses very often try to prevent them from doing that by trying to bring the other team’s best offensive player into a lot of actions, even when that opposing player is a good defender. It’s why it’s often really stupid when people criticize a star player’s defense because they were getting “targeted.” They’re often just being “targeted” to tire them out. Anyways, that’s just an aside about a general phenomenon rather than being specific to Jokic.
Like Who? Or the coach is aware that they're deficient defensively and don't want a good offensive player taking advantage of them or the offensive team isn't trying to "tire them out" but are using every precious possession to score and taking advantage or a poor defender to do so.
If you don’t understand that teams go at the other team’s best offensive player in order to tire them out and make them less effective on the other end, then you just have an overly simplistic view of basketball. But you asked for an example, so I’ll give you one: The Cavs always “hunted” Steph in those Finals against the Warriors, even though they literally shot worse when guarded by Steph than when guarded by anyone else on the entire Warriors team! See the spoiler text below for data on this from a prior post I’ve made in another thread. It wasn’t a strategy the Cavs did in order to maximize how many points they scored. It was a strategy the Cavs did in order to try to optimize how well they did *overall*. Basically, attacking Steph on offense was a way to help their defense by making Steph tired and therefore limiting how much he could do on offense.
Ultimately, basketball is a dynamic game, where what happens on offense and defense are not independent from each other. Teams very often make decisions to do things that are bad for one end of the floor because they think it’ll have an even larger benefit on the other end of the floor. And we don’t just see this with teams “hunting” the other team’s best offensive player. We see it with all kinds of other things. For instance, teams would optimize how much they score if they crashed the offensive glass a bunch, but they don’t do that much at all because crashing the offensive glass will hurt their defense by resulting in them giving up lots of transition baskets.
Spoiler:
I use as an example the Cavaliers in those finals—which was a team that hunted Steph a lot. They hunted Steph, but the Cavs did not actually produce efficient offense by their standards in those finals. They usually dipped (as did the Rockets—who faced the Warriors multiple times in the playoffs and tried the same tactic and typically had catastrophic drops in offensive efficiency). And there’s reason to believe this was in part because of hunting Steph being very ineffective, not in spite of hunting Steph working. Specifically, we have data that shows us that actually, in those finals, the Cavs shot a worse FG% when defended by Steph than they did when defended by any other Warriors player that got meaningful minutes. Hunting Steph was not actually successful:
The NBA’s website actually has data on how teams shot when defended by specific players. See this link and you can filter down to the 2015-2016 playoffs for the Warriors specifically when facing the Cavaliers: https://www.nba.com/stats/players/defense-dash-overall?Season=2015-16. Overall, across all those finals against the Cavs, we can derive from that database that the Cavaliers shot just 36.0% from the field when defended by Steph. For reference, the corresponding number for Iguodala over those finals was 44.4%. The corresponding number for Klay over those finals was 43.1%. The number for Draymond in those finals was 41.7%. For Livingston, it was 39.2% overall. In the two finals Durant was in, the Cavs shot 48.7% when defended by Durant. In the two prior finals, the Cavs shot 46.4% when defended by Harrison Barnes, and 46.9% when defended by Leandro Barbosa. The Cavs shot a total of 39.1% when defended by Bogut in the finals Bogut played in. The Cavs objectively fared *particularly* badly in those finals when defended by Steph. Indeed, in those finals overall, the Cavs shot a worse FG% when defended by Steph than they did when defended by any other Warriors player that got meaningful minutes, and it’s not even close.
If your position is that the 2006-2007 Cavs would “squeak into the playoffs” without LeBron, then perhaps our positions aren’t that far off. I just don’t think that a supporting cast that’s at that sort of level can be defined as “scrubs,” nor do I think that getting to the Finals in a weak conference with such a team really constitutes “carrying” them. Like, obviously a player of LeBron’s level improves a team a lot! I’m not positing that he didn’t make them better. I am simply saying that the supporting cast was objectively a very solid supporting cast, primarily because they played absolutely elite defense. Without LeBron, I don’t think they’d make the Finals, because their offense would be even worse than it was and that would’ve presumably been too much for even that elite defense to overcome. And without LeBron they surely have a worse playoff seed, so you may well be right that they lose in the first round (though I do think they were absolutely capable of beating the actual first round Wizards team the Cavs faced in reality). If you want to define LeBron as “carrying” them because they wouldn’t have gotten as far without him, then I think we’d have to define the star player of essentially every Finals team in history as having “carried” their team. At which point, it becomes an essentially meaningless label.
His supporting cast consisted of Larry Hughes, Ilgauskas, Varejo, Eric Snow, Sasha Pavlovic, Damon Jones, Donyell Marshal, and Daniel Gibson. Relative to every other team in the league - these are scrubs. A team of roll players.
The worst team in the East that year featured Paul Piece, with his supporting cast of Al Jefferson, Delonte West, Wally, Ryan Gomes, Tony Allen, Geral Green, Kendrick Perkins, Bassy and Rondo
A team of scrubs can be coached up to play good defense. And again, the year prior they had the same record, if that defense was "carried" that team why didn't they win mor games in the regular season than they did the year prior with a middling defense, especially with Lebron having another year under his belt.
If a team plays elite defense (which they did), then they are not a “team of scrubs.” Defense is half the game. A supporting cast that is historically elite at half the game is simply not a supporting cast of “scrubs.” You seem to think that a supporting cast that is lacking in offensive firepower but plays fantastic defense are just “scrubs.” This is just not a correct opinion. They were a team that played absolutely elite defense and their limited offensive firepower was mitigated by the fact that they had a star player that prefers playing a heliocentric offensive style anyways. That’s a team that is good and is well-built to optimize around their star player.
Another thing I’d note is that this whole discussion about the 2007 Cavs basically involves you acting like you don’t care about defense when it comes to whether players are good or not. But then you are simultaneously downplaying Jokic solely on the basis of defense (which you also narrowly define to not include a lot of the things that Jokic is great at on defense). How is it the case that the 2007 Cavs supporting cast can be “scrubs” despite playing historically elite defense, while Jokic’s defense is something you find really important?
OhayoKD wrote:Lebron contributes more to all the phases of play than Messi does. And he is of course a defensive anchor unlike messi.
lessthanjake wrote:These are your entirely subjective opinions on how to weigh Jokic’s strengths and weaknesses, and your conclusions are contrary to the data.
If the data is DRAPM than its **** data. Tristan Thompson was one of teh 100 worst defenders on a list of nearly 2,000 players and Deshawn Stevenson was in the bottom 50.
And, by the way, while Jokic isn’t really the prime example of this, actually yes, good defenders do often get “hidden” on bad offensive players. This is because basketball players are not video game players with fatigue toggled off. They have a finite amount of energy they can expend before their performance decreases—even for the best conditioned players. So when you have a player that has to carry the offense, their team often tries to conserve their energy on that side of the ball by “hiding” them on defense. And opposing offenses very often try to prevent them from doing that by trying to bring the other team’s best offensive player into a lot of actions, even when that opposing player is a good defender. It’s why it’s often really stupid when people criticize a star player’s defense because they were getting “targeted.” They’re often just being “targeted” to tire them out. Anyways, that’s just an aside about a general phenomenon rather than being specific to Jokic.
Like Who? Or the coach is aware that they're deficient defensively and don't want a good offensive player taking advantage of them or the offensive team isn't trying to "tire them out" but are using every precious possession to score and taking advantage or a poor defender to do so.
If your position is that the 2006-2007 Cavs would “squeak into the playoffs” without LeBron, then perhaps our positions aren’t that far off. I just don’t think that a supporting cast that’s at that sort of level can be defined as “scrubs,” nor do I think that getting to the Finals in a weak conference with such a team really constitutes “carrying” them. Like, obviously a player of LeBron’s level improves a team a lot! I’m not positing that he didn’t make them better. I am simply saying that the supporting cast was objectively a very solid supporting cast, primarily because they played absolutely elite defense. Without LeBron, I don’t think they’d make the Finals, because their offense would be even worse than it was and that would’ve presumably been too much for even that elite defense to overcome. And without LeBron they surely have a worse playoff seed, so you may well be right that they lose in the first round (though I do think they were absolutely capable of beating the actual first round Wizards team the Cavs faced in reality). If you want to define LeBron as “carrying” them because they wouldn’t have gotten as far without him, then I think we’d have to define the star player of essentially every Finals team in history as having “carried” their team. At which point, it becomes an essentially meaningless label.
His supporting cast consisted of Larry Hughes, Ilgauskas, Varejo, Eric Snow, Sasha Pavlovic, Damon Jones, Donyell Marshal, and Daniel Gibson. Relative to every other team in the league - these are scrubs. A team of roll players.
The worst team in the East that year featured Paul Piece, with his supporting cast of Al Jefferson, Delonte West, Wally, Ryan Gomes, Tony Allen, Geral Green, Kendrick Perkins, Bassy and Rondo
A team of scrubs can be coached up to play good defense. And again, the year prior they had the same record, if that defense was "carried" that team why didn't they win mor games in the regular season than they did the year prior with a middling defense, especially with Lebron having another year under his belt.
Long Term and Medium Term RAPM is pretty good? Would be pretty weird if player value diverged too wildly from it
One thing "rim protection only defense that counts for center" people ignore is the fact that you can defend multiple ways. If player meets cutter at the rim and block him it is good defense. You can have the same result by positioning good and preventing cutter to even recive the ball. But that doesn't count.
If defender challanges shot at the rim and force a miss it is good defense. If by good positioning you don't allow player to shoot at the rim and force him to pass the ball out it doesn't count. That is the way Nuggets and Jokic guarded Butler in the finals last year when he prized Jokic's defense but it is nothing I guess.
If you don't allow shot at the rim but let opponent shoot midrange shots (Nuggets defending Bam in the finals last year) it is good game-plane. But someone will say - see how much Bam scored. Jokic bad.
Boxing-out is defense. Rebounding also. If player defends opponent at the rim but let him score on putback his rim protecting % will be 50% - which means great defense. Opposing teams OFFRTG will be 200 because you have done nothing if you don't secure the ball.
One more thing - creating defensive schemes to protect player deficiencies is visible. If schemes at the same time serve to use players adventages it shouldn't count I guess.
To translate it to offensive side - for SG what you expect is to be good ball-handler, can break his defender off the drible, and create for himself and others. Create separation to get the shot off whenever needed. This is Jerry Steckhouse. Problem was he was hitting less than 40% of his shots. Player that doesn't do any of this and used offensive schemes buildt to cover for his offensive deficiences (as some would say) is Klay Thompson. Maybe those schemes were buildt to use his advantages after all. So who would you have of the two?
This is what happenes when somebody is focused on things he thinks only metter and don't want to except other facts.
JustBuzzin wrote:Hypothetical if Jokic lose tonight this thread will magically get deleted.
If Jokic wins this thread will reach 75 pages by midnight.
LOL
But yeah, it's a pretty big game. If Jokic plays well, then that will be one thing. If they lose and he has a bad game, though, he's gonna get crucified here. And of course how Murray plays will matter a lot.
UglyBugBall wrote:I've been saying this since his first mvp. He's an incredible system player, but he lacks competitive fire and toughness to be an ATG player. His MVP as a 6 seed will be locked at as THE worst mvp season in history. It'll make the Rose and Nash wins seem unanimous.
Jokic is a guy that needs a superstar like Murray to make his game work. He can't take over without that second punch on the perimeter the way other ATGs could. Now that Murray has been exposed, so has Jokic. What's funny is that those really watching told you this year's ago when he only got the sixth seed without him.
To me he is the third best player in the NBA - Luka and Embiid are comfortably ahead of him. Last year he took advantage of an injured field, and a weakened conference in a transition year. He had Murray playing like a superstar and to his credit got it done. But his awards don't match his greatness and in a few years everyone will come around to what I'm saying here right now.
as a great PASSING great big he is only one of TWO, and that other was bill walton a great big who passes great is rarer than rare. they change everything. they don't come along in a generation - they are rarer than that. that's two in FIVE DECADES
JustBuzzin wrote:Hypothetical if Jokic lose tonight this thread will magically get deleted.
If Jokic wins this thread will reach 75 pages by midnight.
LOL
But yeah, it's a pretty big game. If Jokic plays well, then that will be one thing. If they lose and he has a bad game, though, he's gonna get crucified here. And of course how Murray plays will matter a lot.
I'm noticing people are bringing Murray into this conversation as if he plays a huge part.
If you want to call someone the GOAT it has be on them to win this game. LeBron win or lose was getting blame not his sidekick. Same with MJ.
Jokic has no excuses to not win this game tonight. If he's the best player in the world go show why. No excuses win or lose.
JustBuzzin wrote:If you want to call someone the GOAT it has be on them to win this game. LeBron win or lose was getting blame not his sidekick. Same with MJ.
Yeah, but people have caught up to how stupid that is, and are trying not to do it anymore. Because one player literally cannot entirely determine the outcome of a game.
JustBuzzin wrote:If you want to call someone the GOAT it has be on them to win this game. LeBron win or lose was getting blame not his sidekick. Same with MJ.
Yeah, but people have caught up to how stupid that is, and are trying not to do it anymore. Because one player literally cannot entirely determine the outcome of a game.
Then don't mention him in the GOAT conversation.
You want the accolades but don't want the criticism that comes with it. That's a soft mentality. Win the damn game you're the favorites for a reason.
JustBuzzin wrote:Then don't mention him in the GOAT conversation.
No, it doesn't work that way. You don't get to peddle a BS standard (not you, I mean generally) and then deny someone from entry into a discussion once that standard has been disproven.
You want the accolades but don't want the criticism that comes with it. That's a soft mentality. Win the damn game you're the favorites for a reason.
Criticism is fine. Disagreement with the idea that he IS the GOAT is fine. Setting literally impossible standards which don't match the other players in the discussion is not. Jordan didn't win when his teammates weren't there for him, no matter how well he played. That's what his whole early career was about, guys not coming through around him despite his individual brilliance. Same same with Kareem after he left Milwaukee and before Magic.
