What stops Jokic from becoming another Marc Gasol?

[70sFan]

What is (was) Gasol having there that Jokic is missing?
I really don't think it's the hands, smarts and anticipation

Gasol reads the game far better on defense, he also has better fundamentals in terms of footwork and positioning. Seriously, comparing Jokic to Gasol in terms of footwork is like comparing average shooter to elite one.

Gasol is defnitely smarter defender with better anticipation. It's not even close.

Beat me to it — I think there is just an overall under-appreciation from makes a really good defender (not speaking about anyone poster specifically). I’ve had the pleasure to attend a few games that he has played, and he was a defensive maestro.

— people already mentioned his foot work and lateral movement though and his younger years is athleticism a little bit underrated
— he had great court awareness, and so he would position himself accordingly, including boxing out players, so that a teammate to get a rebound.
— he contested shots well without fouling, which isn’t easy to do. There has been a lot of talk about the high school player Cooper Flagg who has an exceptional ability to contest perimeter shots using his LinkedIn athleticism without fouling.
— he read opposing defenses so well, which made him rotate quickly and provide great health defense. Watching him play, he was communicating on the floor all the time, telling people where to go moving them around
— he was just really smart in the way that he read ball-screen actions and made the right read most of the time regardless of what coverage the team was

Jokić could get a little bit better with some slight improvement but he’s never going to be someone like Marc Gasol. What’s interesting to me is that even with the limitations that were mentioned about lateral movement, etc., I find it interesting that Jokic doesn’t read offenses as well, and as quickly as he reads defenses to create offense out of nothing. Either that or he does, and he doesn’t communicate it on court. It’s actually really fascinating.

It's tough to describe, but "offensive" BBIQ is rarely entangled with "defensive" BBIQ. Jokic is a decently smart defender, but he's not savant on that end. He's not the only example - Magic, Nash, Oscar were all top tier offensive minds, but even though they could show signs of quality reads on defense, they never materialized that on full extent.

The same thing applies to defense - I think you won't find many defenders smarter than Patrick Ewing, but his "offensive" BBIQ was extremely limited for a star.

[Peregrine01]

Playing similar way doesn't mean much if one player is significantly better at playing that way than the other.

I don't think you're giving enough credit to how good the whole Grizzlies roster was on defense. They were built with that in mind.

Marc's prime (2013) also came before pace and space became the predominant way of playing. You replace current Jokic with Marc and I don't think you're going to see some dramatic improvement in the Nuggets' defense.

We have seen Gasol in different teams with different coaches and different rosters, yet he always made a huge impact on defense.

About era - come on, Gasol was arguably the most impactful defender on per minute basis in 2019, when he was past his prime and it was 4 years ago.

And yet, he was always on strong defensive rosters. Has Jokic ever played on a roster even remotely as good on defense as the mid-2010s Grizz or the late-2010 Raptors?

Jokic is also a very impactful defender by advanced metrics, so I don't understand why you use that argument for Marc but conveniently omit that about Jokic.

[homecourtloss]

Gasol reads the game far better on defense, he also has better fundamentals in terms of footwork and positioning. Seriously, comparing Jokic to Gasol in terms of footwork is like comparing average shooter to elite one.

Gasol is defnitely smarter defender with better anticipation. It's not even close.

Beat me to it — I think there is just an overall under-appreciation from makes a really good defender (not speaking about anyone poster specifically). I’ve had the pleasure to attend a few games that he has played, and he was a defensive maestro.

— people already mentioned his foot work and lateral movement though and his younger years is athleticism a little bit underrated
— he had great court awareness, and so he would position himself accordingly, including boxing out players, so that a teammate to get a rebound.
— he contested shots well without fouling, which isn’t easy to do. There has been a lot of talk about the high school player Cooper Flagg who has an exceptional ability to contest perimeter shots using his LinkedIn athleticism without fouling.
— he read opposing defenses so well, which made him rotate quickly and provide great health defense. Watching him play, he was communicating on the floor all the time, telling people where to go moving them around
— he was just really smart in the way that he read ball-screen actions and made the right read most of the time regardless of what coverage the team was

Jokić could get a little bit better with some slight improvement but he’s never going to be someone like Marc Gasol. What’s interesting to me is that even with the limitations that were mentioned about lateral movement, etc., I find it interesting that Jokic doesn’t read offenses as well, and as quickly as he reads defenses to create offense out of nothing. Either that or he does, and he doesn’t communicate it on court. It’s actually really fascinating.

It's tough to describe, but "offensive" BBIQ is rarely entangled with "defensive" BBIQ. Jokic is a decently smart defender, but he's not savant on that end. He's not the only example - Magic, Nash, Oscar were all top tier offensive minds, but even though they could show signs of quality reads on defense, they never materialized that on full extent.

The same thing applies to defense - I think you won't find many defenders smarter than Patrick Ewing, but his "offensive" BBIQ was extremely limited for a star.

It’s true. If you can ever get a Player that has it on both ends, well, you need to hang on to him.

[70sFan]

I don't think you're giving enough credit to how good the whole Grizzlies roster was on defense. They were built with that in mind.

Marc's prime (2013) also came before pace and space became the predominant way of playing. You replace current Jokic with Marc and I don't think you're going to see some dramatic improvement in the Nuggets' defense.

We have seen Gasol in different teams with different coaches and different rosters, yet he always made a huge impact on defense.

About era - come on, Gasol was arguably the most impactful defender on per minute basis in 2019, when he was past his prime and it was 4 years ago.

And yet, he was always on strong defensive rosters. Has Jokic ever played on a roster even remotely as good on defense as the mid-2010s Grizz or the late-2010 Raptors?

Jokic is also a very impactful defender by advanced metrics, so I don't understand why you use that argument for Marc but conveniently omit that about Jokic.

Do you think it's impossible to extract defensive value from teammates?

I didn't mention any stats, I don't need to. If you watch games, you see that one of them is among the best defenders of this century and the other one is Jokic.

Now, tell me what other biases I have because I don't consider your favorite player perfect.

[BelgradeNugget]

One thing with Jokic, he's not just conserving energy, he's also avoiding foul trouble which is important since he's so incredibly valuable to the offense. The further he gets into a game without picking up fouls, the more aggressively he defends and the better his rim defense gets.

Just to add some numbers from 2022-23 regular season:

Nuggets DEFRTG - 113.5 (15th in the NBA)
Jokic DEFRTG - 111.6

Jokic DEFRTG by quarters
1st - 111.6
2nd - 116.0
3rd - 112.9
4th - 109.4

Nuggets DEFRTG in the clutch - 99.3 (3rd in the NBA, 142 min)
Jokic DEFRTG in the clutch - 92.9

Hate to be the guy, but clutch numbers are basically useless due to insane noise to signal ratio.

Also, what's the league average DRtg for each quarter? I'd assume 4th quarters are lower on average.

I know clutch numbers can be misleading but we are talking about 142 minutes in 37 games which is equivalent to 3 full games as sample size. It is not 3 games and 10 minutes. If that is not solid sample size OK.

Nuggets were 10th in DEFRTG in 4Q with 111.4. Jokic's DEFRTG of 109.4 is better than Bucks DEFRTG of 109.5 in 4Q which was good for 4th in the NBA

More questions?

https://www.nba.com/stats/teams/advanced?Period=4&dir=A&sort=DEF_RATING

[70sFan]

Just to add some numbers from 2022-23 regular season:

Nuggets DEFRTG - 113.5 (15th in the NBA)
Jokic DEFRTG - 111.6

Jokic DEFRTG by quarters
1st - 111.6
2nd - 116.0
3rd - 112.9
4th - 109.4

Nuggets DEFRTG in the clutch - 99.3 (3rd in the NBA, 142 min)
Jokic DEFRTG in the clutch - 92.9

Hate to be the guy, but clutch numbers are basically useless due to insane noise to signal ratio.

Also, what's the league average DRtg for each quarter? I'd assume 4th quarters are lower on average.

I know clutch numbers can be misleading but we are talking about 142 minutes in 37 games which is equivalent to 3 full games as sample size. It is not 3 games and 10 minutes. If that is not solid sample size OK.

Nuggets were 10th in DEFRTG in 4Q with 111.4. Jokic's DEFRTG of 109.4 is better than Bucks DEFRTG of 109.5 in 4Q which was good for 4th in the NBA

More questions?

https://www.nba.com/stats/teams/advanced?Period=4&dir=A&sort=DEF_RATING

Thank you for the source, as expected Nuggets looks solid, but nothing beyond that. I don't think you can compare Jokic's on DRtg to overall team DRtg, because it misses almost all blowouts when Jokic sat 4th quarters.

[Peregrine01]

We have seen Gasol in different teams with different coaches and different rosters, yet he always made a huge impact on defense.

About era - come on, Gasol was arguably the most impactful defender on per minute basis in 2019, when he was past his prime and it was 4 years ago.

And yet, he was always on strong defensive rosters. Has Jokic ever played on a roster even remotely as good on defense as the mid-2010s Grizz or the late-2010 Raptors?

Jokic is also a very impactful defender by advanced metrics, so I don't understand why you use that argument for Marc but conveniently omit that about Jokic.

Do you think it's impossible to extract defensive value from teammates?

I didn't mention any stats, I don't need to. If you watch games, you see that one of them is among the best defenders of this century and the other one is Jokic.

Now, tell me what other biases I have because I don't consider your favorite player perfect.

No one is considering Jokic perfect. Perhaps, just perhaps, a team's roster matters in how well they play defense and the blame shouldn't fall solely on the big? KG's Minny teams were always a mediocre defense in the regular season AND playoffs yet he's never discredited for that. Instead he's praised for being one of the ATG defenders.

[MrVorp]

If he could learn how to protect the rim better, which I think he did a pretty good job in the finals. He’s got the size, but a lot of the time it seems like he offers weak/no contests to players driving at him.

[70sFan]

And yet, he was always on strong defensive rosters. Has Jokic ever played on a roster even remotely as good on defense as the mid-2010s Grizz or the late-2010 Raptors?

Jokic is also a very impactful defender by advanced metrics, so I don't understand why you use that argument for Marc but conveniently omit that about Jokic.

Do you think it's impossible to extract defensive value from teammates?

I didn't mention any stats, I don't need to. If you watch games, you see that one of them is among the best defenders of this century and the other one is Jokic.

Now, tell me what other biases I have because I don't consider your favorite player perfect.

No one is considering Jokic perfect. Perhaps, just perhaps, a team's roster matters in how well they play defense and the blame shouldn't fall solely on the big? KG's Minny teams were always a mediocre defense in the regular season AND playoffs yet he's never discredited for that. Instead he's praised for being one of the ATG defenders.

Show me where I feel all the blame solely on Jokic, or stop creating strawman.

Roster construction matters a lot. That's why I don't call Jokic the worst defender ever when his team is dominated by the Warriors, but I also don't consider him elite defender when his team was doing fine in 2023 playoffs. The same thing applies to Garnett - I don't blame him for bad results in some Minny years, but I also don't call him GOAT when he changed his team.

The difference is that we know that Garnett was extremely impactful defender even when Minny failed on team level and we know Jokic has clear weaknesses even when the Nuggets can hide them well.

I don't even understand what you are arguing against here - I never said Jokic was the reason Nuggets were so bad defensively - I said teams targeted his weaknesses (which is true). If you agree with me that Garnett is much better defender than Jokic, then why do you even argue with me?

[70sFan]

If he could learn how to protect the rim better, which I think he did a pretty good job in the finals. He’s got the size, but a lot of the time it seems like he offers weak/no contests to players driving at him.

Yeah, he had a few surprisingly good performances in the finals on that matter, though the Heat being very undersized and lacking top slashers didn't hurt.

At the same time, I have seen him being completely ineffective at the rim in different games against different opponents. It didn't matter, because the Nuggets were this good, but I don't see any resemblance to Marc Gasol here.

[Peregrine01]

Roster construction matters a lot.

Good to see that you're willing to concede as much.

[70sFan]

Roster construction matters a lot.

Good to see that you're willing to concede as much.

Show me when I ever said anything different. Again, I don't even understand who you argue against, because it's certainly not with my arguments.

[BelgradeNugget]

Hate to be the guy, but clutch numbers are basically useless due to insane noise to signal ratio.

Also, what's the league average DRtg for each quarter? I'd assume 4th quarters are lower on average.

I know clutch numbers can be misleading but we are talking about 142 minutes in 37 games which is equivalent to 3 full games as sample size. It is not 3 games and 10 minutes. If that is not solid sample size OK.

Nuggets were 10th in DEFRTG in 4Q with 111.4. Jokic's DEFRTG of 109.4 is better than Bucks DEFRTG of 109.5 in 4Q which was good for 4th in the NBA

More questions?

https://www.nba.com/stats/teams/advanced?Period=4&dir=A&sort=DEF_RATING

Thank you for the source, as expected Nuggets looks solid, but nothing beyond that. I don't think you can compare Jokic's on DRtg to overall team DRtg, because it misses almost all blowouts when Jokic sat 4th quarters.

Good point, you can make a case in blowouts teams have even better DEFRTG because opposing deep bench plays worst offense than their starters. Or is it the other way around because in blowouts deep benches play worst defense. But anyway deep bench plays against deep bench. As you said "insane noise to signal ratio".

Maybe clutch stats are not so bad after all, they show how teams play when they try to win.

Anyway iggymcfrack made a point - The further he gets into a game without picking up fouls, the more aggressively he defends and the better his rim defense gets and numbers back it up.

[70sFan]

I know clutch numbers can be misleading but we are talking about 142 minutes in 37 games which is equivalent to 3 full games as sample size. It is not 3 games and 10 minutes. If that is not solid sample size OK.

Nuggets were 10th in DEFRTG in 4Q with 111.4. Jokic's DEFRTG of 109.4 is better than Bucks DEFRTG of 109.5 in 4Q which was good for 4th in the NBA

More questions?

https://www.nba.com/stats/teams/advanced?Period=4&dir=A&sort=DEF_RATING

Thank you for the source, as expected Nuggets looks solid, but nothing beyond that. I don't think you can compare Jokic's on DRtg to overall team DRtg, because it misses almost all blowouts when Jokic sat 4th quarters.

Good point, you can make a case in blowouts teams have even better DEFRTG because opposing deep bench plays worst offense than their starters. Or is it the other way around because in blowouts deep benches play worst defense. But anyway deep bench plays against deep bench. As you said "insane noise to signal ratio".

Maybe clutch stats are not so bad after all, they show how teams play when they try to win.

Anyway iggymcfrack made a point - The further he gets into a game without picking up fouls, the more aggressively he defends and the better his rim defense gets and numbers back it up.

I don't really think it makes any point, because we don't even know whether the Nuggets DRtg improvement comes from paint protection, turnovers creation or pure shooting luck. I think it's a reasonable hypothesis, but this info isn't enough to draw any conclusions.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

I am really curious to see any actual video comparison that shows what makes Gasol's "defensive bball IQ" better than Jokic's.
I don't think I have ever seen Jokic missing rotations or not reading plays in advance when actually bought in.
His only limitations are his lack of quickness and verticality and the fact that he absolutely paces himself on both sides of the court, to save energy and fouls. Something that Gasol didn't do in particular in his later years when he had less of an offensive responsibility.

[70sFan]

I am really curious to see any actual video comparison that shows what makes Gasol's "defensive bball IQ" better than Jokic's.
I don't think I have ever seen Jokic missing rotations or not reading plays in advance when actually bought in.

I may come back here when I start scouting Jokic games for my top 10 centers peak project.

To the bolded - have you ever actually rewatched Jokic games and focused solely on him on D? If not, I don't think it's easy to see such things on a fly, you have to have extremely well trained eye for that. I have seen even Tim Duncan missing rotations or reading plays wrong, it's unlikely that Jokic is better than anyone I have ever scouted.

[kcktiny]

Jokic is also a very impactful defender by advanced metrics

And what metrics might those be?

Because if you look at the publicly available defensive FG% allowed data at stats.nba.com (camera data) you see just the opposite. The first column is the year, the second the number of players in the league that year that faced 1000+ FGAs on defense, the third the FG% allowed range for those players, and the fourth what Jokic allowed:

1819....31....41%-49%....47%
1920....14....41%-51%....49%
2021....13....41%-51%....49%
2122....24....42%-50%....48%
2223....32....42%-54%....51%

Not only has Jokic routinely - year after year - allowed a higher/worse FG% on defense than just the average for players in the league that on defense faced the most opponent FGAs (in this case 1000+ FGAs per season), but he's been among the highest/worst.

On top of this the past five seasons Jokic has blocked shots at a rate (0.8 BS/40min) that is just half what the league average C has blocked shots at (1.8 BS/40min).

Yet those who claim Jokic is a better than average or good defender for a C based on some concocted number refuse to acknowledge actual defensive data that suggests otherwise.

[lessthanjake]

Jokic is also a very impactful defender by advanced metrics

And what metrics might those be?

Because if you look at the publicly available defensive FG% allowed data at stats.nba.com (camera data) you see just the opposite. The first column is the year, the second the number of players in the league that year that faced 1000+ FGAs on defense, the third the FG% allowed range for those players, and the fourth what Jokic allowed:

1819....31....41%-49%....47%
1920....14....41%-51%....49%
2021....13....41%-51%....49%
2122....24....42%-50%....48%
2223....32....42%-54%....51%

Not only has Jokic routinely - year after year - allowed a higher/worse FG% on defense than just the average for players in the league that on defense faced the most opponent FGAs (in this case 1000+ FGAs per season), but he's been among the highest/worst.

On top of this the past five seasons Jokic has blocked shots at a rate (0.8 BS/40min) that is just half what the league average C has blocked shots at (1.8 BS/40min).

Yet those who claim Jokic is a better than average or good defender for a C based on some concocted number refuse to acknowledge actual defensive data that suggests otherwise.

But Jokic’s team also has like a 3.7% higher defensive rebounding rate in the last three years when he’s on the court compared to when he’s off (and it’s more like 6% in the playoffs), because he’s probably the league’s best defensive rebounder. That’s an absolutely enormous difference that probably is about as effective in magnitude as being a pretty elite rim protector would be. And, on top of that, he’s got great hands, which gets him lots of steals but also just makes pocket passes really hard to make. He also contests amongst the most shots in the league—in large part due to great positioning and not going for blocks—and contesting shots at all is substantial value over not contesting (even if the value of your contest isn’t as high as the value of others’ contests). Meanwhile, he’s really big and really strong, so it’s very difficult to get good post position on him. He’s also got a bigger motor than most big men, and therefore is well above average at getting back in transition. So there’s a lot to like about his defense, alongside the obvious negatives that he’s not the most intimidating or effective rim protector and not a quick defender in space.

The net result of all this stuff is that advanced metrics (such as RAPTOR, RPM, and EPM) tend to grade Jokic out as a good defender.

[kcktiny]

So there’s a lot to like about his defense

The past five seasons Jokic has played - by far - the most minutes on the Nuggets, almost 4000 more minutes than any other player.

And the past 5 seasons among all teams Denver has allowed on defense the 7th highest/worst 2pt FG% at 54.2%.

Go to stats.nba.com and look at Jokic's interior shot defense, within 6' of the basket. The past 3 seasons among players having faced 400+ FGAs from 0'-5' he has routinely been among the worst in the league, allowing a high 61%-65% FG%.

The net result of all this stuff is that advanced metrics (such as RAPTOR, RPM, and EPM) tend to grade Jokic out as a good defender.

Nothing like ignoring the obvious, that which is in plain sight.

[lessthanjake]

So there’s a lot to like about his defense

The past five seasons Jokic has played - by far - the most minutes on the Nuggets, almost 4000 more minutes than any other player.

And the past 5 seasons among all teams Denver has allowed on defense the 7th highest/worst 2pt FG% as 54.2%.

Go to stats.nba.com and look at Jokic's interior shot defense, within 6' of the basket. The past 3 seasons among players having faced 400+ FGAs from 0'-5' he has routinely been among the worst in the league, allowing a high 61%-65% FG%.

The net result of all this stuff is that advanced metrics (such as RAPTOR, RPM, and EPM) tend to grade Jokic out as a good defender.

Nothing like ignoring the obvious, that which is in plain sight.

There’s a lot more to defense than just FG% on shots within 6 feet of the basket. That was the whole point of my post!