Does jordan have defensive impact??

[magicman1978]

If we're going to question Jordan's defensive impact using on/off, couldn't you do the same with Pippen? Would be interested in seeing how the numbers compare.

[eminence]

I agree, there doesn't seem to be data to support he was a negative. But I'm more interested in determining how he is an all time great defensive guard.

How would you go about determining any guard (especially pre play by play) was an all-timer?

[OhayoKD]

Hm..this reminds me of something you said about Embiid "well, maybe he's just not as good as ____" criticizing his results, which has me thinking


You are saying he is one of the best defenders ever - but is there actual proof? The premise of his question isn't dumb. We do have data to at least see crudely if his teams are better with him defensively on the court, and is there any strong evidence that suggest thats the case?

From what I can recall, not much.

The high-end (data) approach for Jordan's defense would probably be just taking the small bits of the game he missed when he was on Chicago's roster at face value. I believe he's a consistent positive there and he has certain years where it looks really good(1993).

If you go with larger samples I guess it depends what you're looking at:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2353834

jordan 88-98
bulls with MJ 490-176 (73.6% win rate)
bulls without MJ 90-64 (58.4% win rate)
net rating with MJ +7.7 (62 win pace level)
net rating without MJ +3.6 (52 win pace level)
+5.1 ortg difference
+1.1 drtg difference
+4 total swing

That being said, I think there are some practical things we can look at bolstering Jordan here even if its not a direct delta:

1. Chicago's best defensive rating with that core pre-phil is 1988(-2.5) when Jordan wins his DPOY
2. When the Bulls lost Jordan's best defensive teammate they're still marginally positive(-0.1) which is as good as they'd been since 78(they were a strong negative every year but 84 oddly enough)
3. The Bulls make a big jump defensively between 86 and 87 when

A. Jordan plays the whole season and
B. they trade for a bunch of defensive specialists
C. The bulls are slightly worse in 86 without presumably a worse defensive version of MJ(they drop by 0.3)
D. Jordan's steal-count increasing generally correlates with the bulls defensive rating getting better(though notably by that graph, a lower steal accumulator like kawhi seems to exert larger impact)

Nothing really justifying putting him in the same convo as the pippen, kawhi's, or lebron's, but that's a different matter than being a negative which I really only think works by roping in not peak defensive years as well.

It is probably a fair question to ask just how early and to what degree Jordan's defensive value drops, paticularly considering some of the tracking we've seen for what is considered "still" all-time guard defense MJ:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=2318125

From what I've seen I'd guess his activity drops significantly around 90 and accelerates during the first three-peat, but my impression is that the finals vs the lakers and the trailblazers, and his matchups with the knicks being the only ones I'd consider "is jordan hurting his team here" realistic.

I agree, there doesn't seem to be data to support he was a negative.

If you wanted to make the push it would probably be down to

-> 88-98 indirect/WOWY has the bulls improve by 1 point without
-> Bulls rating improves a touch in 94
-> Bulls are average in 84 and negative in jordan's first few years and the start of 90
-> Drexler shooting better vs MJ than everyone else in 92

Can't think of anything else, really.

But I'm more interested in determining how he is an all time great defensive guard.

Well that's tough to take a strong analytic swing at because...well guard defense just doesn't show up in d-rating even when it's the dpoys. With very rare exceptions(chris paul maybe cause of floor-general something something), the impact side of things tends to be marginal.

We could use data-ball players for archetype whatever but I haven't seen a real attempt at that regarding different sorts of guards.

The other issue is offense vs defense is pretty fluid. ex: I brought up the bulls defense improvement with 87 mj, but i didn't bring up the offensive side of things which...might imply jordan was a near nuetral offensive player if you give it the same stock i've seen people give the defensive shift.

The Bulls very obviously decided to focus on defense in 87 trading a player currently getting traction in the "worst 20 ppg scorer ever thread" to shore up the other side of the floor. That 5-point swing would be, by far, the best defensive signal of Jordan's career(and yeah then he's maybe the goat defensive guard), but it's never replicated and the bigger picture would have jordan's offensive impact comically undercut.

Guards just don't really exert enough impact to cleanly delineate between "good and great" the way we can when we expand the scale to include wings and bigs(and then the best guards all seem to scale down to the decent-good area unless they're oversized atheletes(simmons) with wing qualities or savants(chris paul)

[70sFan]

Someone said something along the lines that he feels Embiid is better than ____ (Larry Bird? I can't recall) and the playoffs haven't reflected that yet.

You replied something along the lines of "maybe he's not as good as Larry Bird".

No, the context was different. It was in Embiid vs Ewing discussion when someone said that Embiid looks like in Shaq/Hakeem tier, but he simply doesn't have the postseason to back it up. I said that if Embiid consistently falls behind these two in the playoffs, then maybe he's not on their level.

Couldn't you apply that here? Maybe Michael Jordan does not have any data to support that he was a difference maker on defense because he may not have been much of one.

"No data to support that he was a difference maker on defense" are strong words, considering that we do have signals about Jordan being an impactful defensive player:

1. The Bulls made a massive leap defensively from 1986 (when Jordan didn't play) to 1987 (he played full season).
2. Jordan has a quite strong impact signals for a guard in his last two seasons, when he was clearly not at his absolute best defensively.
3. Jordan has a few strong signals coming from various unofficial sources, most notably in 1993 and 1996. The early 1990s in general looks only above average and 1980s generally looks mediocre. Jordan's defensive impact seems to be inconsistent, but such data can be quite noisy as hell.

The biggest argument against Jordan having any impact on defense in 1994 absence and it's a fair point, but we're specifically talking about him playing on a team built to deal with his absence on defense (while relying a lot on his volume scoring, which could potentially overstate his absolute offensive impact?).

You said in a sarcastic post that he's only one of the best defensive guards ever. The poster actually did put something that infers that he is not. Do you have something to support your claim?

I already mentioned above, but implying that the OP made any kind of a good point with 1986 example, but selectively choosing rookie year while ignoring the following season... I don't know, maybe it's me but it doesn't look like an argument in a good faith.

Is there evidence to support that?

Yeah, I think him playing on elite and playoff-proof defenses throughout of his prime, while contributing strongly on these teams in terms of his contribution (which can be easily seen by analyzing footage), along with some strong, although inconsistent signals and analyzing his actual skillset, suggest he's elite defensive guard.

Maybe I used wrong words, because I don't think he's literally the top 3 best defensive guard ever, but I don't think it'd be easy to find 20 guards with better defensive career than Jordan (unless you start counting wing hybrids as guards, but that's cheating).

A lot of guards have value doing things like playing the passing lane. The question is there evidence that Jordan is better at it than other defensive guards?

Yeah you can get a good guess by watching players. Sorry to repeat that all the time, but you won't get anything nuanced about defense from the 1980s and 1990s. That's harsh reality, even today you have to actually watch games to know which players are good at certain things defensively and which are not. Even now with so many granuality stats we have, it's not possible to easily quantify defensive skills and impact. Forget about that for the pre-2000s.

[OhayoKD]

If we're going to question Jordan's defensive impact using on/off, couldn't you do the same with Pippen? Would be interested in seeing how the numbers compare.

There are I think two ways to view Pippen with impact.

I'll start with the positive approach i tend to buy in to(largely because it seems to corroborate what we then saw with a modern pippen analog in Lebron in a bunch of contexts and approaches):

Spoiler:

Interesting thoughts Doc. That said, I feel we put the cart a bit ahead of the horse

Okay. Sure, the Bulls are the best defense in the league. But that is a team-achievement and it seems you are distributing a very big chunk of that credit to Jordan. Also notable to me is that Dennis Rodman is not mentioned. And here I think we get into a bit of a problem.

It was not built around a big, but Pippen is an all-time paint-protector for a non-big. So is Rodman. Even MJ is notable in a comparison with guards. So how do we decide where and how to allocate credit. How do we decide which traits to allocate credit to? Well, I'd say step one is to isolate for variables. And in this case those variables are each of these player's respective teammates. For simplicity, let's ignore Rodman. Instead let's key in on Scottie and MJ.

We've talked about 88 and 89. Jordan leads a -2 defense(some on this board have argued oakley was a co-lead but I wouldn't go that far). We can ignore that it fell apart in the playoffs for sample size, but then Oakley leaves and the Bulls regress to average. Now at this point you noted the Bulls do not spike in 1990. Indeed if you just look at the regular season they regress. But looking at what happens over the course of the season paints a different picture:

There's alot of talk about the triangle offense. But let's talk first talk about the defense. Pre ASB, they are below average. Post ASB they are good. In the playoffs they are very good(around -3. In the last two rounds they are -5. This continues through 91 where they are -2.7 in the rs and then around-4 in the postseason(sans actually has them nearing -8 but that is a different process from 90(you scale-up from your opponents series ratings) where I'm just eyeballing bbr). All very impressive, but what caused this change? Did Jordan suddenly get better? I find that unlikely as

1. Jordan started suffering from jumper's foot(something he would have for the rest of his career)
2. By every source of tracking Jordan's defensive activity diminished post 89
3. When Jordan left, Chicago's defense wasn't significantly worse

I'd argue the catalyst was the ascension of Pippen and Grant. Two, very strong, for non-bigs, paint-protectors. From what I've seen(and per tracking I trust) I see Pippen protecting the paint as much as Grant, doing more on the perimeter than Mike, and telling everyone what to do more than anyone besides Jackson. IOW, while you seem to see the Bulls defense as "pippen and jordan", I see it as "pippen(gap), Grant and MJ". And here I'd say the Bulls may not have built around a big, but they built around the next best thing: a wing who can protect the paint.

Okay. Sure, the Bulls are the best defense in the league. But that is a team-achievement and it seems you are distributing a very big chunk of that credit to Jordan. Also notable to me is that Dennis Rodman is not mentioned. And here I think we get into a bit of a problem.

It was not built around a big, but Pippen is an all-time paint-protector for a non-big. So is Rodman. Even MJ is notable in a comparison with guards. So how do we decide where and how to allocate credit. How do we decide which traits to allocate credit to? Well, I'd say step one is to isolate for variables. And in this case those variables are each of these player's respective teammates. For simplicity, let's ignore Rodman. Instead let's key in on Scottie and MJ.

We've talked about 88 and 89. Jordan leads a -2 defense(some on this board have argued oakley was a co-lead but I wouldn't go that far). We can ignore that it fell apart in the playoffs for sample size, but then Oakley leaves and the Bulls regress to average. Now at this point you noted the Bulls do not spike in 1990. Indeed if you just look at the regular season they regress. But looking at what happens over the course of the season paints a different picture:

There's alot of talk about the triangle offense. But let's talk first talk about the defense. Pre ASB, they are below average. Post ASB they are good. In the playoffs they are very good(around -3. In the last two rounds they are -5. This continues through 91 where they are -2.7 in the rs and then around-4 in the postseason(sans actually has them nearing -8 but that is a different process from 90(you scale-up from your opponents series ratings) where I'm just eyeballing bbr). All very impressive, but what caused this change? Did Jordan suddenly get better? I find that unlikely as

1. Jordan started suffering from jumper's foot(something he would have for the rest of his career)
2. By every source of tracking Jordan's defensive activity diminished post 89
3. When Jordan left, Chicago's defense wasn't significantly worse

I'd argue the catalyst was the ascension of Pippen and Grant. Two, very strong, for non-bigs, paint-protectors. From what I've seen(and per tracking I trust) I see Pippen protecting the paint as much as Grant, doing more on the perimeter than Mike, and telling everyone what to do more than anyone besides Jackson. IOW, while you seem to see the Bulls defense as "pippen and jordan", I see it as "pippen(gap), Grant and MJ". And here I'd say the Bulls may not have built around a big, but they built around the next best thing: a wing who can protect the paint.

TLDR:

-> Bulls massively jump defensively basically overnight when pippen and grant gain primacy
-> Bulls keep cooking(defensively) when Jordan leaves in 94
-> Bulls keep cooking(defensively) when Grant leaves in 95
-> Bulls before pippen becomes a key peice collapse defensively in the playoffs
-> Bulls defensive improves to the point it sometimes matches the offense in the playoffs with pippen

Consider then that Pippen, at least by tracking done so far:
-> protects the paint as much as anyone(tied for grant for first in 91 tracking)(history and today strongly suggest this matters the most)
-> makes plays on the perimeter as much as anyone
-> is noted by jackson as the guy who tells people where to go

Very natural then to take this and be like, "soooo, he's the best wing defender ever right?"

However, something kind of funny happens in 1994

The best defensive wing ever...barely has any impact? Well, it's just 10 games, no way it would happen aga--

Huh?

And then you remember, the thing that actually was new to the team mid-way through 1990 was....

The Triangle

IT WAS PHIL JACKSON ALL ALONG!!!!!

Jordan, Pippen, Rodman, all just cogs for the true DPOY of the 90's...

of course there are some good reasons to squint here. two really good reasons:


In sort of an inverse of 87 for Jordan, Pippen the negative defender...is also the most valuable offensive player in the league in 98.

The other thing is...if Phil jackson could just turn anything and everyone into an elite defense...why were there multiple negative defensive seasons in LA?

I think the lesson here if anything, is not to worry too much about distribution. Impact is impact. Also (duh) look at the whole picture, not just part of it.

[TheGOATRises007]

This board has really gone down in quality over the years.

I'm sorry that people don't value guard defense as much as *checks notes* defending the most important part of the court.

Jordan was very good for a guard, as others have pointed out, but his size/position simply don't really allow him to be as impactful as higher-end forwards and middle-of-the-road centers defensively. It's kind of like trying to argue that the greatest midrange shooting big man has as much gravity with his jumpshot as Kyle Korver. There's diminishing returns.

I never said Jordan had defensive impact like centers do.

So not sure why you're going off on that tangent.

[SportsGuru08]

What's next, was Steph Curry actually a good three point shooter? Was Dennis Rodman actually a good rebounder?

Phil Jackson and Johnny Bach have both said Jordan was the superior man-to-man defender over Pippen, who's main strength on defense was as a help defender.

[FrogBros4Life]

A few notes about Jordan on the defensive side of the ball that maybe don't get talked about enough:

He was elite, perhaps the best ever at his position at "slipping screens", meaning that even if he wasn't always going to be stuck to you like Bruce Bowen or Tony Allen in open space, he also was hard to shake completely, even when teams were trying to screen him out of the action. As a result, he was rarely giving up wide open looks to his defensive assignments. Perhaps an exception to this was when he was trying to guard a guy like Reggie Miller who was running all over the court, using teammates' screens like an obstacle course, as in that case the offensive player was running toward the screener rather than the screener coming to the offensive player. By and large though, Jordan had a knack for anticipating when a screen was coming and getting out in front of it.

He was one of the few guards/wings in the history of the game to have real value as a pseudo-rim protector. Because of his extraordinary leaping ability and timing, he was great as a weakside/help defender coming away from his own man to block shots (or merely alter them) at the rim. IIRC Jordan is/was the all time leader in blocked shots for anyone who played either guard position.


He had an impressive wingspan and freakishly large hands. This may seem trivial, but it allowed him to contest step backs and fadeaways much better than your average defender. It also gave him a larger margin of error in still being able to close out (or recover from behind) on a guy who had gotten a half step on him in any direction, and who otherwise would have a decent look at a shot attempt.

He played 78 games or more in 12 different seasons, played a ton of minutes, and rarely ever fouled out. He was also an incredibly smart player who didn't make a lot of mistakes. Even if you only view Jordan as a "good" defender, I think you have to concede that he racked up a ton of career value on that end by virtue of simply being on the floor for as many possessions as he was while not making a lot of errors on that side of the ball.

As has been noted, he can't match the impact of the ATG defensive anchors, and may lag behind some other guards and wings in terms of total defensive impact, though I would scoff at the notion that his defensive aptitude was something of a glaring weakness in his game.

[lessthanjake]

He wasn’t a negative but his reputation doesn’t live up to the impact. Squared’s partial data has him as a slightly positive to slightly negative.

A couple things I want to quickly note about this:

1. We should keep in mind that there’s not a lot of high DRAPM’s in Squared’s data. I’m not sure exactly why this is, but there’s really not many high values. For instance, in the 1987-1988 sample, there’s 48 players with at least 1000 possessions logged by Squared that year, and only 3 of those players have a DRAPM of more than +1.50 (and 37 of the 48 have a negative DRAPM). And, in general, even the best defensive players just don’t have very high DRAPMs (or even necessarily positive ones). In the seasons we have, Hakeem Olajuwon’s DRAPMs in Squared’s data were +1.37, -0.10, +2.12, and +1.43. David Robinson’s were +1.64 and +1.38. Scottie Pippen’s were -1.68, +1.02, and -0.14. Dennis Rodman’s were -1.77, +2.14, and -1.29. Mark Eaton’s were +2.76, -0.43, and +1.49. Dikembe Mutombo had a +1.32. Alonzo Mourning had a +1.00. Gary Payton had -2.69 and -1.14. That’s every big-man DPOY winner of the era, as well as Pippen, Rodman, and Payton, and all of them have numbers that could fairly be described as either “slightly positive” or “slightly positive to slightly negative” (except Payton, who is just slightly negative). Granted, Jordan’s numbers never broke the +1.00 barrier, so the above players except Payton do all have at least a season with higher Squared DRAPM than Jordan’s best in the data. And not all the numbers listed above were in seasons that Squared tracked much for that player’s team (so some of it is in tiny samples). But overall the numbers here are all pretty clustered around the same zone, with even the best defenders of the era not looking overly impactful in this data. It’s not clear to me whether this is in some way an artifact of how Squared ran his data, or whether individual defense in that era simply wasn’t all that impactful. But either way I think it’s important context to keep in mind when trying to talk about what that DRAPM data means about Jordan.

2. I want to note for future reference that if we are going to put significant weight on Squared’s DRAPM values, then we should also do the same for Squared’s ORAPM values. And those make Jordan look incredibly good offensively. For instance, we have two seasons where Jordan and Magic Johnson (a definite contender for best offensive player ever) were both in their primes, and Jordan’s ORAPMs were +7.52 and +5.79 while Magic’s were +6.79 and +3.56. This is outside the scope of this thread and I don’t want to derail things, but if you put significant weight on Squared’s DRAPM data in assessing Jordan’s defensive impact, then I’d hope that in the future you’d similarly put significant weight on Squared’s ORAPM data in assessing Jordan’s offensive impact (which would have to lead you to a very strongly positive view of Jordan’s offensive impact, given the above).

[DraymondGold]

Jordan team drtg never seem to be affected with his loss except 1 season which is the 86 season with a .6 drtg difference.

Does he truly have impact on the defensive end??

Hey Grimreaper, welcome to the forum! From your name, are you a KD fan?

I think it's pretty clear from the poll Jordan had defensive impact, but I want to engage with the question on your terms. You've found a measure where Jordan seems to underperform defensively, and there's a question of why? When data disagrees with general opinion, there's 3 options: (1) the general opinion is wrong, (2) the sample of data is biased/noisy (thus high uncertainty), (3) the stat itself poor (or at least measuring something different from how it's being used). I'm going to argue #2.

You say "Jordan team drtg never seem to be affected with his loss except 1 season which is the 86 season with a .6 drtg difference." You're probably aware, but is basically a form of WOWY -- a version of looking at a team's performance With Or Without You to get a sense of a players value to a team.

WOWY's very interesting, as it's fairly wholistic, and it's one of the few impact metrics that goes back throughout NBA history! Let's look at Jordan's various WOWY samples:

1986: nice sample of missed games, but extremely biased on sample. His season average minutes per game was literally 50% what we’d expect from the surrounding seasons because he was on a minute restriction returning from injury. It’s unclear how to correct for this, but it’s certain that playing half your expected minutes would reduce your per game value significantly. (See details here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=108417295#p108417295)

1987-1993: Jordan missed only 7 games. That’s basically unusably small. In a one year setting (where we assume there’s less roster turnover or changes in teammate value), a 7 game sample would have an uncertainty of +/- 8.3 WOWY. So if Jordan’s even a slight positive at a minimum (spoiler: he is), then he’s within uncertainty range of having the GOAT 7-year prime. And if we consider the fact that there was roster turnover, his teammate value did change, and the sample is unevenly spaced in this window… the uncertainty range gets even wider.

1995: like 1986, this is another solid off sample, but the on sample is again biased. Jordan was clearly playing in worse shape than in any of the surrounding years (compare 95 to 92, 93, 96, 97 on film or statistically and there’s an obvious difference). This would be like using LeBron’s 2019 WOWY to judge his prime — it’s just a poor measure.

And… that’s it for single-season WOWY, unless you want to look to his Wizards years when he’s almost 40 years old (although he’s still a clear positive in these samples too).

We could also turn to multi-year WOWY, e.g. comparing 1984 Bulls pre-Jordan to 1985 with rookie Jordan, or 1993 to 1994 pre-retirement, or 1995-1996, or 1998-1999, or 2001-2002. There is a signal in multi-year WOWY.

However… the mean uncertainty in 2-year/team-change WOWY is larger than the mean signal! (see: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=108693994#p108693994). Multi-year WOWY is one of the noisiest signals in basketball. For top 15 players, you can look at overlapping 2-year team-change WOWY samples, the *mean* variability is +6.53. And that’s not even the max variability, in cases where there’s other contextual factors changing significantly.

For example, his 1993-94 multi-year WOWY was subject to pretty massive contextual changes that’s likely to underrate Jordan. Jordan’s co-stars in Pippen and Grant had clear down years in 1993 and clear bounce-back years in 1994, as supported by the film, the box stats (see: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=109040608#p109040608), the plus minus data: (see: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=109816318#p109816318), and quotes at the time saying they were pacing themselves in the 1993 regular season. There were also numerous roster improvements from 1993 to 1994 (see first link). Those are likely to bias his WOWY sample to be low. Even so, he still comes out like a clear positive and within uncertainty range of GOAT prime, given how wide the uncertainty can get.

At the same time, his rookie-season multi-year WOWY is right in line for a top 15 player, better than Russell or Duncan (after correcting for Robinson’s WOWY) or Garnett’s or Magic’s. His 1998 retirement is the best retirement year on record (even after correcting for Pippen and Rodman’s WOWY), and the 2nd best multi-year WOWY ever among top 15 players. Even his Wizards retirement gives a better multi-year WOWY than Duncan or Shaq or Kareem or Garnett’s retirement. (source: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2310915)

So it’s not as if Jordan’s multi-year WOWY is a nail in the coffin for his impact. There’s better and worse samples. It’s just a noisy measurement, which in his case can be obviously biased by various contextual factors.

And if we’re splitting his overall WOWY into a defense-specific WOWY, that’s potentially making the measurement even noisier. 
Indeed, I actually asked Thinking Basketball (the inventor of WOWY) whether he thought we could use WOWY for defensive/offensive splits, and he basically said it’s far too noisy to be a good ranker (although for the guys with the largest unbiased sample sizes, i.e. not Jordan, defensive /offensive splits can at least be interesting).

If you’re looking for a positive defensive pure impact signal for Jordan: just check out standard full-season RAPM. Goldstein is one of the two classic, trusted sources for RAPM, and Jordan’s 1997 defensive RAPM is +1.9. That’s far from what most would consider his best defensive years, and that’s a clear positive signal. He’s +1.72 defensive RAPM in 1998. For comparison, 2014 Kawhi is +1.8 (although he’s higher in other young years).

(aside: just like there’s adjusted plus minus data, there’s also adjusted WOWY data: the stats are called WOWYR, GPM, RWOWY. Jordan’s adjusted WOWY metrics are well within the range of him being GOAT level, although these don’t have defensive/offensive splits).

[Grimreaper]

@DraymondGold: hi there,yes im a kd fan I'll start of by saying i dont like impact metrics which will include rapm and i also dislike ur version of wowy.

I prefer the raw wowy and jordan simply comes out as a negative defender per the result,rookie season jordan worsens the bulls defense and the bulls prior to getting jordan in 95 had a lower drtg.

Edit: @DraymondGold after looking at some per data I'll refrain my statements and look at the 1993 and 1994 bulls lineup changes

[VanWest82]

I will continue to say as often as I can that wowy is somewhere between completely useless and outright disinformation.

Using wowy to suggest rookie Jordan was a negative defender is so misleading. It should be obvious to anyone who watched Bulls games in 84/85 that MJ was a positive defender. He was certainly among league leaders in deflections and defensive loose balls recovered that year if not the actual leader, and even though his man defense wasn't what it would eventually become in the late 80s and early 90s, he was still pretty clearly an above average man defender.

The biggest thing that happened between 84 and 85 defensively was the achilles injury to Dave Greenwood. Most will know Greenwood as the guy taken after Magic, but he was a very solid two way PF and essentially the backbone of that 84 Bulls defense which was the only thing keeping that team from being historically horrific. Then in 85 he's in and out of the line up with achilles tendonitis, coming off the bench, etc. He was never really the same after that.

This would be like using the loss of Horace Grant to argue 95 Pippen was a bum defensively because look at how much their defense fell off from the previous year.

[Grimreaper]

I will continue to say as often as I can that wowy is somewhere between completely useless and outright disinformation.

Using wowy to suggest rookie Jordan was a negative defender is so misleading. It should be obvious to anyone who watched Bulls games in 84/85 that MJ was a positive defender. He was certainly among league leaders in deflections and defensive loose balls recovered that year if not the actual leader, and even though his man defense wasn't what it would eventually become in the late 80s and early 90s, he was still pretty clearly an above average man defender.

The biggest thing that happened between 84 and 85 defensively was the achilles injury to Dave Greenwood. Most will know Greenwood as the guy taken after Magic, but he was a very solid two way PF and essentially the backbone of that 84 Bulls defense which was the only thing keeping that team from being historically horrific. Then in 85 he's in and out of the line up with achilles tendonitis, coming off the bench, etc. He was never really the same after that.

This would be like using the loss of Horace Grant to argue 95 Pippen was a bum defensively because look at how much their defense fell off from the previous year.

His positive defense had little to no value throughout his career the stats have been presented.

Its ok jordan doesn't have the impact of all time greats like kd,cp3,steph,lebron. They leave and their teams suffer heck even russ has more impact than him

[VanWest82]

I will continue to say as often as I can that wowy is somewhere between completely useless and outright disinformation.

Using wowy to suggest rookie Jordan was a negative defender is so misleading. It should be obvious to anyone who watched Bulls games in 84/85 that MJ was a positive defender. He was certainly among league leaders in deflections and defensive loose balls recovered that year if not the actual leader, and even though his man defense wasn't what it would eventually become in the late 80s and early 90s, he was still pretty clearly an above average man defender.

The biggest thing that happened between 84 and 85 defensively was the achilles injury to Dave Greenwood. Most will know Greenwood as the guy taken after Magic, but he was a very solid two way PF and essentially the backbone of that 84 Bulls defense which was the only thing keeping that team from being historically horrific. Then in 85 he's in and out of the line up with achilles tendonitis, coming off the bench, etc. He was never really the same after that.

This would be like using the loss of Horace Grant to argue 95 Pippen was a bum defensively because look at how much their defense fell off from the previous year.

His positive defense had little to no value throughout his career the stats have been presented.

Its ok jordan doesn't have the impact of all time greats like kd,cp3,steph,lebron. They leave and their teams suffer heck even russ has more impact than him

Oh I get it now - you're just trolling. Never mind.

[AEnigma]

I will continue to say as often as I can that wowy is somewhere between completely useless and outright disinformation.

And I will continue to point out you just dislike its conclusions and accordingly make no effort to engage with it honestly.

Using wowy to suggest rookie Jordan was a negative defender is so misleading. It should be obvious to anyone who watched Bulls games in 84/85 that MJ was a positive defender. He was certainly among league leaders in deflections and defensive loose balls recovered that year if not the actual leader, and even though his man defense wasn't what it would eventually become in the late 80s and early 90s, he was still pretty clearly an above average man defender.

The biggest thing that happened between 84 and 85 defensively was the achilles injury to Dave Greenwood. Most will know Greenwood as the guy taken after Magic, but he was a very solid two way PF and essentially the backbone of that 84 Bulls defense which was the only thing keeping that team from being historically horrific. Then in 85 he's in and out of the line up with achilles tendonitis, coming off the bench, etc. He was never really the same after that.

None of this is equivalent to saying WOWY signals nothing.

This would be like using the loss of Horace Grant to argue 95 Pippen was a bum defensively because look at how much their defense fell off from the previous year.

Not what happened but go off.

His positive defense had little to no value throughout his career the stats have been presented.

Its ok jordan doesn't have the impact of all time greats like kd,cp3,steph,lebron. They leave and their teams suffer heck even russ has more impact than him

Russ as in Bill Russell, sure. I would say Durant’s signals are pretty comparable outside of Golden State. Paul… mixed bag to an extent, with internal disruption based on Paul’s own lack of consistent health, but I do appreciate how consistently he has improved the teams he joins.

[Djoker]

A few notes about Jordan on the defensive side of the ball that maybe don't get talked about enough:

He was elite, perhaps the best ever at his position at "slipping screens", meaning that even if he wasn't always going to be stuck to you like Bruce Bowen or Tony Allen in open space, he also was hard to shake completely, even when teams were trying to screen him out of the action. As a result, he was rarely giving up wide open looks to his defensive assignments. Perhaps an exception to this was when he was trying to guard a guy like Reggie Miller who was running all over the court, using teammates' screens like an obstacle course, as in that case the offensive player was running toward the screener rather than the screener coming to the offensive player. By and large though, Jordan had a knack for anticipating when a screen was coming and getting out in front of it.

He was one of the few guards/wings in the history of the game to have real value as a pseudo-rim protector. Because of his extraordinary leaping ability and timing, he was great as a weakside/help defender coming away from his own man to block shots (or merely alter them) at the rim. IIRC Jordan is/was the all time leader in blocked shots for anyone who played either guard position.


He had an impressive wingspan and freakishly large hands. This may seem trivial, but it allowed him to contest step backs and fadeaways much better than your average defender. It also gave him a larger margin of error in still being able to close out (or recover from behind) on a guy who had gotten a half step on him in any direction, and who otherwise would have a decent look at a shot attempt.

He played 78 games or more in 12 different seasons, played a ton of minutes, and rarely ever fouled out. He was also an incredibly smart player who didn't make a lot of mistakes. Even if you only view Jordan as a "good" defender, I think you have to concede that he racked up a ton of career value on that end by virtue of simply being on the floor for as many possessions as he was while not making a lot of errors on that side of the ball.

As has been noted, he can't match the impact of the ATG defensive anchors, and may lag behind some other guards and wings in terms of total defensive impact, though I would scoff at the notion that his defensive aptitude was something of a glaring weakness in his game.

Fantastic post!

I would add that he was fantastic, one of the best ever, at reading passes and intercepting them for steals. Of course this was the high risk high reward aspect of Jordan's game because if he whiffed, sometimes an opposing player would end up open but when employed within a good defensive system as a free safety and where his teammates could cover for him, he was absolutely devastating. Of course this is because most times he got a steal, it would end up as a dunk on the other end. In the same vein, he was also one of the best at double teaming in the post and still recovering incredibly quickly to the shooter. This is evident against Orlando in 1996 where he would blow up a lot of plays by doubling Shaq and even when Shaq successfully passed out, he would recover to the shooter. He covered a lot of ground incredibly quickly.

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

When Jordan was trying hard he was the best defensive off guard I ever saw.
But he had to pace himself some and not go full out on effort every play because he had to carry his teams on offense.