RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #5 (Tim Duncan)

[cupcakesnake]

What about Defense?

The question of whether guys like, say Hakeem/Duncan/KG, are overall better or more valuable than Magic is something I've chewed on a lot over the years. While Magic moved down my list below those guys in the past partially due to ideas of longevity, there was also that 2-way advantage in my head, as well as how great KG & Duncan's on/off looked.

I've come to the conclusion that in practice, the Lakers' ability to have a good-enough defense to win playoff series was quite robust. And while I've had questions about how well this could be achieved today in this era of spacing, not only is that technically irrelevant to the criteria I'm personally using at this time, I just witnessed arguably the closest thing to Magic play out in the 2023 playoffs with Jokic and the Nuggets, and it really seemed okay.

This is the only knock I have on him and its quite a large one for me.

As the illegal defense rules helped him on offense, I'd say it hurt him on defense. Luckily due to his size, they had the opportunity to play him on multitudes of players to hide him there. I do not like his one-on-one game (which gets enhanced due to illegal defense) and while harder, I don't think was a great rim defender for his size.

I also have a hard time deciding how to weigh Magic's defense against other candidates and their weaknesses. First off, I think I'm pretty low on his defense. If there is a "it's not that bad" camp, I'm lower than them! I find he was surprisingly helpless in a lot of playtypes, with his size being his main saving grace. I dislike the term "soft" when it's used to describe intangibles, but I'd appropriate that term for Magic's help defense. With all kinds of help defense, he came in like a warm cozy blanket rather than a ball of spikes. Even when his feet did the right work and put him in the right place (which wasn't always), he seemed to have very little ability to disrupt. If Magic's doubling you, it's looks less stressful than the average double team. You think that his size relative to other guards in similar kinds of help would make him a terror, but he was...noticeably unterrifying. I don't know a lot of guys listed at 6'9" who seemed to have so little resistance or disruption. He rotated pretty well in a scheme, but his awareness seemed low.

To me he's an outlier amongst the elite players typically discussed in the top 15. I like Shaq, Curry, Kobe, Dirk, Oscar more defensively. I have to get all the way down to Barkley and Nash before I find a Magic defense comp.

I have questions related to the Jokic comp.
They're a pretty harmonious comparison. They both use the scoring threat provided by their physical advantage (size and strength) to compromise the defense and then punish with all-time great passing, putting the ball wherever the defense is the most in trouble. It really is the GOAT level offensive formula and unsolvable for defenses. These 2 also get compared for deriving almost all their value on the offensive side of the ball, while their defense is most generously described as: their team still found a way to build a good enough defense to win a championship with them. But we just watched Jokic be pretty...good? At defense? For a whole playoff run. Not elite defense worth mentioning amongst the greats, but Jokic was playing a very large role in a good playoff defense. The scheme wasn't built to hide him, and no secondary rim protector was saving him. You could argue that Denver compensated with elite POA defense, but it's hard to watch those games and not see that Jokic was being asked to do normal rim protector stuff (snuffing out plays and protecting the paint) and doing just fine at it. I've watched lots and lots of Magic games, but I didn't experience him in real time, nor have I watched a whole playoff run. So my question is: did Magic have stretches like Jokic just had where his defense was a little more on point? I know Jokic is slow and has very little vertical rim protection, but he still looked capable of routinely disrupting plays and holding down the back line. Magic (aside from some nifty anticipation steals) to me has never looked as confident or disruptive on defense as Jokic did.

I'm not arguing Magic's defense should put him lower. I am very comfortable with Magic in the 6-10 range. His control over offense is an outlier to me compared to most of the top 20. But is Magic's defense the biggest weakness amongst the elite? We just voted in Bill Russell, who someone (not me!) might make a similar argument about in terms of his scoring/offense. I know there's plenty of weaknesses to pick a part in the top 20 (Hakeem's passing, Shaq and Wilt's FTs, Bird's rim pressure, Kobe shot selection). Am I indexing too hard on Magic's defense and am I too low on it right now?

[WestGOAT]

bump

What is even more impressive to me here is that in the famous 1965 series against the Celtics, where they had a -9.4 relative defensive rating, Wilt had one of his greatest performances. He averaged 30 points, 31 rebounds, and 3 assists per game on a 55% FG%. Unfortunately, Larry Costello was playing injured and averaged only 5.5 points per game as the 76ers barely lost in Game 7.

Where are these stats available? I've seen a spreadsheet, from Elgee/Ben Taylor I think, with overall post-season relative ORtg/DRtg ratings, but never saw per series or game before for the playoffs.

[iggymcfrack]

Duncan vs Hakeem discussion became intense. How would you compare them year by year?

1985 vs 1998 Duncan
1986 vs 1999 Duncan
1987 vs 2000 Hakeem
1988 vs 2001 Hakeem
1989 vs 2002 Duncan
1990 vs 2003 Duncan
1991 vs 2004 Duncan
1992 vs 2005 Duncan
1993 vs 2006 Hakeem
1994 vs 2007 Hakeem
1995 vs 2008 Hakeem
1996 vs 2009 Duncan
1997 vs 2010 Hakeem
1998 vs 2011 Duncan
1999 vs 2012 Duncan
2000 vs 2013 Duncan
2001 vs 2014 Duncan

That would help us understand how you view their career trajectories.

[AEnigma]

2008-2011 are the same ages (AEnigma's objections notwithstanding ) where hakeem won a title (1994), won another title (1995), finished 4th in mvp voting (1996), and was the best player on a conference finalist and outplayed the MVP in the conference finals (1997).

Basic question here: how old was Duncan in the 2007 Finals, and how old was Hakeem in the 1994 Finals?

1993 vs 2006 Duncan

Yeah I would like to see some justification for that stance consistent with the rest of your year choices, because this is Hakeem’s best regular season and without question of one Hakeem’s top three seasons overall. Both lost in Game 7 of the conference semifinals to a team that did not win the championship, so it is not like there is any notable distinction in results.

For my part, I have them as close from 1998-2001 / 1985-88 (Duncan better regular season player and with more consistent postseason success, Hakeem with the best postseason series among them but yet to settle into his true defensive peak), then Duncan easily from 2002-05, then Hakeem from 1993-99, and then of course Duncan past that.

I also see merit in trying to compare their best ranked seasons (e.g. 1993/94 : 2002/03), but there too I tend to find that it is pretty even overall before Duncan wins the late career years basically by default.

[trex_8063]

EDIT: Just coming in here and making it official. I see the same winners as trex.

As we're past deadline and I'm leaving town (and wifi service) for a few days, and want a chance to vote in the next thread, I'm going to step in and conclude this one (Doc MJ can make it more official later).
Looks like there's been some good discussion through the mid-late stages of this thread; I hope to get into the trees at some point.

Anyway, I have the vote count as:

Duncan - 12
Wilt - 5
Hakeem - 4
Magic - 1



So Duncan has taken #5 with an outright majority (he had a few alternate votes that would transfer, too).


I count the nominations as:

Garnett - 8
Curry - 6
Bird - 4
Mikan - 2
West - 1
Kobe - 1

[One_and_Done]

I had Duncan with 13 votes, but I could be wrong.

[OhayoKD]

,

I am curious how much those ballots reflect your current views. Especially the DPOY. The non-big votes are specially surprising. Lebron top 2 in 2008 and Mj top 2(ever honestly) seems harder to defend with what we've come to know both about those players and about what impacts defense the most in general.

[Doctor MJ]

,

I am curious how much those ballots reflect your current views. Especially the DPOY. The non-big votes are specially surprising. Lebron top 2 in 2008 and Mj top 2(ever honestly) seems harder to defend with what we've come to know both about those players and about what impacts defense the most in general.

Understandable questions, and I'll say up front that I really don't want to come across like my evaluations are "the best evaluations". I'm just doing my best.

When you talk about "what impacts defense most" from a bigs vs non-bigs perspective, I think that's quite reasonable, and maybe the approach I used has a telltale flaw in that you can see it doesn't rely on this above all.

To try to give a sense of my lens here: While I certainly look at the regular season too, something that carried significant weight for me here, maybe more than it should, was the team defense being resilient in the playoffs.

Now, I'll say flat out: I think the nature of basketball is that one man can't ensure elite defense by himself if we're talking about modern quality pros. As such me focusing on who was leading resilient playoff defenses is something that could understandably be called a kind of winning bias, but I might call it more of a proof-in-the-pudding sort of perspective where team achievement is as team performance does.

I'm going to focus on the '95-96 Bulls when talking about Jordan, and not that I have Pippen & Jordan as my first two DPOY slots up front for context.

We know the team has the best DRtg in the regular season so I could just leave it at that. But let me note series by series opponent ORtgs:

Knicks:
First Round against Cleveland: 113.3
Eastern ESF against Chicago: 98.2

Magic:
First Round against Detroit: 123.7
Eastern CSF against Atlanta: 123.1
Eastern CF against Chicago: 99.2

Sonics:
First Round against Sacramento: 103.6
Western CSF against Houston: 115.8
Western CF against Utah: 101.9
Finals against Chicago: 106.7

So let's note first the Knicks & Magic just got utterly shut down against the Bulls after torching their prior opponents.

Next I'll note that the Bulls don't look insanely impressive against the Sonics, which is an indicator that it's myopic to just look at the Bulls against certain matchups and think they were orders of magnitude more effective at defense than anyone else.

What I'm really looking to point out is that the Bulls have a very strong case for being the best defense in the league, and remarkably successful against some playoff matchups...despite not playing a defensive style built around a big man. And I'll note that Seattle had been the #2 DRtg in the league in the regular season, that guard Payton was the 3rd guy on my DPOY ballot, and they also looked excellent in the playoffs...despite not having their defense built around a big.

Consider the possibility that when you build a defense around a big that you can't really emulate when he goes to the bench, you might be providing that big an opportunity for maximum DRAPM potential, but you might also be putting certain weaknesses in your overall team defense.

If it turns out that the best defenses at a particular point in time aren't built around players like that, but are based more around swarming perimeter guys, then what does it mean to say the bigs are achieving more than the key players on those swarming Team DRtg outliers?

Here's where I'd be inclined to be fine giving "goodness" to the bigs, but I don't find it straight forward to say they're achieving more than the perimeter stars. If a team has built the most effective defense in the world without anchoring it to a big, and re-rolling the defensive scheme around a new defensive big doesn't necessarily mean they could be better or even as good, then I think it's pretty reasonable to give the nod to the perimeter guys.

Before I leave Jordan & the Bulls, I want to his what happened to the Jazz against them the subsequent years in the finals.

'96-97:
Regular Season ORtg: 113.6, 2nd in league
First Round against Clippers: 121.7
Western CSF against Lakers: 111.0
Western CF against Houston: 112.8
Finals against Bulls: 103.8

'97-98:
Regular Season ORtg: 112.7, 1st in league
First Round against Houston: 103.7
Western CSF against Spurs: 101.8
Western CF against Lakers: 116.1
Finals against Bulls: 96.1

In both years, what we saw was an utterly elite regular season offense that just got crippled by the Bulls' defense in a way that other teams weren't able to do, and a lot of those other opponents? They were built around Bigs.

If we can have a situation where it's literally most effective to build a defense around non-Bigs, then to me it feels oversimplistic to talk as if Bigs are always the most valuable defenders every year.

And if you're going to acknowledge that the Bulls (arguably) built the best defense of that epoch around non-Bigs...then we shouldn't the guys they literally built everything around be DPOY candidates? And those two guys for the Bulls - their building blocks, and their big minute guys, were Jordan & Pippen. Between the two I give Pippen the nod in a number of years, but, for example, that's not remotely the right thing to do in '97-98 when Pippen missed so much time.

I think we also need to acknowledge here the role a strong-personality leader can have on a team's defense. Jordan & Pippen shouldn't get all the credit for their teammates playing well...but when you're talking about a bunch of guys playing a lot less than Jordan & Pippen, and the guys playing about as much as anyone other than Jordan & Pippen include guys like Kukoc & Kerr, clearly this isn't a situation that is succeeding just because every Bull is stacked for defense.

What about LeBron in 2008? Well, to be honest, I have less of a memory for this. Whereas the 2nd 3-peat Bulls are a phenomenon built around one core, LeBron in that year is just leading a team that was in flux and was not yet at its best. I can tell you that the Cavs' D performed extremely robustly in the playoffs that year and that LeBron played way more than any of his teammates, but that only points to take LeBron seriously, it doesn't pit him specifically against Tim Duncan, who I think is the comparison mostly on people's minds.

To me the more important point is the recognition that yes, you can built top tier defenses with great playoff resilience around guys who aren't big time shotblocking anchors, and this is something I see from the 2nd 3-peat Bulls and something I've seen from LeBron-based teams a number of times.

[DraymondGold]

Understandable questions, and I'll say up front that I really don't want to come across like my evaluations are "the best evaluations". I'm just doing my best.

When you talk about "what impacts defense most" from a bigs vs non-bigs perspective, I think that's quite reasonable, and maybe the approach I used has a telltale flaw in that you can see it doesn't rely on this above all.

To try to give a sense of my lens here: While I certainly look at the regular season too, something that carried significant weight for me here, maybe more than it should, was the team defense being resilient in the playoffs.

Now, I'll say flat out: I think the nature of basketball is that one man can't ensure elite defense by himself if we're talking about modern quality pros. As such me focusing on who was leading resilient playoff defenses is something that could understandably be called a kind of winning bias, but I might call it more of a proof-in-the-pudding sort of perspective where team achievement is as team performance does.

I'm going to focus on the '95-96 Bulls when talking about Jordan, and not that I have Pippen & Jordan as my first two DPOY slots up front for context.

We know the team has the best DRtg in the regular season so I could just leave it at that. But let me note series by series opponent ORtgs:

Knicks:
First Round against Cleveland: 113.3
Eastern ESF against Chicago: 98.2

Magic:
First Round against Detroit: 123.7
Eastern CSF against Atlanta: 123.1
Eastern CF against Chicago: 99.2

Sonics:
First Round against Sacramento: 103.6
Western CSF against Houston: 115.8
Western CF against Utah: 101.9
Finals against Chicago: 106.7

So let's note first the Knicks & Magic just got utterly shut down against the Bulls after torching their prior opponents.

Next I'll note that the Bulls don't look insanely impressive against the Sonics, which is an indicator that it's myopic to just look at the Bulls against certain matchups and think they were orders of magnitude more effective at defense than anyone else.

What I'm really looking to point out is that the Bulls have a very strong case for being the best defense in the league, and remarkably successful against some playoff matchups...despite not playing a defensive style built around a big man. And I'll note that Seattle had been the #2 DRtg in the league in the regular season, that guard Payton was the 3rd guy on my DPOY ballot, and they also looked excellent in the playoffs...despite not having their defense built around a big.

Consider the possibility that when you build a defense around a big that you can't really emulate when he goes to the bench, you might be providing that big an opportunity for maximum DRAPM potential, but you might also be putting certain weaknesses in your overall team defense.

If it turns out that the best defenses at a particular point in time aren't built around players like that, but are based more around swarming perimeter guys, then what does it mean to say the bigs are achieving more than the key players on those swarming Team DRtg outliers?

Here's where I'd be inclined to be fine giving "goodness" to the bigs, but I don't find it straight forward to say they're achieving more than the perimeter stars. If a team has built the most effective defense in the world without anchoring it to a big, and re-rolling the defensive scheme around a new defensive big doesn't necessarily mean they could be better or even as good, then I think it's pretty reasonable to give the nod to the perimeter guys.

Before I leave Jordan & the Bulls, I want to his what happened to the Jazz against them the subsequent years in the finals.

'96-97:
Regular Season ORtg: 113.6, 2nd in league
First Round against Clippers: 121.7
Western CSF against Lakers: 111.0
Western CF against Houston: 112.8
Finals against Bulls: 103.8

'97-98:
Regular Season ORtg: 112.7, 1st in league
First Round against Houston: 103.7
Western CSF against Spurs: 101.8
Western CF against Lakers: 116.1
Finals against Bulls: 96.1

In both years, what we saw was an utterly elite regular season offense that just got crippled by the Bulls' defense in a way that other teams weren't able to do, and a lot of those other opponents? They were built around Bigs.

If we can have a situation where it's literally most effective to build a defense around non-Bigs, then to me it feels oversimplistic to talk as if Bigs are always the most valuable defenders every year.

And if you're going to acknowledge that the Bulls (arguably) built the best defense of that epoch around non-Bigs...then we shouldn't the guys they literally built everything around be DPOY candidates? And those two guys for the Bulls - their building blocks, and their big minute guys, were Jordan & Pippen. Between the two I give Pippen the nod in a number of years, but, for example, that's not remotely the right thing to do in '97-98 when Pippen missed so much time.

I think we also need to acknowledge here the role a strong-personality leader can have on a team's defense. Jordan & Pippen shouldn't get all the credit for their teammates playing well...but when you're talking about a bunch of guys playing a lot less than Jordan & Pippen, and the guys playing about as much as anyone other than Jordan & Pippen include guys like Kukoc & Kerr, clearly this isn't a situation that is succeeding just because every Bull is stacked for defense.

What about LeBron in 2008? Well, to be honest, I have less of a memory for this. Whereas the 2nd 3-peat Bulls are a phenomenon built around one core, LeBron in that year is just leading a team that was in flux and was not yet at its best. I can tell you that the Cavs' D performed extremely robustly in the playoffs that year and that LeBron played way more than any of his teammates, but that only points to take LeBron seriously, it doesn't pit him specifically against Tim Duncan, who I think is the comparison mostly on people's minds.

To me the more important point is the recognition that yes, you can built top tier defenses with great playoff resilience around guys who aren't big time shotblocking anchors, and this is something I see from the 2nd 3-peat Bulls and something I've seen from LeBron-based teams a number of times.

Interesting stuff!

If you get the chance: would it be fair to describe your opinion here using the vocabulary of floor raising and ceiling raising as something like this: "Bigs in this era might be better floor raisers than perimeter players (relating to your comment about goodness), but the gap for ceiling raising is smaller (and may even favor perimeter players in this era)" ?

I wonder here if a counter argument might say the value of a good perimeter player based defense gets split between a number of defenders. In other words, in order to have a successful perimeter defense, you need to have a larger number of above-average defenders compared to an equivalent big man based defense. I haven't studied this thoroughly or anything, just spitballing.

I'm also reminded of a comment by Sansterre, who mentioned that Perimeter Defense might be more resilient than big man defense, given a small shift in the number of perimeter defenses in the top 25 regular season defenses vs playoff defenses:

From the 97 Bulls sansterre top 100 article, on the Top 25 Playoff Defenses:

Bill Russell Celtics: ‘64, ‘60, ‘61, ‘62 (1st, 4th, 5th, 6th)
Ben Wallace Pistons: ‘04, ‘05 (2nd, 25th)
Kareem Bucks: ‘71, ‘72 (3rd, 12th)
Chicago Bulls: ‘96, ‘98, ‘97 (7th, 17th, 21st)
Giannis Bucks: ‘19 (8th)
Wilt Lakers: ‘72 (9th)
Kawhi Spurs: ‘16 (10th)
Bad Boy Pistons: ‘90, ‘88 (11th, 13th)
Duncan/Robinson Spurs: ‘03, ‘99 (14th, 20th)
Kawhi Raptors: ‘19 (15th)
Utah Jazz: ‘96 (16th)
Draymond Warriors: ‘18, ‘15 (18th, 23rd)
Garnett Celtics: ‘10 (19th)
Seattle SuperSonics: ‘96 (22nd)
Los Angeles Lakers: ‘01 (24th)

Some of those teams are pretty predictable: great defenses anchored behind a great defensive big. Nobody’s surprised to see the Russell Celtics, Kareem Bucks, Wilt Lakers, Wallace Pistons, Garnett Celtics or Duncan Spurs. Or the Draymond Warriors for that matter. But that’s only 14 of the 25. The 11 remaining don’t really have a dominant defensive big.
…

In other words, 44% of the best playoff defenses ever didn’t have great rim protectors, and instead had deep athleticism and perimeter defenders. That seems high, right? Let’s contrast this with the Top 25 defensive ratings in the regular season: … That’s 19 of the 25.
…
So what should we conclude? That big men are less critical in the playoffs? Or that the small sample size of playoffs is throwing things off? Either is possible. But I do think that there is a lot to suggest that great playoff defenses are more dependent on perimeter defense than they are in the regular season.

... and later in the comments:

I have a potential theory that a lot of the playoff "game-planning" that we always talk about [which makes playoff defenses tougher to score on] is actually oriented around the perimeter attack. Whether it's by ball-pressure, ball-denial, over-playing certain points of attack/penetration, cheating help D schemes or other "building a wall" schemes [e.g. for Giannis], etc......it seems like a lot of the adjustments are going to occur within the perimeter core, so having versatile athletic personnel in that core is an advantage.

Offensive schemes break down more in the playoffs, too, and there's generally more iso-based play [which may occasionally may be after drawing a "mismatch"].......so again having athletic versatile defenders out there will be handy in making all iso attempts difficult.

[OhayoKD]

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

What I'm really looking to point out is that the Bulls have a very strong case for being the best defense in the league

, and remarkably successful against some playoff matchups...despite not playing a defensive style built around a big man. And I'll note that Seattle had been the #2 DRtg in the league in the regular season, that guard Payton was the 3rd guy on my DPOY ballot, and they also looked excellent in the playoffs...despite not having their defense built around a big.

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.

I also think looking simply for "best in the league" obscures things...

Consider the possibility that when you build a defense around a big that you can't really emulate when he goes to the bench, you might be providing that big an opportunity for maximum DRAPM potential, but you might also be putting certain weaknesses in your overall team defense.

Okay but here's the thing. The Bulls were not better than the best big-led defenses of that time period. The Duncan/Robinson spurs were much better. In fact, Duncan's Spurs, without d-rob were better. The best defenses ever are not perimeter orientated. Even with 2nd-tier bigs, the 71-73 Bucks were all better defenses than anything that came out of Chicago. As were the 2019/2020 Raptors. A defense that turned all-time great with a 30+ Gasol, and then fell to mediocrity in his absence.

You bring up Lebron and Pippen's defenses, but Pippen and Lebron are all-time "paint-protectors" at their size. You know which dpoy-winning non-big has seen their defenses collapse repeatedly in the absence of top-tier rim-protection? Kawhi. The guy who quite arguably is the pinnacle of the archetype you seem to be ascribing unique resiliency to. And that one-year where Jordan was flanked by a strong front-court defender, rather than an exceptional one, that nice regular season defense collapsed in the playoffs.

And on that note

Some of those teams are pretty predictable: great defenses anchored behind a great defensive big. Nobody’s surprised to see the Russell Celtics, Kareem Bucks, Wilt Lakers, Wallace Pistons, Garnett Celtics or Duncan Spurs. Or the Draymond Warriors for that matter. But that’s only 14 of the 25. The 11 remaining don’t really have a dominant defensive big.
…

In other words, 44% of the best playoff defenses ever didn’t have great rim protectors, and instead had deep athleticism and perimeter defenders. That seems high, right? Let’s contrast this with the Top 25 defensive ratings in the regular season: … That’s 19 of the 25.
…
So what should we conclude? That big men are less critical in the playoffs? Or that the small sample size of playoffs is throwing things off? Either is possible. But I do think that there is a lot to suggest that great playoff defenses are more dependent on perimeter defense than they are in the regular season.

[/quote]
To be honest, I do not see how that conclusion logically follows from what you're highlighting. The best defenses from your list are the big-led ones. The top 6, and 8 of the top 9 are all led by bigs. The exception here are Pippen's Bulls. And Pippen is goat-tier rim-protecting non-big. The kawhi-raptors were literally unaffected by his absence and became all-time-great only when a big-man joined. Really the only defense here led by a not-strong paint-deterrent is Kawhi's Spurs, a team that had strong rim-help in the rs and then got yeeted out in the second round when their best rim-protector broke-down(Duncan).

I do not see any evidence here for rim-protection is less important in the postseason and I do not think your argument logically leads to such a conclusion.

[lessthanjake]

I think we should be careful not to blindly measure defenses based just on their rDRTG or whatever, without regard to how good the offense is. It’s a well-documented phenomenon that teams give up more points when they’re ahead by a lot. This is from players naturally letting up a bit when they’re way ahead, and also from garbage time not actually favoring the better team. And a team with a great defense *and* a great offense is going to be ahead by a lot more often than a team that has a great defense and a mediocre offense. If we look at the Duncan-led Spurs, their best rDRTG years were mostly not good rORTG years for them, and vice versa is true as well. In the two years where the Spurs actually had a rORTG that was even in the same stratosphere as the 1995-1996 Bulls’ rORTG, the Spurs only had a rDRTG of -1.7 and -1.4. And in the years where the Duncan-led Spurs had a rDRTG that was similar or better than the 1995-1996 Bulls’ rDRTG, they peaked out at just a +2.7 rORTG (compared to +7.6 for the 1995-1996 Bulls), and the best rDRTG the Spurs ever had was in a year where they had a legitimately below-average offense. I would be a bit hesitant in concluding that those Spurs’ defenses were actually better, rather than the Bulls just destroying everyone and having lots of garbage time that brought their rDRTG down. As good as the Spurs’ defenses were, that Bulls defense was utterly suffocating. And the Spurs never had a playoff rDRTG that was better than the 1995-1996 Bulls’ playoff rDRTG.

[Doctor MJ]

Interesting stuff!

If you get the chance: would it be fair to describe your opinion here using the vocabulary of floor raising and ceiling raising as something like this: "Bigs in this era might be better floor raisers than perimeter players (relating to your comment about goodness), but the gap for ceiling raising is smaller (and may even favor perimeter players in this era)" ?

My first thought is: Sounds pretty reasonable. I'm not married to floor/ceiling raising as the primary lens of analysis here, but what you say makes some sense.

I wonder here if a counter argument might say the value of a good perimeter player based defense gets split between a number of defenders. In other words, in order to have a successful perimeter defense, you need to have a larger number of above-average defenders compared to an equivalent big man based defense. I haven't studied this thoroughly or anything, just spitballing.

I might put it like this: The nature of the half-court in basketball is that no matter how good you are on the perimeter, the offense can avoid you in a way they can't someone on the interior.

Hence, the impact of great perimeter defenders is inherently symbiotic, and thus might be called more multiplicative than additive.

I'm also reminded of a comment by Sansterre, who mentioned that Perimeter Defense might be more resilient than big man defense, given a small shift in the number of perimeter defenses in the top 25 regular season defenses vs playoff defenses:

From the 97 Bulls sansterre top 100 article, on the Top 25 Playoff Defenses:

Bill Russell Celtics: ‘64, ‘60, ‘61, ‘62 (1st, 4th, 5th, 6th)
Ben Wallace Pistons: ‘04, ‘05 (2nd, 25th)
Kareem Bucks: ‘71, ‘72 (3rd, 12th)
Chicago Bulls: ‘96, ‘98, ‘97 (7th, 17th, 21st)
Giannis Bucks: ‘19 (8th)
Wilt Lakers: ‘72 (9th)
Kawhi Spurs: ‘16 (10th)
Bad Boy Pistons: ‘90, ‘88 (11th, 13th)
Duncan/Robinson Spurs: ‘03, ‘99 (14th, 20th)
Kawhi Raptors: ‘19 (15th)
Utah Jazz: ‘96 (16th)
Draymond Warriors: ‘18, ‘15 (18th, 23rd)
Garnett Celtics: ‘10 (19th)
Seattle SuperSonics: ‘96 (22nd)
Los Angeles Lakers: ‘01 (24th)

Some of those teams are pretty predictable: great defenses anchored behind a great defensive big. Nobody’s surprised to see the Russell Celtics, Kareem Bucks, Wilt Lakers, Wallace Pistons, Garnett Celtics or Duncan Spurs. Or the Draymond Warriors for that matter. But that’s only 14 of the 25. The 11 remaining don’t really have a dominant defensive big.
…

In other words, 44% of the best playoff defenses ever didn’t have great rim protectors, and instead had deep athleticism and perimeter defenders. That seems high, right? Let’s contrast this with the Top 25 defensive ratings in the regular season: … That’s 19 of the 25.
…
So what should we conclude? That big men are less critical in the playoffs? Or that the small sample size of playoffs is throwing things off? Either is possible. But I do think that there is a lot to suggest that great playoff defenses are more dependent on perimeter defense than they are in the regular season.

... and later in the comments:

I have a potential theory that a lot of the playoff "game-planning" that we always talk about [which makes playoff defenses tougher to score on] is actually oriented around the perimeter attack. Whether it's by ball-pressure, ball-denial, over-playing certain points of attack/penetration, cheating help D schemes or other "building a wall" schemes [e.g. for Giannis], etc......it seems like a lot of the adjustments are going to occur within the perimeter core, so having versatile athletic personnel in that core is an advantage.

Offensive schemes break down more in the playoffs, too, and there's generally more iso-based play [which may occasionally may be after drawing a "mismatch"].......so again having athletic versatile defenders out there will be handy in making all iso attempts difficult.

Great stuff.

[Doctor MJ]

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.

I think you make great points, but I also think that when you talk about isolating the variables, this gets into the whole symbiotic thing I was talking about it in my response to Draymond.

I think we can have the specific question about Jordan vs Pippen vs Rodman, but I don't really see anything that indicates that Rodman deserves as much credit as Jordan or Pippen.

I also think looking simply for "best in the league" obscures things...

Consider the possibility that when you build a defense around a big that you can't really emulate when he goes to the bench, you might be providing that big an opportunity for maximum DRAPM potential, but you might also be putting certain weaknesses in your overall team defense.

Okay but here's the thing. The Bulls were not better than the best big-led defenses of that time period. The Duncan/Robinson spurs were much better. In fact, Duncan's Spurs, without d-rob were better. The best defenses ever are not perimeter orientated. Even with 2nd-tier bigs, the 71-73 Bucks were all better defenses than anything that came out of Chicago. As were the 2019/2020 Raptors. A defense that turned all-time great with a 30+ Gasol, and then fell to mediocrity in his absence.

You bring up Lebron and Pippen's defenses, but Pippen and Lebron are all-time "paint-protectors" at their size. You know which dpoy-winning non-big has seen their defenses collapse repeatedly in the absence of top-tier rim-protection? Kawhi. The guy who quite arguably is the pinnacle of the archetype you seem to be ascribing unique resiliency to. And that one-year where Jordan was flanked by a strong front-court defender, rather than an exceptional one, that nice regular season defense collapsed in the playoffs.

Well, I should acknowledge up front that I wasn't thinking of the Duncan-Robinson Spurs as being in the same era as the Bulls, so let me speak to that specifically.

'97-98 is the only year where both teams exist.
In the regular season, the Spurs rank 2nd while the Bulls rank 3rd, though of course Pippen missed a lot of time that year.

In the playoffs, seems reasonable to look at their shared opponent, though obviously matchups make fights.

Against the Jazz in the playoffs:
Spurs had a DRtg of 101.8
Bulls had a DRtg of 96.1.

So, with the only apples-to-apples comparison we have, the Bulls take it.

The Spurs certainly get better after that so this isn't fundamental proof that the Bulls were the best defense by any means, but I think at the very least the Bulls deserve serious respect.

Re: Pippen is all-time paint-protector. Huh? Pippen didn't block many shots and neither did those Bulls.

Not looking to knock Pippen generally - I would rank him ahead of Jordan on an all-time list - but the idea that you're trying to knock Jordan because of his non-big-dom by pointing to Pippen as effectively a big just confuses me.

Re: "best defenses ever are big-based". Well, I agree that the defenses that have had the greatest separation from their contemporaries have generally been big-based, and I'd note that bigs dominate my DPOY share lists too.

But:

1. This doesn't mean that in any given year it must be a big that's contributing the most defensive value.

2. I do think that contextual shifts in the league over time, which includes who the other contenders are and what their vulnerabilities are, make this a richer topic than just "best thing to do is to build around a shot-blocker at all times".

[lessthanjake]

Those Bulls were genuinely incredible defensively. They had a set of perimeter defenders (i.e. Jordan, Pippen, Harper) that were incredibly hard to beat one-on-one (either in space or in the post) and those guys had a combination of length, motor, and instincts that could make them completely suffocating for teams to even try to complete passes against. Meanwhile, in Rodman, you had a guy who could really bother any post scorer, while guys like Pippen and Jordan could cover ground so quickly and swipe at the ball so well that those post players really had to rush things. Rodman was also a dominant rebounder (though the lack of a great rebounding center made them not be *completely* elite on the boards as a team). They did not have a great rim protector, but they did have some pretty big-bodied big men that they could throw at people and they wouldn’t generally get just completely dominated 1 on 1. Their bench wasn’t as good defensively (for instance, Kerr was not a good defender), but Kukoc was very long, and so he was no slouch. A key thing about their defense was also that their offense gave up very few turnovers (in large part a consequence of MJ’s freakish ball-security skills), so teams couldn’t get out on transition against them very often.

What would tend to happen with those Bulls teams is that when they turned it on defensively, the other team would typically just suffocate and hardly even be able to complete passes, so those teams would just have to resort to jacking up bad shots.

[One_and_Done]

EDIT: Just coming in here and making it official. I see the same winners as trex.

As we're past deadline and I'm leaving town (and wifi service) for a few days, and want a chance to vote in the next thread, I'm going to step in and conclude this one (Doc MJ can make it more official later).
Looks like there's been some good discussion through the mid-late stages of this thread; I hope to get into the trees at some point.

Anyway, I have the vote count as:

Duncan - 12
Wilt - 5
Hakeem - 4
Magic - 1



So Duncan has taken #5 with an outright majority (he had a few alternate votes that would transfer, too).


I count the nominations as:

Garnett - 8
Curry - 6
Bird - 4
Mikan - 2
West - 1
Kobe - 1

I had Duncan with 13 votes FYI.

[AdagioPace]

I think we should be careful not to blindly measure defenses based just on their rDRTG or whatever, without regard to how good the offense is. It’s a well-documented phenomenon that teams give up more points when they’re ahead by a lot. This is from players naturally letting up a bit when they’re way ahead, and also from garbage time not actually favoring the better team. And a team with a great defense *and* a great offense is going to be ahead by a lot more often than a team that has a great defense and a mediocre offense. If we look at the Duncan-led Spurs, their best rDRTG years were mostly not good rORTG years for them, and vice versa is true as well. In the two years where the Spurs actually had a rORTG that was even in the same stratosphere as the 1995-1996 Bulls’ rORTG, the Spurs only had a rDRTG of -1.7 and -1.4. And in the years where the Duncan-led Spurs had a rDRTG that was similar or better than the 1995-1996 Bulls’ rDRTG, they peaked out at just a +2.7 rORTG (compared to +7.6 for the 1995-1996 Bulls), and the best rDRTG the Spurs ever had was in a year where they had a legitimately below-average offense. I would be a bit hesitant in concluding that those Spurs’ defenses were actually better, rather than the Bulls just destroying everyone and having lots of garbage time that brought their rDRTG down. As good as the Spurs’ defenses were, that Bulls defense was utterly suffocating. And the Spurs never had a playoff rDRTG that was better than the 1995-1996 Bulls’ playoff rDRTG.

I find your comment a bit aimless. I don't get what is your point actually. Bulls were an exceptional cast of three(3) 1st team all-nba level defenders (for each year of the 2xthreepeat) and qualitatively and overall a better team than the spurs (actually a better team than most teams in history!). Spurs' defense was based mostly on Duncan with help from Bowen, that's all. If you want to point out that a big-led defense can't reach certain highs, there's only room for comparison if teams are comparable. It makes no sense otherwise. Give me a comprable ensamble with Duncan, Bowen and.... Kawhi and we have the GOAT defensive team that blows the Bulls out of the water.

[OhayoKD]

Have been meaning to respond to this for a while but the project has used up alot of my realgm time. Now that I'm not putting so much effort into the votes I may as well address this

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.

I think you make great points, but I also think that when you talk about isolating the variables, this gets into the whole symbiotic thing I was talking about it in my response to Draymond.

I think we can have the specific question about Jordan vs Pippen vs Rodman, but I don't really see anything that indicates that Rodman deserves as much credit as Jordan or Pippen.

Okay, so what do you think indicates Rodman(and i guess by extension grant) deserve less credit? I don't think either have a worse track-record without Scottie. Rodman was obviously a key part on those all-time detroit defenses(and won his own dubious dpoy).

I don't buy any of the 3's defensive hype, but I guess if I had to choose the magic and lakers playoff spikes with grant arriving strike me as the most impressive datapoints for any of the 3 and he was a co-primary in terms of protecting the paint from what i've seen/other people's tracking.

I also think looking simply for "best in the league" obscures things...

Consider the possibility that when you build a defense around a big that you can't really emulate when he goes to the bench, you might be providing that big an opportunity for maximum DRAPM potential, but you might also be putting certain weaknesses in your overall team defense.

Okay but here's the thing. The Bulls were not better than the best big-led defenses of that time period. The Duncan/Robinson spurs were much better. In fact, Duncan's Spurs, without d-rob were better. The best defenses ever are not perimeter orientated. Even with 2nd-tier bigs, the 71-73 Bucks were all better defenses than anything that came out of Chicago. As were the 2019/2020 Raptors. A defense that turned all-time great with a 30+ Gasol, and then fell to mediocrity in his absence.

You bring up Lebron and Pippen's defenses, but Pippen and Lebron are all-time "paint-protectors" at their size. You know which dpoy-winning non-big has seen their defenses collapse repeatedly in the absence of top-tier rim-protection? Kawhi. The guy who quite arguably is the pinnacle of the archetype you seem to be ascribing unique resiliency to. And that one-year where Jordan was flanked by a strong front-court defender, rather than an exceptional one, that nice regular season defense collapsed in the playoffs.

Well, I should acknowledge up front that I wasn't thinking of the Duncan-Robinson Spurs as being in the same era as the Bulls, so let me speak to that specifically.

'97-98 is the only year where both teams exist.
In the regular season, the Spurs rank 2nd while the Bulls rank 3rd, though of course Pippen missed a lot of time that year.

In the playoffs, seems reasonable to look at their shared opponent, though obviously matchups make fights.

I mean the specific claim that was a response to was the idea that bigs/rim-protectors are floor-raisers as opposed to cieling-raisiers and/or that big-oriented defenses have a lower cieling. If you want to say the Bulls were the best defense in the league in specific years I don't have a big issue with that, but extrapolating that perimeter defense is more scalable or whatever seems like a stretch to me(even moreso than the offense-focused counterpart). Adagio explained the issue with the reasoning rather well I think.

I also don't like only using the bulls, by far, best defensive performance of their dynasty when that same playoff defense went +1 a round earlier vs reggie's pacers and was +0 in the first round(-10 in the 2nd tbf). They might win an overall comparison anyway(spurs went -5 and -7) for that specific year, but i wouldn't use one series like that. 

Re: Pippen is all-time paint-protector. Huh? Pippen didn't block many shots and neither did those Bulls.

The qualifier was "for his size" or even more simply, "for a non-big". I think tracking bears that out(ben, blocked, ect), paticularly in the playoffs where Pippen could greatly limit even someone like ewing even with grant having a bleh series(kept mispositioning himself for some reason) in 94

Counter-intuitively, blocks aren't actually all that useful when assessing paint-protection. Take for example, Joel Embid who has never finished top 5 in blocks per game. Guess what happens with actual tracking data:

Oh wow Embid looks like...arguably the best rim-protector in the league?

Note this is still only looking at who happens to be closest to a shot, not the "anti-gravity" thing we've discussed before where even pippen-lite can basically generate blocks for teammates(not facing great leapers helps). Steals don't really correlate with defensive results too well, but blocks correlate even worse with players like Durant and Thybuille racking up more or as much as Draymond/Embid in given years despite the former being comparative drops in a bucket in terms of what they offer inside.

On a similar note, Grant has never been a big block-collector, but the Lakers trade for him in 2001 and their efficacy protecting the rim skyrockets from 2000(and with it their playoff defense.)

Re: "best defenses ever are big-based". Well, I agree that the defenses that have had the greatest separation from their contemporaries have generally been big-based, and I'd note that bigs dominate my DPOY share lists too.

But:

1. This doesn't mean that in any given year it must be a big that's contributing the most defensive value.

Sure. But you took two non-bigs over the field in a league that still included Hakeem Olajuwon and David Robinson playing fantastic defense(Hakeem was great in the playoffs too). That feels like a stretch to me, particularly in the absence of a overwhelming case for that 2nd guy being the 2nd defensive guy on his team(though maybe you have that lined up).

I'm not sure there is a singular year in databall where empirical impact has pointed to a non-big as the league's best defender. Lebron came closest maybe in 2009 but i dont think he had a great case vs dwight and that was only really possible because KG got injured. Kawhi and Smart won dpoys but they were not close in terms of value to the best bigs those years by the cold data.

If the 2nd most valuable defender in the league being a non-big happens once in a blue-moon, it seems dubious that suddenly both the two top dpoys were actually non-bigs. Particularly when one of them has no real track-record suggesting such when we isolate them from dude #1.

I'm also not sure the defensive gap between the sonics and the bulls justifies picking 2 guys from one and 0 from the other.

2. I do think that contextual shifts in the league over time, which includes who the other contenders are and what their vulnerabilities are, make this a richer topic than just "best thing to do is to build around a shot-blocker at all times".

Sure. but, I think there are a few threads to skip past before we get to "build around 1 v 1 defense" which of course Hakeem is also fantastic at.

[Doctor MJ]

Have been meaning to respond to this for a while but the project has used up alot of my realgm time. Now that I'm not putting so much effort into the votes I may as well address this

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.

I think you make great points, but I also think that when you talk about isolating the variables, this gets into the whole symbiotic thing I was talking about it in my response to Draymond.

I think we can have the specific question about Jordan vs Pippen vs Rodman, but I don't really see anything that indicates that Rodman deserves as much credit as Jordan or Pippen.

Okay, so what do you think indicates Rodman(and i guess by extension grant) deserve less credit? I don't think either have a worse track-record without Scottie. Rodman was obviously a key part on those all-time detroit defenses(and won his own dubious dpoy).

I don't buy any of the 3's defensive hype, but I guess if I had to choose the magic and lakers playoff spikes with grant arriving strike me as the most impressive datapoints for any of the 3 and he was a co-primary in terms of protecting the paint from what i've seen/other people's tracking.

Well, consider the MP, On & On/Off for the Bulls during their GOAT year ('95-96):

Jordan 3090, +16.7, +15.2
Pippen 2825, +16.8, +11.8
Rodman 2088, +14.7, +2.7

General rule that if we see guys putting up much bigger numbers here while also playing many more minutes, it's evidence that they were more critical to the success of the team.

I was glad to see this specific data when we got it because the '95-96 Bulls are so important, and Rodman was the big new addition causing some to suggest that perhaps he was actually more impactful not just relative to Pippen but also Jordan. I wasn't looking to see Rodman knocked down, but I knew what I was looking for in the data to evaluate how much of a leap such statements were.

So yeah, I don't see any reason to talk about Rodman generally as being Pippen's equal on the Bulls.

Of course that data is not defense-specific, but with Rodman playing so much less it's hard to imagine the defense was more dependent on him than Jordan or Pippen.

I'll note that in '97-98 Rodman plays more and Pippen plays less, and I wouldn't be wanting to argue for Pippen over Rodman on the basis of that season.

Re: Grant. We don't have the data for it, and I respect Grant a great deal, but aside the fact that no one on the Bulls seems to have seen Grant as Pippen's equal, the fact that the team hit their highest highs without him makes it hard for me to seriously try to argue for Grant over Pippen.

I also think looking simply for "best in the league" obscures things...

Okay but here's the thing. The Bulls were not better than the best big-led defenses of that time period. The Duncan/Robinson spurs were much better. In fact, Duncan's Spurs, without d-rob were better. The best defenses ever are not perimeter orientated. Even with 2nd-tier bigs, the 71-73 Bucks were all better defenses than anything that came out of Chicago. As were the 2019/2020 Raptors. A defense that turned all-time great with a 30+ Gasol, and then fell to mediocrity in his absence.

You bring up Lebron and Pippen's defenses, but Pippen and Lebron are all-time "paint-protectors" at their size. You know which dpoy-winning non-big has seen their defenses collapse repeatedly in the absence of top-tier rim-protection? Kawhi. The guy who quite arguably is the pinnacle of the archetype you seem to be ascribing unique resiliency to. And that one-year where Jordan was flanked by a strong front-court defender, rather than an exceptional one, that nice regular season defense collapsed in the playoffs.
c

Well, I should acknowledge up front that I wasn't thinking of the Duncan-Robinson Spurs as being in the same era as the Bulls, so let me speak to that specifically.

'97-98 is the only year where both teams exist.
In the regular season, the Spurs rank 2nd while the Bulls rank 3rd, though of course Pippen missed a lot of time that year.

In the playoffs, seems reasonable to look at their shared opponent, though obviously matchups make fights.

I mean the specific claim that was a response to was the idea that bigs/rim-protectors are floor-raisers as opposed to cieling-raisiers and/or that big-oriented defenses have a lower cieling. If you want to say the Bulls were the best defense in the league in specific years I don't have a big issue with that, but extrapolating that perimeter defense is more scalable or whatever seems like a stretch to me(even moreso than the offense-focused counterpart). Adagio explained the issue with the reasoning rather well I think.

I also don't like only using the bulls, by far, best defensive performance of their dynasty when that same playoff defense went +1 a round earlier vs reggie's pacers and was +0 in the first round(-10 in the 2nd tbf). They might win an overall comparison anyway(spurs went -5 and -7) for that specific year, but i wouldn't use one series like that. 

Honestly I'm struggling with remembering the prior context. As someone who voted Russell as his GOAT, it's hard for me to fathom I said something like "Perimeter-led defenses generally scale best against top competition." What's closer to how I feel is that it's not so clear cut that the best defenses will necessarily be led by bigs in eras where the offense is more perimeter-oriented.

You mention the Bulls struggling against the Pacers, but of course, the answer to a Reggie Miller-led offense is certainly not a twin tower defense. The way to stop such offenses is with more agile perimeter players.

And as far as the 1st round numbers, well, I just wouldn't ever feel comfortable trying to find numbers to knock a team's performance when they sweep their opponent. All the more so when they are a 1 seed playing an 8 seed and probably not all that worried about the opponent as a threat.

Re: Pippen is all-time paint-protector. Huh? Pippen didn't block many shots and neither did those Bulls.

The qualifier was "for his size" or even more simply, "for a non-big". I think tracking bears that out(ben, blocked, ect), paticularly in the playoffs where Pippen could greatly limit even someone like ewing even with grant having a bleh series(kept mispositioning himself for some reason) in 94

Counter-intuitively, blocks aren't actually all that useful when assessing paint-protection. Take for example, Joel Embid who has never finished top 5 in blocks per game. Guess what happens with actual tracking data:

Oh wow Embid looks like...arguably the best rim-protector in the league?

Note this is still only looking at who happens to be closest to a shot, not the "anti-gravity" thing we've discussed before where even pippen-lite can basically generate blocks for teammates(not facing great leapers helps). Steals don't really correlate with defensive results too well, but blocks correlate even worse with players like Durant and Thybuille racking up more or as much as Draymond/Embid in given years despite the former being comparative drops in a bucket in terms of what they offer inside.

On a similar note, Grant has never been a big block-collector, but the Lakers trade for him in 2001 and their efficacy protecting the rim skyrockets from 2000(and with it their playoff defense.)

I'd need to see more data here.

I certainly get the argument that a great paint protector will have his blocks deflated because he discourages guys from daring to take interior shots, but I'm skeptical that the Bulls were achieving their effectiveness by these means.

Re: "best defenses ever are big-based". Well, I agree that the defenses that have had the greatest separation from their contemporaries have generally been big-based, and I'd note that bigs dominate my DPOY share lists too.

But:

1. This doesn't mean that in any given year it must be a big that's contributing the most defensive value.

Sure. But you took two non-bigs over the field in a league that still included Hakeem Olajuwon and David Robinson playing fantastic defense(Hakeem was great in the playoffs too). That feels like a stretch to me, particularly in the absence of a overwhelming case for that 2nd guy being the 2nd defensive guy on his team(though maybe you have that lined up).

I'm not sure there is a singular year in databall where empirical impact has pointed to a non-big as the league's best defender. Lebron came closest maybe in 2009 but i dont think he had a great case vs dwight and that was only really possible because KG got injured. Kawhi and Smart won dpoys but they were not close in terms of value to the best bigs those years by the cold data.

If the 2nd most valuable defender in the league being a non-big happens once in a blue-moon, it seems dubious that suddenly both the two top dpoys were actually non-bigs. Particularly when one of them has no real track-record suggesting such when we isolate them from dude #1.

I'm also not sure the defensive gap between the sonics and the bulls justifies picking 2 guys from one and 0 from the other.

So I'll note that my '95-96 DPOY Top 3 has Gary Payton in it too, so in that year I don't have any bigs in my Top 3. I completely understand raising eye-brows at that, but those two teams were the two best defenses in the league, and they were not led by bigs.

Yes it's a team game and can certainly acknowledge that perhaps a big gave more defensive value that year despite being on a less successful defense, but I think should give us pause in consideration of just how extreme the advantage for bigs are on defense, when two defensive-oriented teams can be the best teams all year and reach the finals while not having a single star defensive big among them.

I think it's also helpful to look at the 4 factors here. The rule in general is that bigs are supposed to lower eFG% and raise DRtg%, but it's perimeter players who create the turnovers. So when you see two teams lead the league in DRtg, and they do so with TO% as their main competitive advantage, that speaks to the kind of bang-for-the-buck they're getting from their perimeter defenders.

2. I do think that contextual shifts in the league over time, which includes who the other contenders are and what their vulnerabilities are, make this a richer topic than just "best thing to do is to build around a shot-blocker at all times".

Sure. but, I think there are a few threads to skip past before we get to "build around 1 v 1 defense" which of course Hakeem is also fantastic at.

There's more to defense that shot-blocking and 1v1, and while I'm a big Olajuwon fan, I think we have to acknowledge that he and his team were on the tail end of things by this point. Maybe he was still a more capable defensive impactor than any perimeter player by this point, but we are talking about a guy known for getting 6 stocks per game in his prime who isn't getting that in his mid-30s.

[OhayoKD]

Have been meaning to respond to this for a while but the project has used up alot of my realgm time. Now that I'm not putting so much effort into the votes I may as well address this

I think you make great points, but I also think that when you talk about isolating the variables, this gets into the whole symbiotic thing I was talking about it in my response to Draymond.

I think we can have the specific question about Jordan vs Pippen vs Rodman, but I don't really see anything that indicates that Rodman deserves as much credit as Jordan or Pippen.

Okay, so what do you think indicates Rodman(and i guess by extension grant) deserve less credit? I don't think either have a worse track-record without Scottie. Rodman was obviously a key part on those all-time detroit defenses(and won his own dubious dpoy).

I don't buy any of the 3's defensive hype, but I guess if I had to choose the magic and lakers playoff spikes with grant arriving strike me as the most impressive datapoints for any of the 3 and he was a co-primary in terms of protecting the paint from what i've seen/other people's tracking.

Well, consider the MP, On & On/Off for the Bulls during their GOAT year ('95-96):

Jordan 3090, +16.7, +15.2
Pippen 2825, +16.8, +11.8
Rodman 2088, +14.7, +2.7

General rule that if we see guys putting up much bigger numbers here while also playing many more minutes, it's evidence that they were more critical to the success of the team.

I was glad to see this specific data when we got it because the '95-96 Bulls are so important, and Rodman was the big new addition causing some to suggest that perhaps he was actually more impactful not just relative to Pippen but also Jordan. I wasn't looking to see Rodman knocked down, but I knew what I was looking for in the data to evaluate how much of a leap such statements were.

So yeah, I don't see any reason to talk about Rodman generally as being Pippen's equal on the Bulls.

Of course that data is not defense-specific, but with Rodman playing so much less it's hard to imagine the defense was more dependent on him than Jordan or Pippen.

Hm, okay. I'll just note rodman does look alot better in a 14 gm/szn wowy sample during the second three-peat(similar lift on similar teams to oscar in 72 and kd in 2017). Minutes is fair enough though. Wasn't paying attention to that. You also have the big rebounding improvement(paticularly noteworthy in 98).

The assertion was not rodman=pippen though. As I've argued, I have it as pippen and an ensemble of good to elite defenders though there's a case to be made it was really jackson and an ensemble of good to elite defenders. That said playing more does allow for more impact so sure. Though if you weigh the playoffs alot more(and you seem to be putting a lot of stock in the playoff rating), I think rodman was an arguable #2(defensively).

Obviously jordan was the overall and offensive centerpiece, i've never humored rodman>pippen even, but he looks unusually impactful for a 3rd banana using the games he completely misses from the second three-peat. Possible people were overindexing on his finals performance though.

I'll note that in '97-98 Rodman plays more and Pippen plays less, and I wouldn't be wanting to argue for Pippen over Rodman on the basis of that season.

I mean it was still pippen's show in the playoffs fwiw imo. Especially vs the Jazz

Re: Grant. We don't have the data for it, and I respect Grant a great deal, but aside the fact that no one on the Bulls seems to have seen Grant as Pippen's equal, the fact that the team hit their highest highs without him makes it hard for me to seriously try to argue for Grant over Pippen.

Okay but I didn't say grant=pippen. It was grant = MJ.

I also think looking simply for "best in the league" obscures things...

Okay but here's the thing. The Bulls were not better than the best big-led defenses of that time period. The Duncan/Robinson spurs were much better. In fact, Duncan's Spurs, without d-rob were better. The best defenses ever are not perimeter orientated. Even with 2nd-tier bigs, the 71-73 Bucks were all better defenses than anything that came out of Chicago. As were the 2019/2020 Raptors. A defense that turned all-time great with a 30+ Gasol, and then fell to mediocrity in his absence.

You bring up Lebron and Pippen's defenses, but Pippen and Lebron are all-time "paint-protectors" at their size. You know which dpoy-winning non-big has seen their defenses collapse repeatedly in the absence of top-tier rim-protection? Kawhi. The guy who quite arguably is the pinnacle of the archetype you seem to be ascribing unique resiliency to. And that one-year where Jordan was flanked by a strong front-court defender, rather than an exceptional one, that nice regular season defense collapsed in the playoffs.
c

Well, I should acknowledge up front that I wasn't thinking of the Duncan-Robinson Spurs as being in the same era as the Bulls, so let me speak to that specifically.

'97-98 is the only year where both teams exist.
In the regular season, the Spurs rank 2nd while the Bulls rank 3rd, though of course Pippen missed a lot of time that year.

In the playoffs, seems reasonable to look at their shared opponent, though obviously matchups make fights.

I mean the specific claim that was a response to was the idea that bigs/rim-protectors are floor-raisers as opposed to cieling-raisiers and/or that big-oriented defenses have a lower cieling. If you want to say the Bulls were the best defense in the league in specific years I don't have a big issue with that, but extrapolating that perimeter defense is more scalable or whatever seems like a stretch to me(even moreso than the offense-focused counterpart). Adagio explained the issue with the reasoning rather well I think.

I also don't like only using the bulls, by far, best defensive performance of their dynasty when that same playoff defense went +1 a round earlier vs reggie's pacers and was +0 in the first round(-10 in the 2nd tbf). They might win an overall comparison anyway(spurs went -5 and -7) for that specific year, but i wouldn't use one series like that. 

Honestly I'm struggling with remembering the prior context. As someone who voted Russell as his GOAT, it's hard for me to fathom I said something like "Perimeter-led defenses generally scale best against top competition."

You did not, someone who replied to you and me did, and i replied to that point.

What's closer to how I feel is that it's not so clear cut that the best defenses will necessarily be led by bigs in eras where the offense is more perimeter-oriented.

Well offense is as perimiter oriented as ever right now and the best playoff defenses of this period have been...

-> The Giannis bucks
-> The Gasol Raptors
-> The Ad Lakers
-> The Draymond Warriors

Note that all these defenses have seen collosal collapses tied to the named player and all these defenses have the guy named leading the lineup stuff when they're doing atg things(notably the bucks collapsed to a little bit better than average in the regular season when lopez/jrue started posting comparable defensive +/- and then went back to all-time great in the playoffs with giannis lineups specifically doing the best)

What would you need to see to consider things clear cut?

I think databall has just made it more obvious that bigs are the leaders here. The change is in the ==type== of big, but all these bigs share alot of similarities with hakeem defensively.

You mention the Bulls struggling against the Pacers, but of course, the answer to a Reggie Miller-led offense is certainly not a twin tower defense. The way to stop such offenses is with more agile perimeter players.

I would say we have a modern analog in Anthony Davis who would beg to differ. The agile perimeter players certainly help but the agile big is of supreme import

And as far as the 1st round numbers, well, I just wouldn't ever feel comfortable trying to find numbers to knock a team's performance when they sweep their opponent. All the more so when they are a 1 seed playing an 8 seed and probably not all that worried about the opponent as a threat.

As long as you're consistent with it.

Re: Pippen is all-time paint-protector. Huh? Pippen didn't block many shots and neither did those Bulls.

The qualifier was "for his size" or even more simply, "for a non-big". I think tracking bears that out(ben, blocked, ect), paticularly in the playoffs where Pippen could greatly limit even someone like ewing even with grant having a bleh series(kept mispositioning himself for some reason) in 94

Counter-intuitively, blocks aren't actually all that useful when assessing paint-protection. Take for example, Joel Embid who has never finished top 5 in blocks per game. Guess what happens with actual tracking data:

Oh wow Embid looks like...arguably the best rim-protector in the league?

Note this is still only looking at who happens to be closest to a shot, not the "anti-gravity" thing we've discussed before where even pippen-lite can basically generate blocks for teammates(not facing great leapers helps). Steals don't really correlate with defensive results too well, but blocks correlate even worse with players like Durant and Thybuille racking up more or as much as Draymond/Embid in given years despite the former being comparative drops in a bucket in terms of what they offer inside.

On a similar note, Grant has never been a big block-collector, but the Lakers trade for him in 2001 and their efficacy protecting the rim skyrockets from 2000(and with it their playoff defense.)

I'd need to see more data here.

I certainly get the argument that a great paint protector will have his blocks deflated because he discourages guys from daring to take interior shots, but I'm skeptical that the Bulls were achieving their effectiveness by these means.

My claim was not that they were especially great at protecting the paint, but that they could compensate for a lack of traditional paint-protecting bigs because their non-bigs(notably Pippen) were unusually good at it. As for more data, perhaps some raw tracking will suffice?

I did 40 possessions from the 4th game of the 91 ECF today just looking at the distribution of, as 70's calls it, "load as a paint-protector":
[url]

Watch on YouTube

[/url]
(if you want to check, 20 possessions are finished through 19:42 amd 40 are finished through 49:52)

Note it was very hard to make out players(besides pippen whose got a nasty case of roblox head), so i could be misattributing here and there though I used jersey numbers, names, commentators, and head/body shapes the best i could. I also counted "splits" for both parties(which is why the numbers don't add up to 40)


Distribution went

Pippen/Grant
14 each

Purdue
6 or 7

Cartwright
4

Armstrong/Jordan
1 each

FWIW, Grant seemed more significantly more effective than Pippen but otoh, Pippen was trusted to deal with laimbeer far more than anyone else

All that aside, what's notable here is that it's the non-bigs who are checking rim threats the most. Not the centres. With one of the two deterring attempts, sometimes on an island, the rest of the team was enabled to try and force turnovers with suffocating pressure.

Re: "best defenses ever are big-based". Well, I agree that the defenses that have had the greatest separation from their contemporaries have generally been big-based, and I'd note that bigs dominate my DPOY share lists too.

But:

1. This doesn't mean that in any given year it must be a big that's contributing the most defensive value.

Sure. But you took two non-bigs over the field in a league that still included Hakeem Olajuwon and David Robinson playing fantastic defense(Hakeem was great in the playoffs too). That feels like a stretch to me, particularly in the absence of a overwhelming case for that 2nd guy being the 2nd defensive guy on his team(though maybe you have that lined up).

I'm not sure there is a singular year in databall where empirical impact has pointed to a non-big as the league's best defender. Lebron came closest maybe in 2009 but i dont think he had a great case vs dwight and that was only really possible because KG got injured. Kawhi and Smart won dpoys but they were not close in terms of value to the best bigs those years by the cold data.

If the 2nd most valuable defender in the league being a non-big happens once in a blue-moon, it seems dubious that suddenly both the two top dpoys were actually non-bigs. Particularly when one of them has no real track-record suggesting such when we isolate them from dude #1.

I'm also not sure the defensive gap between the sonics and the bulls justifies picking 2 guys from one and 0 from the other.

So I'll note that my '95-96 DPOY Top 3 has Gary Payton in it too, so in that year I don't have any bigs in my Top 3. I completely understand raising eye-brows at that, but those two teams were the two best defenses in the league, and they were not led by bigs.

Okay well if we are restricting it to those two, and assuming payton was their lead(i dont tihnk thats obvious), I would probably split the top two if nothing else. Both were historic (-9.5, vs -7.5 by sans) and notably when they met head to head, the sonics shot defense was actually better than the bulls with payton doing a number on jordan's efficiency.

I do think that at least partially reflects payton having the better defensive showing.

You can point out the extra-possessions but the bulls lead-stock getter that series was Pippen and their lead rebounder was obviously rodman.

Yes it's a team game and can certainly acknowledge that perhaps a big gave more defensive value that year despite being on a less successful defense, but I think should give us pause in consideration of just how extreme the advantage for bigs are on defense, when two defensive-oriented teams can be the best teams all year and reach the finals while not having a single star defensive big among them.

I think it's also helpful to look at the 4 factors here. The rule in general is that bigs are supposed to lower eFG% and raise DRtg%, but it's perimeter players who create the turnovers. So when you see two teams lead the league in DRtg, and they do so with TO% as their main competitive advantage, that speaks to the kind of bang-for-the-buck they're getting from their perimeter defenders.

Yes, but actual distribution of those forced turnovers is far more even than the narratives that revolve it would indicate and having great safeties gives the teammates the freedom to go out and generate turnovers,

As is Hakeem actually averaged more stocks in the playoffs than Jordan did. Are you positive Jordan was generating more value as a turnover-forcer than Hakeem was?

2. I do think that contextual shifts in the league over time, which includes who the other contenders are and what their vulnerabilities are, make this a richer topic than just "best thing to do is to build around a shot-blocker at all times".

Sure. but, I think there are a few threads to skip past before we get to "build around 1 v 1 defense" which of course Hakeem is also fantastic at.

There's more to defense that shot-blocking and 1v1, and while I'm a big Olajuwon fan, I think we have to acknowledge that he and his team were on the tail end of things by this point. Maybe he was still a more capable defensive impactor than any perimeter player by this point, but we are talking about a guy known for getting 6 stocks per game in his prime who isn't getting that in his mid-30s.

[/quote]
Okay but Hakeem averaged as many steals in the 96 regular season as when he won the 94 DPOY and then averaged more steals in the ensuing playoffs. In fact his playoff count was the 5th best of his career.

Hakeem had taken a tumble offensively, but I don't think his defense was that different.

[Doctor MJ]

Good stuff, but a lot. Focusing just on the things I feel compelled to respond to:

What's closer to how I feel is that it's not so clear cut that the best defenses will necessarily be led by bigs in eras where the offense is more perimeter-oriented.

Well offense is as perimiter oriented as ever right now and the best playoff defenses of this period have been...

-> The Giannis bucks
-> The Gasol Raptors
-> The Ad Lakers
-> The Draymond Warriors

Note that all these defenses have seen collosal collapses tied to the named player and all these defenses have the guy named leading the lineup stuff when they're doing atg things(notably the bucks collapsed to a little bit better than average in the regular season when lopez/jrue started posting comparable defensive +/- and then went back to all-time great in the playoffs with giannis lineups specifically doing the best)

What would you need to see to consider things clear cut?

I think databall has just made it more obvious that bigs are the leaders here. The change is in the ==type== of big, but all these bigs share alot of similarities with hakeem defensively.

I think the fact that the best defender of the current age, Draymond, imho, is shorter than Scottie Pippen and has smaller hands with less vertical threat than Michael Jordan says a lot about how much weight "type" is carrying carrying here.

But I certainly won't deny that size has advantages to defense. All of these guys are extremely large human beings after all.

Yes it's a team game and can certainly acknowledge that perhaps a big gave more defensive value that year despite being on a less successful defense, but I think should give us pause in consideration of just how extreme the advantage for bigs are on defense, when two defensive-oriented teams can be the best teams all year and reach the finals while not having a single star defensive big among them.

I think it's also helpful to look at the 4 factors here. The rule in general is that bigs are supposed to lower eFG% and raise DRtg%, but it's perimeter players who create the turnovers. So when you see two teams lead the league in DRtg, and they do so with TO% as their main competitive advantage, that speaks to the kind of bang-for-the-buck they're getting from their perimeter defenders.

Yes, but actual distribution of those forced turnovers is far more even than the narratives that revolve it would indicate and having great safeties gives the teammates the freedom to go out and generate turnovers,

As is Hakeem actually averaged more stocks in the playoffs than Jordan did. Are you positive Jordan was generating more value as a turnover-forcer than Hakeem was?

No, I'm not utterly certain.

Sure. but, I think there are a few threads to skip past before we get to "build around 1 v 1 defense" which of course Hakeem is also fantastic at.

There's more to defense that shot-blocking and 1v1, and while I'm a big Olajuwon fan, I think we have to acknowledge that he and his team were on the tail end of things by this point. Maybe he was still a more capable defensive impactor than any perimeter player by this point, but we are talking about a guy known for getting 6 stocks per game in his prime who isn't getting that in his mid-30s.

[/quote]
Okay but Hakeem averaged as many steals in the 96 regular season as when he won the 94 DPOY and then averaged more steals in the ensuing playoffs. In fact his playoff count was the 5th best of his career.

Hakeem had taken a tumble offensively, but I don't think his defense was that different.[/quote]

I'm not saying you can't believe Olajuwon was as good as he'd always been at that point, but I struggle to justify his candidacy.