trex_8063 wrote:lebron3-14-3 wrote:trex_8063 wrote:
Ricky Rubio definitely deserves consideration among the PG's. Maybe Chauncey Billups or Rajon Rondo, too???
Also, eminence asked an important question before you move forward: what kind of time-frame are you referring to? Some players have a really good 3-4 year stretch of defense, but if you look at their average defense over their entire careers, it's not so special (Kobe might be a good example of this). So you really should clearly state what kind of time-frame you're referring to.
I would prefer to do a career value ranking
Even that statement requires more specificity: do you mean their average year (over their entire career), or some manner of cumulative [total] career defensive value?
With the former, guys with long careers are hurt in the comparisons (because players's defensive [and overall] capabilities tend to dwindle with age). With the latter, younger players are hurt in the comparisons (for example, have guys like Andre Roberson or Robert Covington even accumulated enough TOTAL career defensive value to be considered against good defensive players who played >10 seasons?).
I might suggest something like the average of their 3-5 best defensive seasons.
I would be more oriented to do it considering the whole career of the player, but without a specific method, I would leave it to the common sense of the members. I think that people understand that a player who played 21 years will have a lowered average defensive years, or that guys that played few years can't have a great total career defensive values. But, as these two criteria have these flaws, considering just the 3-5 best defensive seasons has an even bigger flaw, that is not considering the rest of the career.
I mean, if we did the same ranking for the offensive part of the game, the question would be, how good has he been in his career? And that would mean what impact did he have throughout the years, how long did he play at a certain level etc, we don't consider just his best 8-10 offensive seasons.
I know that the big difference is that level of defense is more variable and it tends to lower in fewer years, but I don't think it's an issue.
Now, I do think that people have different opinions about what it means to play valuable defense, but I don't think people have very diverse opinions about what you said. If we have two players that played 11 and 17 seasons, both played a 90/100 defense for their first 11 years (pretending you can give a number to one player's defense), the first one retired while the second one continued to play a 75/100 defense for other 6 years, it would be obvious that the second one would be ranked higher than the first one, even if his average season would be lowered by those 6 seasons.
Now, if we have a player that has played 4 elite defensive seasons but was average for other 11 years it depends on what somebody thinks, I don't think there's someone that says No I consider just those 4 seasons and he's the 3rd best defender in his position because of that, but It's not about the criteria we choose to use in this project, I think that there are already estabilished things in the way we rank things in basketball.
So, If I had to give an answer I would say: I'm more oriented to a criteria that considers the entire career of the player, but not specifically a total career value or an average year, but also peaks and primes are important, exactly like it is when we rank players careers in general.
