Dutchball97 wrote:I've noticed a tendency for overcorrections on RealGM. Media underrates defense? Well suddenly everything here is about defense. The notion of a 50-50 split in offense and defense in terms of importance has always been a pretty wild take to me in a game where teams score 100s of points and great defense will still be scored on frequently. Or how high volume scoring wings with average efficiency get dismissed for being empty calorie players because the media likes them too much.
The most egregious case of this I still think is big men. I'm not sure if it's people growing up watching the game in earlier eras where big men were all that mattered or if it is another overcorrection for "the death of the big men" narrative but it doesn't make sense to me. We know by now Frazier was more important to the Knicks than Reed for example but I still see a lot of centers getting praise just for being centers. The idea that big man defense is infinitely more valuable than anyone else on the court just sounds so outdated at this point.
I mean the media certainly is not overrating defense, that's pretty safe to say.
Well, okay, you don't think defense is as important as offense. That kind of explains your take though. Obviously others think more highly of defense, so why are you so perplexed? It would seem logical then that if people think Robinson is a better defender than Leonard, and that defense is important that Robinson might be the better player. That doesn't sound like some contradiction.
Big men are more important than smaller players on defense generally speaking. Many people cannot make the NBA because they're too small to play defense. Center's impact primarily comes from defense not offense - point guards impact generally comes from offense not defense, as a rule of thumb that is pretty damn hard to debate. For every outlier you find you could find 10x more that would fit that narrative.
Frazier was more important on the Knicks because he was also their best offensive player in addition to his defense, and it's debatable if he was better than Reed anyway. Even if Frazier was the best defender on his team that wouldn't prove anything really other than he is an outlier for his position. That wouldn't make Frazier the best defender in the entire league either, which he wasn't.
It seems like instead of analyzing defense you're making it some type of positional racism. David Robinson is a better defender than Kawhi Leonard, not because he is a center, but because...he's probably just a better defender than Kawhi Leonard. You seem to think there is no separation in elite defenders defense, and your post is even leading toward that defense is somewhat neglect-able as long as they hit the check box of "they're good at defense".
David Robinson has a much larger sample size of anchoring elite defenses for multiple seasons, has generally played defense on a more consistent level, the few seasons we have of his impact data shows he is elite despite not being in his prime most of those seasons, he beats Kawhi Leonard badly on rebounds, he beats him bad on blocks, he beats him on minutes and durability which in turn allows him to match Kawhi in steals (despite being a post player).
I mean there are plenty of things going for David Robinson. Do you think Scottie Pippen and David Robinson are equal defenders?
Conceptual speaking just because teams can score over a 100 points doesn't mean that defense is not as valuable as offense. You're ignoring things like pace and that elite defense is relative to the opposition.
