Is Kevin Garnett a defensive anchor?

[Rapcity_11]

Yes, you're correct. In 04/05 KG had a down year in terms of on/off impact.

Like I already indicated 03/04 KG is +13.0 on offense and -6.5 on defense and Cassell is +9.7 on offense and -1.7 on defense. Nice numbers for Cassell but nowhere near KG.

Of course benches/rotations have ton to do with on/off numbers. It's still a good way to measure impact.

Obviously you and I largely agree, but I want to take issue with the bolded phrasing.

In '04-05, KG had a down year in terms of +/- numbers, but the issue with one year there's a good amount of noise in the numbers. Plus, the APM numbers from 82games & Engelmann still are saying he's quite good if not as good as in other years.

Good point.

Do you have any links you can give me for APM numbers? Other than 82 games, Ilardi and basketball value.

[Doctor MJ]

But the offense was better in games KG missed than the games he played. I take more stock in those numbers because off/on numbers have small sample sizes with lots of bench players playing. In the games he missed, the sample is pretty large and its more relevant because it includes a lot of time with starters.

Well, keep in mind that if you're someone looking seriously at +/- numbers, you're using "adjusted" stuff that factors in who you were playing with and against, and looking at sample sizes larger than one season in addition to one season. Unless you're doing the same with you games played/not played comparison there are a ton of nuances you're missing.

Additionally, as I mentioned above, there's the "stop coasting because the star is out" phenomenon, so it's really not clear cut that entirely missed games are a more accurate representation of what a team can do without a player.

But I do get where you're coming from. I look at the data you like to, and factor that in along with everything else.

[G35]

With a defensive anchor you don't have to have great defensive players or gameplan. The anchor will erase any mistakes with his intimidation and presence.....

By that definition defensive anchors no longer exist. Not saying someone like Dwight Howard isn't great, but this notion that he could turn any defensive lineup into an elite defense is completely without basis. The +/- stats tell us players on that level don't exist, as does common sense: In a league where it's trivial to find players who can bury an open 3, defense gets nowhere without it's components being smart about working together.

And of course, who is the best in the league at being a defensive general telling his teammates where to go while covering the most ground himself? Garnett.

Howard has not played with any great defensive players that I can think of and they have tried to surround him with a lot of three point shooters. Turkgolu, Vince, Jason Richardson, Rashard Lewis, Gilbert Arenas, Pietrus, Jameer Nelson, Brandon Bass.

His coaches have been Brian Hill and Stan Van Gundy.

Orlando's defensive ratings since 2006/07:

06/07 6th
07/08 6th
08/09 1st
09/10 3rd
10/11 3rd

Do you really think that KG could have lead the Magic to those types of Dr-ratings with the teammates Dwight has had?....

[pancakes3]

athleticism grows by the bushel but basketball players are hard to find. that's why defense is easy to come by and offense harder. you're born with athleticism. you have to work on an offensive skill. of course this isn't to say that any team can be good at defense if they tried. somebody has to come in last. i'm just saying losing out on draft picks doesn't make this so. elite defenses all have a hoss mucking up the middle - which is why a crap team like Milwaukee can manage to be in the top 2 in defense for the past 2 years.

all i'm asking, as the OP, is why couldn't KG do that in minnesota? i'm just trying to say that KG is a very good defensive player, a very impactful player, but maybe isn't quite as good at team defense as many would believe.

as for coaching? forget the forgotten years of '05-'07. even in the salad days of '01-03 the minny defense was mediocre at best (15-ish in the league). flip's lastest coaching stint with my beloved wizards took us to an 18th finish before the team was gutted last season and we dropped to 24th (which was still higher than our offensive ranking). the point is, a coach can only set priorities. flip sets an offensive priority. it's up to the players to execute and KG in minny merely executed rather than elevate (imo).

[ahonui06]

With a defensive anchor you don't have to have great defensive players or gameplan. The anchor will erase any mistakes with his intimidation and presence.....

By that definition defensive anchors no longer exist. Not saying someone like Dwight Howard isn't great, but this notion that he could turn any defensive lineup into an elite defense is completely without basis. The +/- stats tell us players on that level don't exist, as does common sense: In a league where it's trivial to find players who can bury an open 3, defense gets nowhere without it's components being smart about working together.

And of course, who is the best in the league at being a defensive general telling his teammates where to go while covering the most ground himself? Garnett.

Howard has not played with any great defensive players that I can think of and they have tried to surround him with a lot of three point shooters. Turkgolu, Vince, Jason Richardson, Rashard Lewis, Gilbert Arenas, Pietrus, Jameer Nelson, Brandon Bass.

His coaches have been Brian Hill and Stan Van Gundy.

Orlando's defensive ratings since 2006/07:

06/07 6th
07/08 6th
08/09 1st
09/10 3rd
10/11 3rd

Do you really think that KG could have lead the Magic to those types of Dr-ratings with the teammates Dwight has had?....

This exactly. Defensive anchors enable their team to have solid defense because they are protecting the paint/rim. Even with very suspect defensive players, Dwight Howard has managed to propel Orlando to being a top defensive team.

[Rapcity_11]

I'll say this for the millionth time, when Dwight misses time due to injuries or is on the bench, the Magic Drtg gets worse but not by crazy amounts. About 1-3.5 pts worse. The fallacy that the Magic are screwed without Howard needs to end. They still play more than adequate defense with Dwight off the court.

[ahonui06]

I'll say this for the millionth time, when Dwight misses time due to injuries or is on the bench, the Magic Drtg gets worse but not by crazy amounts. About 1-3.5 pts worse. The fallacy that the Magic are screwed without Howard needs to end. They still play more than adequate defense with Dwight off the court.

Dwight Howard hasn't missed significant time. When he did they had Marcin Gortat backing him up, who is a serviceable C. With Gortat now gone, it will be interesting to see how poorly the Magic defense performs when Howard is out with an injury.

[pancakes3]

hasn't missed significant time is an understatement. he's missed 5 games in 7 years.

[Doctor MJ]

Howard has not played with any great defensive players that I can think of and they have tried to surround him with a lot of three point shooters. Turkgolu, Vince, Jason Richardson, Rashard Lewis, Gilbert Arenas, Pietrus, Jameer Nelson, Brandon Bass.

His coaches have been Brian Hill and Stan Van Gundy.

Orlando's defensive ratings since 2006/07:

06/07 6th
07/08 6th
08/09 1st
09/10 3rd
10/11 3rd

Do you really think that KG could have lead the Magic to those types of Dr-ratings with the teammates Dwight has had?....

I get where you come from. You see a bunch of guys on both player's teams with meh defensive reputations, and think "How can the difference between them really be that huge?"

Where am I coming from? Start with a realistic assessment of how much impact players have in the NBA.

1) What's the gap between the very best teams and the very worst teams in the NBA? Average difference over the last 3 years:

Offense: 12.3 (points per 100 possessions)
Defense: 11.9

That includes the dream teams and the tankers. One would certainly think that the impact of any one player was only a fraction of that, right? What would you guess?

2) What's the best indicator we have of the order of magnitude of stars? Gotta be APM leaderboards. To be clear there is a weakness with using APM to judge a particular player because of lack of sample size which leads to relatively high variance. But using a leaderboard from a multi-year sample basically fixes all of that and gives us a ballpark for star impact.

So what do we see? Well, Ilardi's 6 year sample from '03-04 to '08-09 yields these numbers for the Top 10 big minute players:

Offense: Top 10 average: +6.82. Std Dev: +1.14.
Defense: Top 10 average: +5.11. Std Dev: +1.04.

So about half the team number, which seems utterly reasonable to me. Again, if the offense can pass the ball to an open man, your defense is screwed. One defender cannot keep that from happening, he needs help. All of this seems to me to be about the only rational way to go about estimating this stuff, and I feel a lot more comfortable with that that looking at sets of teammates and saying "Eh, looks about the same."

[G35]

I'll say this for the millionth time, when Dwight misses time due to injuries or is on the bench, the Magic Drtg gets worse but not by crazy amounts. About 1-3.5 pts worse. The fallacy that the Magic are screwed without Howard needs to end. They still play more than adequate defense with Dwight off the court.

hasn't missed significant time is an understatement. he's missed 5 games in 7 years.

[Rapcity_11]

I'll say this for the millionth time, when Dwight misses time due to injuries or is on the bench, the Magic Drtg gets worse but not by crazy amounts. About 1-3.5 pts worse. The fallacy that the Magic are screwed without Howard needs to end. They still play more than adequate defense with Dwight off the court.

Dwight Howard hasn't missed significant time. When he did they had Marcin Gortat backing him up, who is a serviceable C. With Gortat now gone, it will be interesting to see how poorly the Magic defense performs when Howard is out with an injury.

Dwight sat on the bench for 1031 minutes last year. 75% of those minutes were without Gortat backing him up.

The defense was 3 pts/100 worse with him on the bench.

[ahonui06]

I'll say this for the millionth time, when Dwight misses time due to injuries or is on the bench, the Magic Drtg gets worse but not by crazy amounts. About 1-3.5 pts worse. The fallacy that the Magic are screwed without Howard needs to end. They still play more than adequate defense with Dwight off the court.

Dwight Howard hasn't missed significant time. When he did they had Marcin Gortat backing him up, who is a serviceable C. With Gortat now gone, it will be interesting to see how poorly the Magic defense performs when Howard is out with an injury.

Dwight sat on the bench for 1031 minutes last year. 75% of those minutes were without Gortat backing him up.

The defense was 3 pts/100 worse with him on the bench.

Sitting on the bench and missing games due to injury are completely different things.

I would be very surprised if the Magic were anywhere near where they are defensively with Dwight Howard out of the lineup. Magic would easily be one of the worst defensive teams without him. They have no one that can play defense on that team except maybe Brandon Bass, but he is undersized.

[Rapcity_11]

Dwight sat on the bench for 1031 minutes last year. 75% of those minutes were without Gortat backing him up.

The defense was 3 pts/100 worse with him on the bench.

Sitting on the bench and missing games due to injury are completely different things.

I would be very surprised if the Magic were anywhere near where they are defensively with Dwight Howard out of the lineup. Magic would easily be one of the worst defensive teams without him. They have no one that can play defense on that team except maybe Brandon Bass, but he is undersized.

How are they completely different? In both situations Howard isn't on the court.

We're talking about 1000+ minutes last year in which Dwight sat on the bench. They were only 3pts/100 worse.

[pancakes3]

because starters play at the beginning and end of halves while bench players play in the middle chunks of the 2nd and 3rd quarters. every team. every single team.

[Wone]

Yes he is. He is one of the geratest defenders of all time how could he not be an anchor? Just because he's not as good an anchor as Duncan or Hakeem doesn't mean he's not an anchor at all.

[chefy]

yes but not full time. garnet spends most of his time in the high post, hes a high post/roamer and sometimes perimeter defender. and this is because in his early years he was a skinny sf. so yea his game was forged kind of similar to an sf, offensively and defensively.

[LakerLegend]

He anchored one of the best defenses in NBA History. What the heck kind of question is this.

[ElGee]

There's a lot more to it than just Garnett joining the Celtics. For starters, Pierce missed half the prior season, and the only other guys that were somewhat steady for the Celtics were Gerald Green, Al Jeff, and Delonte West. Kendrick Perkins was only get around 22 MPG, so while he was solid defender he wasn't getting the minutes to have enough of an impact -- and let's face it, when you're FC partner is Al Jeff then you're in bad shape.

Rondo came in and was already a decent defender in his first season. He's quick and while not a great man defender it doesn't matter when you have KG and Perkins backing you up. Ray Allen has always been a solid defender, and when you put all of that together in addition to the motivation those 3 guys had upon coming together, well, they were pretty fantastic.

Oh, and they hired a guy named Tom Thibodeau that off-season. I think he had a little something to do with that improvement as well..

The thing is, because of Garnett's injuries in the past 4 years we can test exactly how the Celtics have played with and without him with a huge sample size each way. We also have a huge sample size with the starting unit without Perkins. I spent some time looking through 82games.com's 5-man units and this is what it told me about how the Rondo/Allen/Pierce units have played with every combination of big man the Celtics have had:

Garnett and Perkins: 112.4 points/100 possessions, 97.3 points allowed/100 poss
Garnett w/o Perkins: 111.9 points/100 possessions, 99.3 points allowed/100 poss
Perkins w/o Garnett: 109.5 points/100 possessions, 112.1 points allowed/100 poss

Now, let me be clear. Since Garnett arrived in 2007, the Celtics' main starting group (Rondo, Ray Allen, Pierce, and Perkins) in a Tom Thibideaux defense have given up 112.1 points/100 possessions when any other player besides Garnett was the 5th player on the floor with them. Just for clarity, the worst defense in the NBA this year gave up 112.7 points/100 possessions. And again, we're talking huge sample sizes here, from well over 200 games that Garnett has played in and 60 that he hasn't over the past 4 years. Conversely, with Garnett in the the line-up (with or without Perkins) the starting unit has given up 13 - 15 fewer points per 100 possessions.

How is that possible if Garnett is riding their coattails to the elite Celtics defenses of the past 4 years?

And again, let me be clear. I'm not saying that the other 4 players are bad defenders, or that they don't also play a role in the Celtics' defensive results. They're not, and they do. But the thing is, individually, the other 4 Celtics have some things that make them effective defenders but also things that make them LIMITED defensive players. By themselves, they can't play stifling team defense even in an excellent Thibideau scheme, because alone they aren't enough. What they need is the one defensive player to build the whole thing around...the guy who is able to erase their mistakes, to help them to recover when their man beats them, and to make sure that they are in the right places at all times.

In short, to be successful on defense, the other Celtics need a defensive anchor.

In all of the conversations I've had on the subject, I've never had ONE person able to explain the above facts to me without Garnett being the anchor. Usually, at this point either the thread dies or the argument is taken in another direction. When Garnett's around, the Celtics team defense is elite. When he's not, the defense falls off a cliff. You can swap out the 2nd best defender, no problem. Swap out Garnett, and the main unit stinks on defense. I mean seriously...what is the counter-argument here? Four years later, how can we still be having new posts about whether or not Garnett is a defensive anchor?

Are you sure those numbers are correct? 82games has Boston w/out KG as:
2008 102.2 DRtg
2009 106.6 DRtg
2010 107.9 DRtg
2011 105.1 DRtg

I don't ses how your numbers can be correct...

[Rerisen]

I would say depends on opponent. If you are playing Shaq, Duncan, then no. If you are playing a team that runs PnR to death, then yes, perhaps moreso than a defensive center, he could be an anchor.

However, he's missing the intimidation and blocking of what you want in your ideal defensive anchor.

To illustrate a bit of difference between KG and a center dominant anchor, if you remove Perkins off the Celts and replace him with Eddy Curry, Bargnani, or some defensive milquetoast, you are going to see a noticeable difference in your defensive integrity.

But if you put such a player (think Boozer) alongside a David Robinson, Dwight Howard, Mutombo, chances are you can still build a great defense fairly easily with some decent help on the perimeter.

In an interesting interview shortly after the Perkins trade, Scalabrine said there was noticeable optimism in the Bulls locker room, and around the league from other contenders, that teams would no longer have to deal with Perkins in the middle when facing the Celtics in the upcoming playoffs. This really speaks to KG needing a symbiotic big to help him out much more than a traditional center anchor would rely on another position.

[G35]

Dwight sat on the bench for 1031 minutes last year. 75% of those minutes were without Gortat backing him up.

The defense was 3 pts/100 worse with him on the bench.

Sitting on the bench and missing games due to injury are completely different things.

I would be very surprised if the Magic were anywhere near where they are defensively with Dwight Howard out of the lineup. Magic would easily be one of the worst defensive teams without him. They have no one that can play defense on that team except maybe Brandon Bass, but he is undersized.

How are they completely different? In both situations Howard isn't on the court.

We're talking about 1000+ minutes last year in which Dwight sat on the bench. They were only 3pts/100 worse.

You act like 3 points is nothing. 3 points a game is a significant number. Orlando is 4th in the league at points allowed at 93.7 ppg. Three points more a game would make them the 11th ranked team. They would be just ahead of Charlotte who were the 11th ranked team. Not insignificant as you make it seem.

Also the league average is 99.6 ppg which the Magic are ahead by nearly 6 full points. Looking at Orlandos roster:


Blocks:

Dwight 186
Bass 52
Anderson 38

Steals

Dwight 107
Nelson 75
Richardson 66

Rebounds

Dwight 1098
Bass 424
Anderson 355