OhayoKD wrote:Special_Puppy wrote:OhayoKD wrote:The Bucks team that saw their defense collapse by 7 points adding Jrue Holiday because Giannis packed it in the regular-season?
Why do you keep using the same team that suggests the opposite of what you're arguing as evidence?
The returning members of the 2020 Bucks supporting cast (as basically everyone not just Giannis) taking a step back defensively in 2021 (at least in the RS) is going to lead to a worse RS defense yeah.
After swapping Holiday for Lillard, they went from the best defense in the league in 2023 to the 16th best defense in 2024 which is what OP was talking about
They got worse by 2.4 points between 2023 and 2024. They got worse by 7 points between 2020 and 2021. They're also currently a -1.1 defense (so barely a 1-point drop) in 2025 with 2024 having much better contextual excuses than 2021. The Bucks are not an example of perimeter defense gaining importance. Hinding behind rank doesn't change that
I’m a little confused as to how you’re seeing the Bucks’ large drop in defensive effectiveness between 2020 and 2021 and saying it indicates the lack of importance of POA defense. Your argument seems to be that Giannis didn’t try as hard on defense in 2021 and that had a massive effect. But what concrete evidence is there that Giannis didn’t try as hard, and, in particular, that his effort decreased while the rest of his team’s defensive effort didn’t? You seem to be creating a roundabout argument based on vibes.
FWIW, Giannis’s DRAPM in 2021 was still really good (15th in the NBA, as per BasketballDatabase; and 5th in the NBA in the two-year 2020-21 to 2021-22 span that includes an even worse year for the Bucks’ defense), while the rest of his team graded out far worse overall in DRAPM in 2021 (compare:
https://thebasketballdatabase.com/2019-20MILRegularSeasonAdvanced.html and
https://thebasketballdatabase.com/2020-21MILRegularSeasonAdvanced.html). And, notably for purposes of your argument, the guys whose RAPM dropped the most between 2020 and 2021 tended to actually be guards and wings, like DiVincenzo and Middleton as well as no longer having Wesley Matthews (who had had a great DRAPM in 2020). Single-year RAPM is definitely noisy, but that does generally suggest that the vast bulk of the difference in terms of defense between the 2020 Bucks and 2021 Bucks was about other players on the Bucks being less impactful, not about Giannis, and more generally doesn’t support your argument against the importance of POA defense. In fact, if anything, this data suggests the opposite.
