penbeast0 wrote:Looking at Kirilenko, then Kawhi, but willing to be convinced . . . . so won't vote yet.
OK, well I'll take a moment to try and convince of the merits of Luol Deng. As iggymcfrack and Dr Positivity both stated, he appears to be the clear numbers pick (I'll reference the categories I've listed in my above post for some of the following)....
There are several eligible candidates who have clearly outdone him in defensive honors, but I think most of us agree this is likely the most unreliable of the "measures" we have at our disposal (we did, after all, just vote Shawn Marion in at #8, and he had precisely ZERO All-D honors to his credit; and you were one of his supporters if I'm not mistaken). I've only included All-D honors above for the sake of completeness.
He's also behind several available candidates in DPOY shares, though these are likely only marginally more reliable [if at all??] than All-D honors. And to be fair, Kawhi is the only eligible candidate who is ahead of him by a terribly significant margin.
Several are ahead of him in DBPM; well, it is a box-derived metric, and he doesn't get a huge number of steals/blocks. In the other box-derived defensive measure, he's second only to Tom Sanders among the remaining eligible candidates.
Then we get to the impact measures (except for pre-'94 seasons, as noted previously still have to rely on a box-derived measure for those), where I've broken it down to include measures of single-season peak, full-careers, and best 5-year primes......notable that Luol Deng rates best among ALL remaining eligible candidates in ALL of those categories.
Deng is long (6'8" listed on DraftExpress and nbadraft.net [not certain if those are his 19-yrs-old draft measures], 6'9" on bbref), with a 7'0.25" wingspan. I don't think I need to elaborate on how that kind of length is useful defensively. Despite other athletic attributes being average-ish by NBA standards, his lateral quickness is actually pretty good (this observation seconded on DraftExpress ["solid" being the word they used]), and he'd frequently draw the difficult defensive assignment among the SG/SF (or sporadically PF) positions.
Has averaged 1.5 steals/0.7 blocks/6.7 DRebs per 100 for his career, though this kind of stuff is not fully representative of where his defensive value comes from. Timely rotations on team defense, shot contesting (without blocking), and general man containment is more his jam.......all this while usually playing MASSIVE minutes (due to his wicked motor) and having offensive responsibilities (compared to someone like Bruce Bowen, for example). To back up the semantic choice of "massive": from '10-'13 (that's FOUR consecutive seasons) he averaged 38.8 mpg; he has SEVEN other seasons OUTSIDE OF that span where he averaged >32 mpg.
What that means is that he's exerting his positive influence on defense more frequently per game than most of his competition.
I'll also once again bring up the '11 Bulls.......
There were certainly several good defensive players [aside from Deng] on that team, such as Joakim Noah, Ronnie Brewer, Taj Gibson, Kurt Thomas, and Keith Bogans. However, I'll point out a few things with them:
NOAH: missed 34 games that season
BREWER: was only a 22.0 mpg player.
GIBSON: 21.8 mpg player.
THOMAS: Although his career was primarily based upon being solid defensively, he was never a true defensive anchor [imo]. And at any rate, he was 38 years old this season (well past his prime), was playing just 22.7 mpg, AND missed 30 games that season to boot.
BOGANS: just a 17.8 mpg player.
I'd also note that the guy who was a close 2nd [behind Deng] in total minutes was Derrick Rose (an average defender), and 3rd in total minutes was Carlos Boozer (a poor defender).
The '11 Chicago Bulls nonetheless a -7.0 rDRTG, tied for the 16th-best team defense in the history of the NBA......
*ahead of ALL Jordan/Pippen/(Grant/Rodman) anchored Bulls defenses
**ahead of ALL Eaton/Stockton/Malone anchored Jazz defenses
***ahead of ALL Moncrief/Pressey/Lister anchored Bucks defenses
****ahead of ALL Hayes/Unseld Bullets defenses or Frazier/Reed anchored Knick defenses
*****ahead of all but five of the Russell Celtic teams
This is the season Deng posted a career-best +3.9 DRAPM (while playing 39.1 mpg and missing not a single game); so he was arguably the biggest piece of this all-time elite defense. He was a also a key piece in THREE OTHER top 25 [of
all-time] team defenses.
By way of comparison to this '11 Bulls team, I'm going to highlight the '04 Jazz team headed by Andrei Kirilenko (because this was a squad that was brought up in AK's support specifically within the context of this defense project). I don't want to blatantly take away from Kirilenko (and Sloan), given how they overachieved that season, but I must point out that he had a decent defensive center in Greg Ostertag (27.6 mpg) and a decent defensive SG in Raja Bell (24.6 mpg), both of whom were healthy that year........The '04 Jazz posted a +0.4 rDRTG.
I'll stop there. He's not the only good candidate here, but I do think Deng is the best candidate left.
"Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience." -George Carlin
"The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it." -Edward Rutherfurd
