Hooplah wrote:trex_8063 wrote:Hooplah wrote:
An certain 12-time All-Defensive selection didn't even get an honorable mention at SG. What does that tell you about the voters? Thabo Sefolosha though.
It tells me that voters didn't base their picks on the number of All-D selections a guy has??
Might have something to do that certain 12-time All-Defensive team guy being a neutral to negative defensive contributor for at least 5-6 of those 12 All-D seasons.
And heck, my 9-year-old can easily count up All-D selections and create a list based on that (and the "result" likely would have pleased many). Most voters' methodologies were a little more substantive [and worthwhile] though.....like looking at
actual defensive impact indicators and scouting players on non-box factors and consistency. To each his own, though. Never gonna please everyone.
You sure the LeBron voters didn't factor in his all-defensive teams? Let's not pretend like there's some intensive analysis behind LeBron's ranking. Having read through both threads, I'd cite Dr. Positivity's posts among others as to where I'm coming from on LeBron vs. Kobe.
I don’t know…..I scanned the #3 SF thread [where Lebron was voted in], and the FIRST mention of media-awarded honors/accolades of any kind is in
post #18; then I don’t see anything of that sort mentioned again until post #27, and then only mentioned by one other poster after that.
I’m sure accolades works its way into the thinking of some, but not to the point where one declares without reservation that a player with only 1-2 All-D honors cannot be better [or even close to??] a player with 10+ such honors. I guess because it boils down to whether or not said honors were actually earned. Kobe’s largely were not imo [and I’ll attempt to substantiate that opinion some below].
There’s arguably no better example in NBA history than Kobe’s numerous All-D honors to illustrate how misleading honors can be. Shawn Marion’s LACK of All-D honors is the only other potential that comes to mind.
One can ask why then was he given these honors if they weren’t strictly earned. I can’t say for certain, though I theorize a few things:
1) Kobe is an extremely high-profile and popular player. Popular players (and “stars”, in general) tend to get more attention/credit even for things like defense than lesser-known role players.
2) People tend to mentally carry forward early impressions of players long after the players have stopped matching that impression. I.e. they get credit in the present for what they
used to do. A good example can be seen in that same #3 SF thread: a poster states that Kawhi was the best defensive player in the league “by far” in ‘17. But to anyone with a discerning eye who was watching that year it was quite clear that Kawhi----once shouldering the increased superstar usage on offense----was no longer giving the consistent effort defensively that had garnered him earlier praise (including DPOY awards). This trend has continued to this current season (he’s now on one of my two favorite teams, so I’ve watched a fair bit of him this year): his defensive effort has been downright lackadaisical at times. Sure, he can still be a great defender on a given possession if he’s dialed in (just as Kobe was capable when he was dialed in); but he’s NOT dialed in on a consistent basis. This ties right in to the third reason I think Kobe continued to garner honors…..
3) The people doing the voting [more on them below] can mentally fixate on those sporadic possessions where Kobe [or Kawhi, or whoever] were dialed in, but conveniently ignore or otherwise fail to notice all the other possessions where he maybe didn’t move his feet because he was too tired, or gets burned off-ball because he’s ball watching, or isn’t closing on a shooter too aggressively, or when he’s slow or absent on the help-D rotation, etc. Consequently they may be voting based on what the player is capable of doing when he feels like it, but NOT what the player is actually doing
the majority of the time.
4) I also suspect that casual fans [which often this is all the media persons doing the voting are, more on this below] simply don’t recognize the more subtle and utterly non-sexy aspects of team defense. But they might recognize a good 1-on-1 on-ball isolation stop (one of the things Kobe was usually good at). So, even though that’s a relatively small piece of overall defensive performance, it’s one of the few things they actually pick up on (and thus may have had a somewhat inflated sense of Kobe’s defensive presence).
And though some people will try to sell the media personalities who do the voting as “expert basketball analysts”, basketball analysis is not really their job. Their job is to sell print; their job is entertainment. They are not in the business of delving deep into analysis and talent scouting to have that kind of discussion with the true students of the game [like team execs or….us, perhaps]. There are too few of us for the large media platforms to give a hoot about. Their job is to construct entertaining or engaging narratives that appeal to the masses of impressionable casual fans, and thus make money.
They are, usually, little more than casual fans themselves; they just happen to have a platform to reach a lot of people. And as a “reward” of sorts, they’re allowed in their small way to write NBA history. But simply because these people say Player A was better than Player B does NOT make it so.
And in the modern era at least, we have A LOT of tools at our disposal for evaluating defense and defensive impact, as well as the ability to find and watch nearly any game we’d care to see.
For older players, where means of evaluating impact [including video for scouting purpose] are more scarce, All-D honors perhaps can carry more weight (any port in a storm). But in the modern era we have any number of better means of evaluating defensive impact.
I mean for example, Kobe was awarded All-Defensive
1st Team in ‘06. That
should [to anyone who was watching the NBA consistently that year] elicit an “ayfkm?!?” type of reaction. Kobe was a -1.2 DRAPM; the Lakers’ DRtg was 6.4 LOWER [that is: better] with him
off the court, despite the fact that Kobe had a fantastically awesome turnover economy that year (which theoretically could “falsely” lower the team’s DRtg when he’s on court by limiting transition opportunities for the opponent). And again, to anyone watching it wasn’t difficult to see why: his effort and attention on defense was sorely lacking much of the time that year.
To better illustrate Kobe’s legitimacy [or lack thereof] as an all-time elite defensive guard, I’ll share the DVOR (Defensive Value Over Replacement) data I was harvesting at the time of this project. I utilized DRAPM where possible (see notation below) and worked with the assumption that, in a vacuum (or with all things being equal), a player would be replaced by a “replacement-level” player when he sat.
I thought -1.5 RAPM is fair overall representation of a replacement-level player, and assumed that roughly half of that is coming on the defensive end (i.e. -0.75 DRAPM assumed for replacement level). So for each year of a player's career, I took the difference from replacement-level and multiplied by the minutes played (shutupandjam’s Estimated Impact [EI] defensive split used as proxy for ‘93 and earlier, combination of EI and rs APM used to estimate DRAPM split for ‘94-’96).
Below are the results.....
CAREER (Cumulative) Defensive Value Above Replacement (DVOR)Thabo Sefolosha - 47,383.8
Danny Green - 36,011.6
Stacey Augmon - 35,545.3
Doug Christie - 31,770.4
Jimmy Butler - 30,445.8
Dwyane Wade - 28,323.8
Joe Dumars - 22,583.0
*Don Chaney (*'76 not included)- 21,792.2
Andre Roberson - 19,433.8
Kobe Bryant - 13,224.5^^^^Note this is
cumulative; so Kobe’s immensely long career should be to his advantage vs much of the rest of the field (as long as his DRAPM is -0.74 or higher). And yet he still came out lowest of this group [by a somewhat large margin]. Broken down into average DVOR per season for their respective careers…..
AVERAGE Defensive Value Above Replacement (per season)Jimmy Butler - 4,349.4
Danny Green - 4,001.3
Thabo Sefolosha - 3,948.6
Andre Roberson - 3,886.8
Doug Christie - 2,647.5
Stacey Augmon - 2,369.7
Don Chaney - 1,981.1
Dwyane Wade - 1,888.3
Joe Dumars - 1,613.1
Kobe Bryant - 661.2^^^^^Here he rates out downright abysmal. But in such a long career, maybe it’s a mere few or a handful of poor defensive seasons that are dragging this down. So let’s isolate on the BEST defensive years…...
AVERAGE DVOR per season in Best 5 seasonsDanny Green - 6,303.7
Doug Christie - 6,217.4
Thabo Sefolosha - 6,177.2
Jimmy Butler - 5,722.0
Dwyane Wade - 4,664.2
Jaren Jackson, Sr - 4,426.7
Kobe Bryant - 4,137.7Stacey Augmon - 4,028.5
Andre Roberson - 3,886.8
Don Chaney - 3,442.2
Joe Dumars - 3,063.5
^^^^Bear in mind that multiplying by minutes played is a component of any DVOR sample; so again Kobe’s minutes (often near 40 mpg in his best seasons) should be to his advantage vs some of these guys whose minutes are relatively limited due to their lacking offensive acumen. Kobe still rates out somewhat mediocre among this group, even if isolating on his best five seasons. We can also look at peak…..
Best Single Year Defensive Value Above ReplacementThabo Sefolosha ('13) - 11,479.35
Doug Christie ('03) - 11,246.5
Danny Green ('16) - 7,918.1
Stacey Augmon ('94) - 7,085.6
Jimmy Butler ('18) - 6,643.5
Dwyane Wade ('06) - 6,507.0
Kobe Bryant ('10) - 5,811.75Andre Roberson ('17) - 5,702.4
Don Chaney ('73) - 4,354.0
Joe Dumars ('91) - 3,807.5
^^^Again, he’s not super-competitive among this group, much nearer to the bottom than the top, and basically only half the defensive value (by this measure) as top seasons of Thabo or Christie.
I didn’t have Eddie Jones’ DVOR data harvested, but he’d rank very well in this group too (for reference, I did cite some DRAPM data for him in the #6 SG thread).
We can look to more box-based [or at least partially box-based] defensive metrics (which I find of limited value, especially for perimeter players), but it doesn’t particularly help Kobe’s candidacy. I mean, he DOES rank very strongly in cumulative DWS because of his long mostly durable (and high-minute) career; even bad defenders typically accrue at least a small amount of DWS.
But then Kobe is a -0.5 rDRTG for his career. For comparison, Thabo was a -4.0 rDRTG, Danny Green a -4.8 rDRTG, Doug Christie a -1.4 rDRTG, Eddie Jones a -2.3 rDRTG, Dwyane Wade a -2.6 rDRTG (and Lebron, for that matter [though obv not a SG], a -3.6 rDRTG). So Kobe would be at the bottom in this category.
Kobe’s a career -0.6 DBPM…..Thabo was a +2.2, Green +2.1, Christie +1.1, Wade +1.0, Jones +1.0. So again Kobe is last [by handy margin].
Kobe’s PIPM (Player Impact Plus/Minus) defensive split for his career is -0.66. Green’s is +2.01, Thabo +1.57, Jones +1.23, Iguodala’s +1.05, Christie’s +0.54, DWade’s was +0.40. So again, Kobe a somewhat distant last place.
Outside of DWS (which again, even poor defenders accumulate), the ONLY thing Kobe in which Kobe would rank highly is accolades. But many of us are simply of the belief that he didn’t really earn most of those, so they’re sort of whatever.
You mentioned Lebron and a potential link to his All-D honors and such; but I’ll refer you to post #2 in the #9 SF thread, where I provided a whole bunch of DVOR splits, as well as DRAPM, DWS, DBPM, and honors/accolades data.
I tend to think Lebron went a little high at #3; but even removing all consideration of honors, it’s plain to see he still looks like a strong top 5-6 candidate. Kobe, otoh, doesn’t look remotely like a top-10 candidate among the SG’s, despite that huge tally of dubious All-D honors.