Does jordan have defensive impact??

[Grimreaper]

Jordan team drtg never seem to be affected with his loss except 1 season which is the 86 season with a .6 drtg difference.

Does he truly have impact on the defensive end??

[Grimreaper]

I'm aware this topic is more suited for the general board but I'm a new user so I can't post there

[eminence]

Yeah, though not near DPOY level.

[Rishkar]

First off, welcome to the forum! Jordan was a great defender with a ton of athletic talent. He liked to steal hunt (sometimes to the detriment of his team) but he was often athletic enough to recover after a bad attempt. Impact wise, he's not touching any elite defensive bigs (or the absolute upper echelon of guards) but he is certainly providing value on that end of the court.

[Grimreaper]

First off, welcome to the forum! Jordan was a great defender with a ton of athletic talent. He liked to steal hunt (sometimes to the detriment of his team) but he was often athletic enough to recover after a bad attempt. Impact wise, he's not touching any elite defensive bigs (or the absolute upper echelon of guards) but he is certainly providing value on that end of the court.

I don't see any evidence he was inpactful at all he seems a net negative

[70sFan]

Of course one of the best defensive players at his position had no defensive value at all...

[1993Playoffs]

Yes for his position and especially when he was younger,

Don’t think his impact can match some of the best centers, PFs of even SFs though

[OhayoKD]

Jordan team drtg never seem to be affected with his loss except 1 season which is the 86 season with a .6 drtg difference.

Does he truly have impact on the defensive end??

There's a difference between not having much impact(with much being a matter of perspective) and being a negative. Jordan was definitely a positive I think and even the data supports him being a positive to a degree(+0.6 for the 90's and jordan probably should get some credit for the bulls defensive improvement between 86 and 87 though they did trade for defensive pieces).

Guard defense isn't really about cauing big drating shifts(and jordan is at a clear disadvatnage to elite wings and bigs like your lebron's pippens, kareem's russell's ects because of that), but there's a value to

A. being a matchup people would prefer to avoid
B. not being too exploitable(jordan was not impervious, clyde, magic and certain jumpshooters had their way, but for the most part people didn't like dealing with jordan)
C. making game-changing plays in key situations, ect

Jordan isn't a top-tier non big defensively and probably isn't a goat guard(extremely high error-rate, even potentially a liability against the top top matchips(magic, drexler to a degree), but it's hard for me to see him not being a good defensive addition, especially if you consider the position he played. There may be an "absolute value" argument against smaller players in general, but that would hurt everyone besides bigs to some degree.

TLDR:

First off, welcome to the forum! Jordan was a great defender with a ton of athletic talent. He liked to steal hunt (sometimes to the detriment of his team) but he was often athletic enough to recover after a bad attempt. Impact wise, he's not touching any elite defensive bigs (or the absolute upper echelon of guards) but he is certainly providing value on that end of the court.

Yes for his position and especially when he was younger,

Don’t think his impact can match some of the best centers, PFs of even SFs though

[Colbinii]

Yeah, clearly, and he did exceptionally well when paired with someone like Pippen where Jordan's strength as being a disruptor was at full force.

[homecourtloss]

He wasn’t a negative but his reputation doesn’t live up to the impact. Squared’s partial data has him as a slightly positive to slightly negative.

[Djoker]

MJ is one of the best ever defenders at the SG position so the answer is obviously yes although like other perimeter players, he doesn't touch the impact of the elite defensive bigs.

[TheGOATRises007]

This board has really gone down in quality over the years.

[Snake3]

There was a scouting report that said don't pass the ball on the side of the court MJ is on.

So, yeah. He's great at playing the passing lane, probably one of the best ever at that. He had very quick hands, and could go for the steals on the help with the double team. He would gamble a bit too much, but he was a solid defender. You can read articles of his defensive impact too.

"In that series, Detroit averaged just 0.79 points per play with Jordan as the primary defender, and shot just 35%, according to research by ESPN Stats & Information. Jordan relentlessly tracked guards Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars, pickpocketing them in the backcourt or springing out of his low defensive stance with catlike quickness to flood their passing lanes.

"Michael had very quick hands," Rivers says. "And he was very smart in how he used them. The more athletic and dominant you are, the less people give you credit for your intelligence. It's funny, [Larry] Bird and Magic [Johnson], neither of them was a super athlete, so we gave them all this credit for their brains. Well, Michael was just as clever.

"That, combined with his athleticism, made him a suffocating defender. You're bringing the ball up thinking, 'Man, is this guy even going to let me get over half court?' It was unbearable.""

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/29163085/michael-jordan-dominated-nba-defense

You can watch the games to see his impact and his mistakes. He was one of the best defensive guards. He had impact but not impactful as a big.

[HeartBreakKid]

Of course one of the best defensive players at his position had no defensive value at all...

Hm..this reminds me of something you said about Embiid "well, maybe he's just not as good as ____" criticizing his results, which has me thinking


You are saying he is one of the best defenders ever - but is there actual proof? The premise of his question isn't dumb. We do have data to at least see crudely if his teams are better with him defensively on the court, and is there any strong evidence that suggest thats the case?

From what I can recall, not much.

[Franco]

This board has really gone down in quality over the years.

I'm sorry that people don't value guard defense as much as *checks notes* defending the most important part of the court.

Jordan was very good for a guard, as others have pointed out, but his size/position simply don't really allow him to be as impactful as higher-end forwards and middle-of-the-road centers defensively. It's kind of like trying to argue that the greatest midrange shooting big man has as much gravity with his jumpshot as Kyle Korver. There's diminishing returns.

[LukaTheGOAT]

This board has really gone down in quality over the years.

I'm sorry that people don't value guard defense as much as *checks notes* defending the most important part of the court.

Jordan was very good for a guard, as others have pointed out, but his size/position simply don't really allow him to be as impactful as higher-end forwards and middle-of-the-road centers defensively. It's kind of like trying to argue that the greatest midrange shooting big man has as much gravity with his jumpshot as Kyle Korver. There's diminishing returns.

You are arguing against a point that no one in this thread has made.

[70sFan]

Hm..this reminds me of something you said about Embiid "well, maybe he's just not as good as ____" criticizing his results, which has me thinking

Could you elaborate? Cause I don't see any link between my Embiid comment and this topic.

You are saying he is one of the best defenders ever - but is there actual proof?

No, I am saying he's one of the best defenders at guard position, which is something completely different. Jordan is nowhere near the best defenders ever.

The premise of his question isn't dumb. We do have data to at least see crudely if his teams are better with him defensively on the court, and is there any strong evidence that suggest thats the case?

From what I can recall, not much.

Yeah, if your whole analysis ends on looking at on/off numbers (especially from the earlier eras where we have no detailed signals), then I don't think you are doing it right way. We can watch games and conclude that Jordan was a very good defender at his best. Probably overrated by the fact of being Michael Jordan, but he had value as a weakside defender and on passing lanes. There are matchups in which his tendencies could have become problematic, but against most solid teams you won't go like - "yeah, Jordan gives me no difference than someone like Byron Scott on defense".

You don't have to agree with me, but that's my take on that topic.

[HeartBreakKid]

Hm..this reminds me of something you said about Embiid "well, maybe he's just not as good as ____" criticizing his results, which has me thinking

Could you elaborate? Cause I don't see any link between my Embiid comment and this topic.

Someone said something along the lines that he feels Embiid is better than ____ (Larry Bird? I can't recall) and the playoffs haven't reflected that yet.

You replied something along the lines of "maybe he's not as good as Larry Bird".


Couldn't you apply that here? Maybe Michael Jordan does not have any data to support that he was a difference maker on defense because he may not have been much of one.

You said in a sarcastic post that he's only one of the best defensive guards ever. The poster actually did put something that infers that he is not. Do you have something to support your claim?

You are saying he is one of the best defenders ever - but is there actual proof?

No, I am saying he's one of the best defenders at guard position, which is something completely different. Jordan is nowhere near the best defenders ever.[/quote]I made a typo, I meant to say you said he is one of the best defensive guards ever.

Is there evidence to support that?

The premise of his question isn't dumb. We do have data to at least see crudely if his teams are better with him defensively on the court, and is there any strong evidence that suggest thats the case?

Yeah, if your whole analysis ends on looking at on/off numbers (especially from the earlier eras where we have no detailed signals), then I don't think you are doing it right way. We can watch games and conclude that Jordan was a very good defender at his best. Probably overrated by the fact of being Michael Jordan, but he had value as a weakside defender and on passing lanes. There are matchups in which his tendencies could have become problematic, but against most solid teams you won't go like - "yeah, Jordan gives me no difference than someone like Byron Scott on defense".

You don't have to agree with me, but that's my take on that topic.

A lot of guards have value doing things like playing the passing lane. The question is there evidence that Jordan is better at it than other defensive guards?

Why does Jordan get the benefit of the doubt of being one of the best defensive guards?


I wouldn't say that drtg difference is great for measuring his impact here, but that begs a bigger question, what do we have that supports that Jordan is "one of the best defensive guards ever". If someone said he wasn't, what would you really counter with?

[OhayoKD]

Of course one of the best defensive players at his position had no defensive value at all...

Hm..this reminds me of something you said about Embiid "well, maybe he's just not as good as ____" criticizing his results, which has me thinking


You are saying he is one of the best defenders ever - but is there actual proof? The premise of his question isn't dumb. We do have data to at least see crudely if his teams are better with him defensively on the court, and is there any strong evidence that suggest thats the case?

From what I can recall, not much.

The high-end (data) approach for Jordan's defense would probably be just taking the small bits of the game he missed when he was on Chicago's roster at face value. I believe he's a consistent positive there and he has certain years where it looks really good(1993).

If you go with larger samples I guess it depends what you're looking at:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2353834

jordan 88-98
bulls with MJ 490-176 (73.6% win rate)
bulls without MJ 90-64 (58.4% win rate)
net rating with MJ +7.7 (62 win pace level)
net rating without MJ +3.6 (52 win pace level)
+5.1 ortg difference
+1.1 drtg difference
+4 total swing

That being said, I think there are some practical things we can look at bolstering Jordan here even if its not a direct delta:

1. Chicago's best defensive rating with that core pre-phil is 1988(-2.5) when Jordan wins his DPOY
2. When the Bulls lost Jordan's best defensive teammate they're still marginally positive(-0.1) which is as good as they'd been since 78(they were a strong negative every year but 84 oddly enough)
3. The Bulls make a big jump defensively between 86 and 87 when

A. Jordan plays the whole season and
B. they trade for a bunch of defensive specialists
C. The bulls are slightly worse in 86 without presumably a worse defensive version of MJ(they drop by 0.3)
D. Jordan's steal-count increasing generally correlates with the bulls defensive rating getting better(though notably by that graph, a lower steal accumulator like kawhi seems to exert larger impact)

Nothing really justifying putting him in the same convo as the pippen, kawhi's, or lebron's, but that's a different matter than being a negative which I really only think works by roping in not peak defensive years as well.

It is probably a fair question to ask just how early and to what degree Jordan's defensive value drops, paticularly considering some of the tracking we've seen for what is considered "still" all-time guard defense MJ:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=2318125

From what I've seen I'd guess his activity drops significantly around 90 and accelerates during the first three-peat, but my impression is that the finals vs the lakers and the trailblazers, and his matchups with the knicks being the only ones I'd consider "is jordan hurting his team here" realistic.

[HeartBreakKid]

Of course one of the best defensive players at his position had no defensive value at all...

Hm..this reminds me of something you said about Embiid "well, maybe he's just not as good as ____" criticizing his results, which has me thinking


You are saying he is one of the best defenders ever - but is there actual proof? The premise of his question isn't dumb. We do have data to at least see crudely if his teams are better with him defensively on the court, and is there any strong evidence that suggest thats the case?

From what I can recall, not much.

The high-end (data) approach for Jordan's defense would probably be just taking the small bits of the game he missed when he was on Chicago's roster at face value. I believe he's a consistent positive there and he has certain years where it looks really good(1993).

If you go with larger samples I guess it depends what you're looking at:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2353834

jordan 88-98
bulls with MJ 490-176 (73.6% win rate)
bulls without MJ 90-64 (58.4% win rate)
net rating with MJ +7.7 (62 win pace level)
net rating without MJ +3.6 (52 win pace level)
+5.1 ortg difference
+1.1 drtg difference
+4 total swing

That being said, I think there are some practical things we can look at bolstering Jordan here even if its not a direct delta:

1. Chicago's best defensive rating with that core pre-phil is 1988(-2.5) when Jordan wins his DPOY
2. When the Bulls lost Jordan's best defensive teammate they're still marginally positive(-0.1) which is as good as they'd been since 78(they were a strong negative every year but 84 oddly enough)
3. The Bulls make a big jump defensively between 86 and 87 when

A. Jordan plays the whole season and
B. they trade for a bunch of defensive specialists
C. The bulls are slightly worse in 86 without presumably a worse defensive version of MJ(they drop by 0.3)
D. Jordan's steal-count increasing generally correlates with the bulls defensive rating getting better(though notably by that graph, a lower steal accumulator like kawhi seems to exert larger impact)

Nothing really justifying putting him in the same convo as the pippen, kawhi's, or lebron's, but that's a different matter than being a negative which I really only think works by roping in not peak defensive years as well.

It is probably a fair question to ask just how early and to what degree Jordan's defensive value drops, paticularly considering some of the tracking we've seen for what is considered "still" all-time guard defense MJ:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=2318125

From what I've seen I'd guess his activity drops significantly around 90 and accelerates during the first three-peat, but my impression is that the finals vs the lakers and the trailblazers, and his matchups with the knicks being the only ones I'd consider "is jordan hurting his team here" realistic.

I agree, there doesn't seem to be data to support he was a negative. But I'm more interested in determining how he is an all time great defensive guard.