RealGM

Background

In the past and amongst more casual fans, there has generally been too little recognition given to the defensive impact of rim-protecting big men compared to other players. Nowadays, largely as a result of people developing impact data that measured defensive impact, there’s a general consensus in relatively sophisticated circles that elite rim-protecting big men have the highest defensive impact. This insight seems obviously right.

However, I think that that line of thinking sometimes leads people here to go overboard, and to simply assume that players with higher rim-protecting load are more defensively impactful than smaller defenders, at least if that player seems pretty good at rim protection. To me, this is definitely too far. Rim protection is definitely impactful defensively, and it has a higher peak in terms of potential defensive impact, but I think it is a big oversimplification to assume a player who protects the rim more than another player and does it pretty well must be the more impactful defender.

The Interesting Case of Alex Caruso’s Defensive Impact

I was sparked into thinking about this recently when looking at Alex Caruso. This is a guard who has been one of the top one or two players in the NBA in terms of defensive impact in recent years. While he definitely does hustle and stay with his man on drives, his defensive impact is not really about rim protection. It is about a combination of great point-of-attack defense, disruption that causes turnovers and makes it difficult for teams to make even basic plays on the perimeter, and having solid enough size that he can’t easily be mismatched. This is enough to make him have defensive impact on par with the best rim-protecting big men!

So I got to thinking about this. What does this mean? My first reaction was to think about how Caruso plays limited minutes and perhaps couldn’t sustain that level of defensive impact in longer minutes. And I do think there’s some truth to that. But I was curious if we see genuinely high defensive impact from guys who derive their defensive impact in a similar way—i.e. guards and wings with decent size who are great point-of-attack defenders and disrupt the other team a lot.

Analyzing the Defensive Impact of Similar Types of Players

In order to look at this, I needed to look for similar players that we would actually have RAPM data for. As a proxy for disruption, I looked at career Steal Percentage (not a perfect proxy, but seemed reasonable). Specifically, I looked at the players in the NBA’s top 150 all time in terms of Steal Percentage. Obviously, a lot of those players can’t be considered because they played entirely or primarily before the play-by-play era. So what I did was look through the list and identify play-by-play era guards and wings who I think also had a particularly good reputation for on-ball defense, and that had some size. I defined play-by-play era players to include ones who played at least 5 years in the play-by-play era, which seemed a natural cutoff, since I’d be analyzing things using five-year RAPM. I also used being at least 6 foot 4 as a rough proxy for having some size.

Here’s the list I ended up with:

Play-by-Play Era Guards/Wing players in the top 150 in career steal %, who are at least 6 foot 4, and had good reputations as on-ball defenders

Andre Iguodala
Thabo Sefolosha
Paul George
Metta World Peace
Kawhi Leonard
Robert Covington
Tony Allen
Jason Kidd
Jimmy Butler
Eddie Jones
Ron Harper
Gerald Wallace
Scottie Pippen
Gary Payton
Jrue Holiday

I note that Alex Caruso has a high enough steal % to make the top 150 list but simply doesn’t have enough minutes played yet to qualify for it.

Now that I’d come up with a list of players, I wanted to look at what we saw from them in terms of DRAPM. Were these guys’ best defensive years able to compete with great rim protectors in terms of defensive impact? Interestingly, the answer was actually a pretty consistent yes! See below for some information on this, using TheBasketballDatabase’s five-year RAPM:

How These Players Fare in DRAPM

- Alex Caruso has been ranked 2nd in DRAPM in three straight five-year periods.
- Andre Iguodala had five-year periods in which he was 2nd, 4th, and 6th in DRAPM.
- Thabo Sefolosha had five-year periods ranked 4th, 8th, and 10th in DRAPM.
- Paul George has had five-year periods ranked 3rd, 4th, 4th, 6th, 9th, and 10th in DRAPM.
- Metta World Peace had five-year periods ranked 3rd, 3rd, 8th, and 10th in DRAPM.
- Kawhi Leonard had five-year periods ranked 4th, 7th, and 9th in DRAPM.
- Robert Covington had five-year periods ranked 2nd, 2nd, 4th, 4th, and 9th in DRAPM. IMO he eventually became more of a PF than a wing when NBA offenses started changing, but these high placements are in time periods where he was all or mostly playing as a wing.
- Tony Allen had five-year periods ranked 3rd, 3rd, 3rd, 3rd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 7th, 7th, and 9th in DRAPM.
- Jason Kidd had five-year time periods ranked 7th, 7th, and 10th in DRAPM.
- Jimmy Butler had a five-year period ranked 6th in DRAPM.
- Eddie Jones had five-year periods ranked 8th and 10th in DRAPM.
- Ron Harper had a five-year period ranked 10th in DRAPM (note: this was really a 4-year period, since it was the first 4 years of the play-by-play era).
- Gerald Wallace had five-year periods ranked 6th, 8th, and 8th in DRAPM.
- Scottie Pippen is one of three guys in the list I identified who does not have any top 10 time period in terms of DRAPM. His best “five-year” period was 50th, but that was really a one-year period since it was 1997 only. And his best after that was 99th. Of course, the play-by-play era only comes near the end of Scottie’s career.
- Gary Payton is another guy who does not have a top 10 time period in DRAPM. He peaks out at 68th in the first couple years of the play-by-play era, and then is 76th a couple years after that. Like Pippen, though, the play-by-play era doesn’t encompass his whole career (though it gets more of it than Pippen’s). I also think Payton being listed as 6 foot 4 may cause him to be swept into this measure when his size isn’t *really* what I’m looking for here.
- Jrue Holiday is the final guy who does not have a top 10 time period in DRAPM. He peaks out at 26th. That said, he barely qualified for two of the three criteria—being listed as exactly 6 foot 4 and being barely above the cutoff to be top 150 in steal percentage (and easily the lowest steal percentage out of these players)—so he’s a bit of an edge case here.
- I note that I felt like Trevor Ariza was on the cusp in terms of inclusion, since I wasn’t really sure his reputation as an on-ball defender was good enough to warrant inclusion. FWIW, Ariza peaks out at only 35th in five-year DRAPM.

Discussion of Results

This seemed really interesting to me! Almost every player I identified had been top 10 in the NBA in DRAPM in a five-year time period! Half of them had even been top 5! Granted, a lot of them weren’t *consistently* that high, but in their best defensive timeframes, these guys were almost all up there amongst the most impactful defenders in the league.

I think this tends to show that it is overly simplistic to assume good rim protectors are more impactful defensively than this type of player. It is evidently the case that guards/wings with decent size that are great point-of-attack defenders and cause a lot of disruption can be, and often are, amongst the league’s most impactful defenders! None of these players were 1st in any five-year period (and I imagine it was a rim protector every time), so this does not indicate that the ceiling for this type of player is quite as high as it is for elite rim protectors. Most of these guys also weren’t quite as consistent at being at this level of impact throughout their careers, while the best rim protectors in history generally are. So I’m not suggesting this truly upends the consensus about elite rim protectors generally being the most impactful defensive archetype. But it does suggest that this type of player can be competitive with the league’s top rim protectors.

And, just to be clear, it is almost certainly not the case that the “decent size” portion of this is acting as a meaningful proxy for identifying players that are actually major rim protectors. We actually have stats from the last decade or so on “rim contests per 100” on the NBArapm website. When we look at that, we see that some of these players were above average in terms of how often they contested at the rim (Caruso being one example), but most of the ones we have this data on were below average in that regard.

Theories About Why These Players are so Defensively Impactful

Anyways, why would this type of player frequently be able to be this high up in terms of defensive impact despite not engaging much in the important task of protecting the rim? I think that’s up for debate. My theory on this is that defensive disruption is really underrated.

We are all generally familiar with the concept of rim deterrence—i.e. that rim protectors derive a lot of value from deterring people from even trying to get easy shots at the rim. That is really impactful! But I think guys who are really disruptive defenders have their own deterrent effect. Specifically, when a player is worried about getting stripped or having a pass stolen, they are deterred from doing things that might create an easier basket. For instance, if you think a guy will strip you if you drive to the hoop, you’re far more likely to settle for a contested jump shot. If you think a guy is going to get into the passing lane to steal or deflect a pass, you’re a lot less likely to try to make that high-value pass into a tight window that would lead to an easy bucket. If you think a guy is going to help over to you and strip you in the post, you’re much more likely to take a shot in the post immediately with the position you have, rather than trying to take a dribble or two backing someone down to get closer to the basket. This kind of deterrence can be really impactful. And it’s actually something I think we are mostly aware of from playing basketball ourselves and thinking about this stuff while playing, but that people have maybe now forgotten to think about enough when analyzing basketball.

There’s lots of smaller guys who are disruptive and cause lots of turnovers, and I imagine they derive serious impact from that too, but I think their size causes them to give away a lot of that impact in other ways—for instance, being easy to cause a mismatch against, being weak rebounders, etc. This was borne out when I looked at the DRAPM for those types of players, and didn’t see nearly the same type of DRAPM from those players—even ones with good reputations as on-ball defenders. Similarly, there’s lots of guys who are disruptive but simply not all that good as on-ball defenders, so of course they give back defensive impact that way.

__________________

NOTE: I want to be clear upfront that I did not make any attempt to cherry-pick what players I looked at here. I compiled my list of players before looking at any of their DRAPMs, so I did not look at DRAPM for any player that meets the criteria and isn’t discussed above. Feel free to point out if I missed anyone who probably should be included.

lessthanjake wrote:
Here’s the list I ended up with:

Play-by-Play Era Guards/Wing players in the top 150 in career steal %, who are at least 6 foot 4, and had good reputations as on-ball defenders

Andre Iguodala
Thabo Sefolosha
Paul George
Metta World Peace
Kawhi Leonard
Robert Covington
Tony Allen
Jason Kidd
Jimmy Butler
Eddie Jones
Ron Harper
Gerald Wallace
Scottie Pippen
Gary Payton
Jrue Holiday
.

Why are half the examples being used here to make a point about POA guards, wings who offer more paint-protection than any guard would?

OhayoKD wrote:

lessthanjake wrote:
Here’s the list I ended up with:

Play-by-Play Era Guards/Wing players in the top 150 in career steal %, who are at least 6 foot 4, and had good reputations as on-ball defenders

Andre Iguodala
Thabo Sefolosha
Paul George
Metta World Peace
Kawhi Leonard
Robert Covington
Tony Allen
Jason Kidd
Jimmy Butler
Eddie Jones
Ron Harper
Gerald Wallace
Scottie Pippen
Gary Payton
Jrue Holiday
.

Why are half the examples being used here to make a point about POA guards, wings who offer more paint-protection than any guard would?

Umm, the thread is about guards *and* wings. It’s literally in the title!

In any event, I basically addressed this in the OP.



To further elaborate, some of the players you bolded are amongst the ones who were genuinely below average in rim contests per 100. For instance, Iguodala is well below average in that regard in all of the years we have that data for in the timeframes that he was top 10 in DRAPM. The same is true of Kawhi, though at least his rim contest fgdiff% is good most of the relevant years, unlike Iguodala. Covington’s rim contests per 100 are low until near the end of the years included in his string of top 10 five-year DRAPM finishes (which basically just corresponds to him becoming primarily a PF near the end of those years) and his rim contest fgdiff% generally isn’t good. Paul George actually does have impressive rim contests numbers in recent years (and he has done well in DRAPM in those years), but he also reached top 10 in DRAPM in earlier timeframes where his rim contest numbers are definitely unimpressive. Of course, we only have this rim contest data from 2014 onwards, so we don’t have this data for Pippen, and we effectively don’t have it for Metta World Peace since he was ancient and barely played from 2014 onwards (though FWIW, the data we do have doesn’t paint him as a high volume or particularly effective rim protector). To be clear, compared to the guys you bolded who we actually have data for, Alex Caruso (who definitely isn’t some rim protecting wing) contests at the rim more often (and more effectively) than all but recent-years Paul George. These guys just generally really weren’t high-volume rim protectors. It’s really stretching things to suggest that that’s where their high defensive impact comes from.

Furthermore, the fact that the guys you *haven’t* bolded also have ranked quite highly in five-year DRAPM also obviously indicates that rim protection is not a necessary piece of the puzzle here.

lessthanjake wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:

lessthanjake wrote:
Here’s the list I ended up with:

Play-by-Play Era Guards/Wing players in the top 150 in career steal %, who are at least 6 foot 4, and had good reputations as on-ball defenders

Andre Iguodala
Thabo Sefolosha
Paul George
Metta World Peace
Kawhi Leonard
Robert Covington
Tony Allen
Jason Kidd
Jimmy Butler
Eddie Jones
Ron Harper
Gerald Wallace
Scottie Pippen
Gary Payton
Jrue Holiday
.

Why are half the examples being used here to make a point about POA guards, wings who offer more paint-protection than any guard would?

Umm, the thread is about guards *and* wings. It’s literally in the title!

It seems the "and wings" was cropped. My bad then.

In any event, I basically addressed this in the OP.

And, just to be clear, it is almost certainly not the case that the “decent size” portion of this is acting as a meaningful proxy for identifying players that are actually major rim protectors. We actually have stats from the last decade or so on “rim contests per 100” on the NBArapm website. When we look at that, we see that some of these players were above average in terms of how often they contested at the rim (Caruso being one example), but most of the ones we have this data on were below average in that regard.

To further elaborate, some of the players you bolded are amongst the ones who were genuinely below average in rim contests per 100. For instance, Iguodala is well below average in that regard in all of the years we have that data for in the timeframes that he was top 10 in DRAPM. The same is true of Kawhi, though at least his rim contest fgdiff% is good most of the relevant years, unlike Iguodala.

The issue here is "rim contests" occur on a minute fraction of possessions someone operates as a primary or secondary paint-deterrent, probably in part, because one of the points of paint-protection is deterring people from trying in the first place. Bigger rim-threats will also generally be rim-contested by bigger defenders. For example:

so we don’t have this data for Pippen, and we effectively don’t have it for Metta World Peace since he was ancient and barely played from 2014 onwards (though FWIW, the data we do have doesn’t paint him as a high volume or particularly effective rim protector).

He's not a "particularly effective or high volume rim-protector" and yet:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=2421706
-1994- game

He was the bulls primary or co-primary in 91 vs the pistons (game 4), 94 vs the knicks (game 7), and already a tertiary in game 3 vs the Knicks (88).

In the game tracked Pippen has 2 rim-contests, where he goes 1 for 2. The vast majority of possessions for Pippen and really every player tracked go something like this:

After a stretch of bad/neutral defensive possessions coming back, Ewing has his best of this game. Of relevance to this tracking: Ewing gets his 2nd IA (2) with Pippen deciding to swing it around as opposed to driving on Pat. Ewing ventures out to block a shot from Cartwright. Cartwright then tries to take it to the hole only to get bodied by Pat into a turnover. (Ewing - 8 PP)

Or this:

Wennington is closest to the basket as the possession is interrupted early with a technical foul. After the inbound. Pippen roams the paint helping deter a drive from Harper, getting back to the basket to fight two knicks players for a board. Said players fail to recover quickly enough to contest a Wennington board. Wennington is closest to the basket for most of the possession. Co-primaries for me. (Pippen - 7 PP)

Or this:

Grant switches with Pippen for “watching Smith right under the basket” duties and then challenges him strong side, pressuring him into a missed hook-shot. Pippen starts the possession watching Smith, switches to watch Oakley at the key and then comes back to prevent Herb Williams from snatching an offensive board, tipping it to Myers. (Grant - 4 PP, Pippen - 6 PP)]

Or this:

Longley and Pippen spend the bulk of the possession in the paint tracking Smith and Oakley. Longley spends more time on the bigs(and a brief bit near both) while Pippen spends more time in the paint and deters a inside pass towards Smith after the inbound. Calling them co-primaries here. (Pippen - 4 PP)

The 5 most used paint-defenders in this game combine for 2 blocks. Just went through the 80 possessions tracked and I only counted 6 instances of a rim-contest for anyone involved. You're using a proxy which almost never happens'. Kawhi leonard may not be contesting shots left and right but you'd probably prefer going through someone who weighs 20-40 pounds less and has a higher center of gravity

Furthermore, the fact that the guys you *haven’t* bolded also have ranked quite highly in five-year DRAPM also obviously indicates that rim protection is not a necessary piece of the puzzle here.

[/quote]
Yeah let's go over those.

-> Alex Caruso. This is your best example though the caveat here is he's averaging over 25 minutes exactly twice.
-> Thabo Sefolasha, a shooting guard who entered the league weighing 215 pounds and has 7 seasons at small forward and 1 season at power forward. Him being a guard is up for debate. He also averages under 22 minutes and only has 4 seasons where he averages over 25.
-> Tony Allen, a proper guard and does very well too though as with Caruso I think it's worth noting he's only averaging 25+ minutes 6 times and for his career he averages 22 minutes. He also enters the league weighing 214 despite being 6'4. Probably someone a fair bit of players would like to avoid near the basket.
-> Jason Kidd and Eddie Jones are the only 30+ per minute guards here who makes the top 10 multiple times and they never enter the top 5.
-> Gerald Wallace is an out and out wing being listed at forward every year, entering the league at 215 pounds, and even spending a season at power forward.
-> Jimmy Butler, who only makes the top ten once, entered the league weighing 230, and spends half his seasons listed as a forward

So to summarise we have
-> 2 psuedo wings
-> 2 low minute defensive specialists
-> 2 high minute guards who don't perform especially well

And that is after you applied two filters filtering out negative examples, but another filter that filters out a bunch of wings (top 150 steal percentage). And still, the "surprising" performance here is mostly carried by the bigger, stronger, and stouter wings who, relative to their smaller counterparts, spend more time closer to the basket, and less time chasing steals or jumping passing lanes.

That's not to say a guard being a top 5 defender is categorically impossible, but frankly I'd say this data suggests those sorts of players are very rare. And those are the players who spend the most time affecting POA, and the least time affecting the interior.

OhayoKD wrote:

lessthanjake wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:
Why are half the examples being used here to make a point about POA guards, wings who offer more paint-protection than any guard would?

Umm, the thread is about guards *and* wings. It’s literally in the title!

It seems the "and wings" was cropped. My bad then.

You say this and then large swaths of the rest of your post are specifically aimed at labeling players I mentioned as wings rather than guards, as if that somehow disputes any point being made. Odd.

In any event, I basically addressed this in the OP.

And, just to be clear, it is almost certainly not the case that the “decent size” portion of this is acting as a meaningful proxy for identifying players that are actually major rim protectors. We actually have stats from the last decade or so on “rim contests per 100” on the NBArapm website. When we look at that, we see that some of these players were above average in terms of how often they contested at the rim (Caruso being one example), but most of the ones we have this data on were below average in that regard.

To further elaborate, some of the players you bolded are amongst the ones who were genuinely below average in rim contests per 100. For instance, Iguodala is well below average in that regard in all of the years we have that data for in the timeframes that he was top 10 in DRAPM. The same is true of Kawhi, though at least his rim contest fgdiff% is good most of the relevant years, unlike Iguodala.

The issue here is "rim contests" occur on a minute fraction of possessions someone operates as a primary or secondary paint-deterrent, probably in part, because one of the points of paint-protection is deterring people from trying in the first place. Bigger rim-threats will also generally be rim-contested by bigger defenders.

I think it is safe to say that players with genuinely below average numbers of rim contests are not deterring players a ton such that rim deterrence would explain why they’re one of the top DRAPMs in the league. Yes, when someone is deterred it doesn’t end up as a rim contest, but you only deter players by actually being present near the basket and if you’re present near the basket a good bit you simply won’t end up with below average numbers of rim contests. Logically, it is *possible* for that to occur if someone is such a deterrent that no one even bothers trying, but it’s not what we see in reality (for instance, Gobert and Wemby have amongst the highest rim contests per 100), and it’s definitely not plausible for it to be the case for the guys listed in this thread—who are all obviously far from genuinely elite rim protectors.

For example:

so we don’t have this data for Pippen, and we effectively don’t have it for Metta World Peace since he was ancient and barely played from 2014 onwards (though FWIW, the data we do have doesn’t paint him as a high volume or particularly effective rim protector).

He's not a "particularly effective or high volume rim-protector" and yet:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=2421706
-1994- game

Spoiler:

New York overall
Oakley - 15
Ewing - 13

Chicago overall
Pippen - 15
Grant - 7
Cartwright - 6

New York with Ewing (22 Possessions)

Ewing - 13
Oakley - 5

Overall

Pippen/Oakley - 15
Ewing - 13
Grant - 7
Cartwright - 6



Here is the distribution of IAs:

[spoiler]Overall
Ewing - 3
Pippen/Grant - 1

He was the bulls primary or co-primary in 91 vs the pistons (game 4), 94 vs the knicks (game 7), and already a tertiary in game 3 vs the Knicks (88).

In the game tracked Pippen has 2 rim-contests, where he goes 1 for 2. The vast majority of possessions for Pippen and really every player tracked go something like this:

After a stretch of bad/neutral defensive possessions coming back, Ewing has his best of this game. Of relevance to this tracking: Ewing gets his 2nd IA (2) with Pippen deciding to swing it around as opposed to driving on Pat. Ewing ventures out to block a shot from Cartwright. Cartwright then tries to take it to the hole only to get bodied by Pat into a turnover. (Ewing - 8 PP)

Or this:

Wennington is closest to the basket as the possession is interrupted early with a technical foul. After the inbound. Pippen roams the paint helping deter a drive from Harper, getting back to the basket to fight two knicks players for a board. Said players fail to recover quickly enough to contest a Wennington board. Wennington is closest to the basket for most of the possession. Co-primaries for me. (Pippen - 7 PP)

Or this:

Grant switches with Pippen for “watching Smith right under the basket” duties and then challenges him strong side, pressuring him into a missed hook-shot. Pippen starts the possession watching Smith, switches to watch Oakley at the key and then comes back to prevent Herb Williams from snatching an offensive board, tipping it to Myers. (Grant - 4 PP, Pippen - 6 PP)]

Or this:

Longley and Pippen spend the bulk of the possession in the paint tracking Smith and Oakley. Longley spends more time on the bigs(and a brief bit near both) while Pippen spends more time in the paint and deters a inside pass towards Smith after the inbound. Calling them co-primaries here. (Pippen - 4 PP)

This is a really bizarre response. You seem to frame this response as a retort to me saying the data we have on Pippen “doesn’t paint him as a particularly effective or high volume rim protector,” but I clearly used that language in relation to Metta World Peace, not Pippen! You’re just completely straw manning.

And regardless, I don’t know why you’re going through so much effort to say Pippen was a rim protector. He’s actually one of the few exceptions listed in my OP that doesn’t look particularly great by DRAPM! So saying he’s a rim protector really does nothing to disprove the thesis of this thread. Indeed, if anything, if you think Pippen was a higher-volume rim protector than the other guys I listed, then him doing worse in DRAPM would tend to further suggest that rim protection is not a particularly important factor here driving the high DRAPM for these players.

The 5 most used paint-defenders in this game combine for 2 blocks. Just went through the 80 possessions tracked and I only counted 6 instances of a rim-contest for anyone involved. You're using a proxy which almost never happens'. Kawhi leonard may not be contesting shots left and right but you'd probably prefer going through someone who weighs 20-40 pounds less and has a higher center of gravity

If you look at the rim contests per 100 data, it is clear that “rim contests” for purposes of that data occurs a lot more than 6 times overall in 80 possessions across five different players. Individual players vary between about 3 to 13 rim contests per 100 possessions, and obviously 5 players combined would be much higher than that. So yeah, either the sample you tracked had an idiosyncratically small amount of rim contests (most likely) or you’re measuring something very different than the data I’m referring to. Either way, you tracking 80 possessions in a random game doesn’t somehow suggest that fulsome data on rim contests is somehow completely misleading us as to how often a player protected the rim.

Furthermore, the fact that the guys you *haven’t* bolded also have ranked quite highly in five-year DRAPM also obviously indicates that rim protection is not a necessary piece of the puzzle here.

Yeah let's go over those.

-> Alex Caruso. This is your best example though the caveat here is he's averaging over 25 minutes exactly twice.
-> Thabo Sefolasha, a shooting guard who entered the league weighing 215 pounds and has 7 seasons at small forward and 1 season at power forward. Him being a guard is up for debate. He also averages under 22 minutes and only has 4 seasons where he averages over 25.
-> Tony Allen, a proper guard and does very well too though as with Caruso I think it's worth noting he's only averaging 25+ minutes 6 times and for his career he averages 22 minutes. He also enters the league weighing 214 despite being 6'4. Probably someone a fair bit of players would like to avoid near the basket.
-> Jason Kidd and Eddie Jones are the only 30+ per minute guards here who makes the top 10 multiple times and they never enter the top 5.
-> Gerald Wallace is an out and out wing being listed at forward every year, entering the league at 215 pounds, and even spending a season at power forward.
-> Jimmy Butler, who only makes the top ten once, entered the league weighing 230, and spends half his seasons listed as a forward

So to summarise we have
-> 2 psuedo wings
-> 2 low minute defensive specialists
-> 2 high minute guards who don't perform especially well

As I alluded to above, this seems mostly aimed at quibbling over whether players are wings rather than guards, even though the thread is very obviously about both. Just a weird straw man.

Anyways, I’ll also note that I don’t really think there’s a big difference between guards and wings once the filter is applied to only players 6 foot 4 and above. At that point, we’re looking at players that have the size to potentially fit under either label. The only potential exception to that listed in this thread is probably Gary Payton, but he’s also one of the few that didn’t finish high in DRAPM.

And that is after you applied two filters filtering out negative examples, but another filter that filters out a bunch of wings (top 150 steal percentage). And still, the "surprising" performance here is mostly carried by the bigger, stronger, and stouter wings who, relative to their smaller counterparts, spend more time closer to the basket, and less time chasing steals or jumping passing lanes.

That's not to say a guard being a top 5 defender is categorically impossible, but frankly I'd say this data suggests those sorts of players are very rare. And those are the players who spend the most time affecting POA, and the least time affecting the interior.

What do you mean by “filtering out negative examples”? The whole point of this thread is to talk about the high defensive impact of a particular type of player and the filters are specifically aimed at allowing us to look at that type of player. If we took away one of the filters, we’d no longer be looking at the type of players I’m talking about!

In any event, the idea that the performance of these players “is mostly carried by the bigger, stronger, stouter wings” is quite odd when some of the best results out of any of these players come from guys like Tony Allen and Alex Caruso. After having applied the size filter I used, there’s not really a correlation here between which of these players had the very best DRAPMs and which ones were “the bigger, stronger, stouter wings.” And, probably more importantly, the results here are great from virtually all of these players. The results aren’t being “carried” by any subset of players, since the data is very strong and supportive of the thesis from almost every player I identified.

You’re trying very hard to parse through this data to suggest the results (and any conclusion one might draw from it) don’t apply to a type of player that it clearly does apply to. We both know why you’re so desperate to do that (you really do have a single-track mind, so it’s not difficult to figure out), but it really is just a lot of flailing and straw manning.

More generally, I think this is a good example of being overly fixated on rim protection when it comes to defensive impact. When posed with a bunch of non-bigs that had amongst the highest DRAPMs in the league, your reaction is basically to suggest that they got those high DRAPMs because of rim protection. It’s not actually plausible, and there’s much more obvious reasons for it, if you just step back and realize that other things besides rim protection do actually matter defensively.

Good post. Great POA defense does something that even great rim protection can’t do: strangle an offense from even getting into their sets. If rim protection is the last line of defense, perimeter defense is the first deterrent.

The great 90s Bulls defenses never had a traditional rim protecting big but they absolutely suffocated offenses with their presses and traps.

Good post Jake! Hopefully this thread doesn’t turn into the usual proxy war over Jordan vs LeBron Credit to you for always having the patience to give reasonable replies.

I was also interested in the impact of smaller players recently. I did a quick survey of defensive on/off and defensive 3-year RAPM, and came away with a similar takeaway. Here are some of the top players I saw in (unweighted) 3-year RS defensive on-off, in order by tiers meter than -5:
-8+: Gobert (big), Draymond (big)
-6+: Caruso (guard), Duncan (big), Garnett (big) Covington (wing),
-5+: Giannis (big), Tony Allen (guard), Kawhi (wing), Ben Wallace (big) ~ Iguodala (wing)
On-off and RAPM can be super noisy, and we’re most interested in with a small number of outlier players. But both on-off and RAPM agree about some trends. The best bigs generally have better defensive impact than wings or guards, but the gap isn’t insurmountable (certainly for the two-way MVP bigs), at least according to the data. The best wings and guards still enter the top tier or two of defensive bigs. And in a given year, the best wings and guards can certainly be e.g. in the top ~5 most valuable defenders in the league.

A few questions/topics come to mind:

(1) Is this just for the perimeter archetype you suggested, i.e. for the more disruptive point of attack style defenders, or does this also apply to other perimeter archetypes?

Caruso and Tony Allen seem to be the most impactful guards in the brief survey of players/3-year peak stats I’ve checked, and both have similarities in their style. They’re highly disruptive, with good versatility/fundamentals, and very high-motor (possibly enabled by lower minutes / offensive load). Covington, Iguodala, and Kawhi are among the most impactful wings in the 3-year peak stats I’ve checked, and at least Kawhi fits that highly disruptive style of POA perimeter defense.

It’s hard to be highly confident in a small sample qualitative play style trends. If you’re looking for other perimeter players to compare to, you might check the old realgm Top 10 defenders at each position project and thinking basketball’s Top defenders of the last 15 years podcasts. Some top players with data might be Chris Paul, (old) Stockton, Jason Kidd, Dwyane Wade, Oladipo, Marcus Smart, Jrue Holiday, Derrick White, Gary Payton II, LeBron, Iguodala, Paul George, Bruce Bowen, Shane Battier, Shawn Marion, and Luol Deng. They probably don’t all fit into your ‘disruptive POA defender’ archetype, but I’m not sure if I could group them into other archetypes so that we might compare archetypes. Could be interesting to compare the value of different perimeter defender archetypes, but probably hard to get anything reasonable given the noise and small sample. Open to suggestions!

(2) does this apply across contexts (e.g. era, floor raising vs ceiling raising, resilience) or is there specific context that guards need in order to have this high-level impact?

(2a) For era specific, the rules and styles have shifted to be more perimeter oriented, which might increase the importance of perimeter defense, while also making less mobile big rim protectors less valuable. There’s certainly a very respectable crop of top guard defenders nowadays. If it changes across era, does this scale with 3 point volume, or for example is perimeter defense more valuable before the dead ball era with hand checking than during the dead ball era without hand checking?

(2b) For floor vs ceiling raising, I’ve wondered before if guards have their best value in more of a defensive ceiling raising role (surrounded by good casts), while bigs retain good value as floor raisers on bad teams in addition to on good teams. From a style perspective, it might be that it’s easier for bigs to have higher defensive volume as the sole rim protector on an otherwise bad defensive team — opponents are always going to want to drive to the rim. In contrast, a good perimeter defender might get the wrong matchup in transition and be put on the weak side by the offense — opponents might not care as much whether they attack from the left vs right. However, if there are multiple good perimeter defenders, it becomes harder to force the good perimeter defender to the weak side, and opponents might put less emphasis on avoiding the best perimeter defender. There might also be chemistry between multiple good perimeter defenders, as it allows the defense to full-court press, swarm, double aggressively, etc. The 90s Bulls of course and the recent Bulls come to mind.

(2c) For resilience, I’m reminded of a quick study I did on team results. I looked at the how many of the top defensive teams all time had the top defenders all time at each position. I measured top defensive teams by rDRTG, and measured top defenders all time from the RealGM Top 10 defenders at each position project (including honorable mentions).

How many top defenders at a position are on All Time RS teams -> All time teams:
Top Defensive Guards in Top 15 Defensive teams: 4 (regular season) -> 7 (postseason)
Top Defensive Guards in Top 25: 6 -> 12
Top Defensive Guards in Top 40: 15 -> 19

Top Defensive Wings in Top 15: 8 -> 6
Top Defensive Wings in Top 25: 14 -> 10
Top Defensive Wings in Top 40: 22 -> 16

Top Defensive Power Forwards in Top 15: 9 -> 9
Top Defensive Power Forwards in Top 25: 14 -> 15
Top Defensive Power Forwards in Top 40: 20 -> 23

Top Defensive Centers in Top 15: 7 -> 7
Top Defensive Centers in Top 25: 12 -> 9
Top Defensive Centers in Top 40: 16 -> 14

So this is clearly a noisy measure, and I’m not sure we can trust the trends here. But for what it’s worth, the number of all-time defensive guards increases on top postseason defenses the most. The number of (larger power) forwards increases slightly, centers decrease slightly, wings decrease the most. Of course, bigs are the most represented here, supporting that they’re generally the best defenders. But guards and wings aren’t massively far behind. And the number of guards does increase the most in playoff teams, supporting (but certainly not proving) the idea that great guard perimeter defense is resilient in the playoffs.

(3), How does defensive longevity play a role here? I’m reminded of a Engelmann’s full career RAPM, and DPM, which at least anecdotally I recall being higher defensively than these 3-5 year impact metrics on big man defense compared to wing and guard defense. If perimeter players are closer in 5-year defensive RAPM to bigs than in full-career RAPM (assuming these aren’t due to differences in the RAPM versions themselves), then it seems perimeter players have a greater drop off in non-peak/prime samples.

I think we can see secondary evidence for this in DARKO DPM. DARKO DPM also has perimeter players slightly lower in defensive value than bigs, relative to these other stats (e.g. 5-year RAPM, on-off, EPM). Since DPM is a predictive stat, not a descriptive stat, it may be that perimeter players have less defensive longevity than bigs, and so are more likely to fall off. If so, I imagine athleticism plays a big role here. Perhaps guards who are impactful defenders rely more on their athleticism. When this athleticism falls off, the defensive impact falls off. Bigs, on the other hand, might rely more on their size or back-in communication, which would drop off less with age.

I find it's worth noting that the top apm guards tend to be more specialized (lower minutes, used in more specific situations, consistently appearing on the lower end of the offensive side of the ball than you'd expect given the null) than the top bigs. So the total impact gap seems likely to be wider than an apm can make it look at first glance.

But generally in agreement that the top defensive guards/wings seem at least comparable to the ~2.5th tier of defensive bigs.

There's also a subset of players - mostly guards - who have their defensive apm raised by what I would consider an offensive skill - limiting turnovers - MJ/CP3/Conley guys I immediately think of.

DraymondGold wrote:
(1) Is this just for the perimeter archetype you suggested, i.e. for the more disruptive point of attack style defenders, or does this also apply to other perimeter archetypes?

Caruso and Tony Allen seem to be the most impactful guards in the brief survey of players/3-year peak stats I’ve checked, and both have similarities in their style. They’re highly disruptive, with good versatility/fundamentals, and very high-motor (possibly enabled by lower minutes / offensive load). Covington, Iguodala, and Kawhi are among the most impactful wings in the 3-year peak stats I’ve checked, and at least Kawhi fits that highly disruptive style of POA perimeter defense.

It’s hard to be highly confident in a small sample qualitative play style trends. If you’re looking for other perimeter players to compare to, you might check the old realgm Top 10 defenders at each position project and thinking basketball’s Top defenders of the last 15 years podcasts. Some top players with data might be Chris Paul, (old) Stockton, Jason Kidd, Dwyane Wade, Oladipo, Marcus Smart, Jrue Holiday, Derrick White, Gary Payton II, LeBron, Iguodala, Paul George, Bruce Bowen, Shane Battier, Shawn Marion, and Luol Deng. They probably don’t all fit into your ‘disruptive POA defender’ archetype, but I’m not sure if I could group them into other archetypes so that we might compare archetypes. Could be interesting to compare the value of different perimeter defender archetypes, but probably hard to get anything reasonable given the noise and small sample. Open to suggestions!

Here’s how these guys do in terms of their best five-year timespans in TheBasketballDatabase’s DRAPM (leaving aside Iguodala, Kidd, Jrue Holiday, and Paul George, who I’ve provided this info on in my OP):

- Chris Paul’s best five-year period was ranked 12th. He has a few other spans in the top 20.
- Stockton’s best five-year period was ranked 12th. He also has a couple other spans in the top 20.
- Dwyane Wade’s best five-year period was only ranked 52nd. He was most often found in the 100-200 range.
- Oladipo’s best five-year period was ranked 14th. He also has three straight five-year periods where he was ranked 16th.
- Marcus Smart’s best five-year period was ranked 20th. He has several other time periods in the top 50.
- Derrick White was ranked 6th in DRAPM in the last five years, and was 11th in the five-year period just before that.
- Gary Payton II’s best five-year period was ranked 104th.
- LeBron’s best five year periods were ranked 5th, 6th, and 7th, but otherwise he was seen in the 25-100 range.
- Bruce Bowen looks fantastic in this. He has five-year spans ranked 3rd, 4th, 4th, 5th, 6th, 6th, 7th, and 9th.
- Shane Battier also looks great. He has five-year periods ranked 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 5th.
- Shawn Marion’s best five-year rank was 19th, but that was really just from his first two years. His best five-year rank where he actually played the whole time was 38th. He was often in the latter half of the top 100.
- Luol Deng had five-year spans ranked 9th and 10th, as well as a few more in the top 20.

I think there’s a couple tentative takeaways for me with this:

First, the placement of guys like Stockton, Chris Paul, and Marcus Smart in the 11-20 range suggests to me that if you’re disruptive and a good POA defender, you can be very impactful defensively but that being relatively short puts a ceiling on that that’s a bit below the very top group of defenders in the league. Which makes sense, since there’s only so much you can do about guys shooting over you.

Second, Bowen, Battier, and to a lesser extent White and Deng doing so well suggests that if you’re a good enough POA defender, you don’t necessarily need the disruption aspect of things to have top-tier defensive impact. They were relatively specialized in defense (especially Bowen and Battier), though, so I wonder if having greater disruption capability is key here for players who have a higher offensive load (and who therefore can’t use as much of their energy on defense). LeBron is a bit of a counterpoint to this since he’s only 168th in career steal percentage, but that’s still relatively disruptive and his high DRAPM years correspond with years where his steal percentage was higher than normal and would’ve been enough to put him in the top 150.

(2) does this apply across contexts (e.g. era, floor raising vs ceiling raising, resilience) or is there specific context that guards need in order to have this high-level impact?

Good question! Not something I have a concrete answer on. Intuitively, I suspect that having a having a great rim protector may compound the impact of both players (since it makes it harder to scheme them away), but it’s not something that I’m certain of just from this info.

(2a) For era specific, the rules and styles have shifted to be more perimeter oriented, which might increase the importance of perimeter defense, while also making less mobile big rim protectors less valuable. There’s certainly a very respectable crop of top guard defenders nowadays. If it changes across era, does this scale with 3 point volume, or for example is perimeter defense more valuable before the dead ball era with hand checking than during the dead ball era without hand checking?

I think this is definitely plausible. It’s a little hard to tell, though, because RAPM data doesn’t go back far enough for us to have a lot of timeframes prior to threes becomes more and more important. FWIW, the relevant players I listed in my OP do include guys from relatively early in the play-by-play era. But I do think it’s plausible that someone like Alex Caruso is having a bit more impact now than he would’ve in the past, for the reasons you mentioned.

(2b) For floor vs ceiling raising, I’ve wondered before if guards have their best value in more of a defensive ceiling raising role (surrounded by good casts), while bigs retain good value as floor raisers on bad teams in addition to on good teams. From a style perspective, it might be that it’s easier for bigs to have higher defensive volume as the sole rim protector on an otherwise bad defensive team — opponents are always going to want to drive to the rim. In contrast, a good perimeter defender might get the wrong matchup in transition and be put on the weak side by the offense — opponents might not care as much whether they attack from the left vs right. However, if there are multiple good perimeter defenders, it becomes harder to force the good perimeter defender to the weak side, and opponents might put less emphasis on avoiding the best perimeter defender. There might also be chemistry between multiple good perimeter defenders, as it allows the defense to full-court press, swarm, double aggressively, etc. The 90s Bulls of course and the recent Bulls come to mind.

That seems plausible to me, and dovetails with what I said above about having a great rim protector potentially compounding the effect of both the great rim protector and great perimeter defender. A lot of these guys did play on great defensive teams, but there’s a bit of a chicken and egg issue there, where maybe they were great defensive teams because these guys were so defensively impactful, rather than that they were able to be so defensively impactful because they were on great defensive teams. It’s hard to say.

One potential area for further thought/analysis on this would be to think about how this maps onto the inconsistency/longevity thing that I mentioned in my OP and that you discuss a bit below. I’d be interested in thinking about whether there’s a correlation between when these players got their high DRAPMs and when their team’s defenses were really good. If there’s a strong correlation, that might suggest that perimeter players are better ceiling raisers than floor raisers defensively. That said, we’d expect some correlation even if that weren’t the case, because we’d expect that their teams’ defenses would be better in the years that they were more defensively impactful. So it may be hard to look at things and really tell what is the cause and what is the effect.

(2c) For resilience, I’m reminded of a quick study I did on team results. I looked at the how many of the top defensive teams all time had the top defenders all time at each position. I measured top defensive teams by rDRTG, and measured top defenders all time from the RealGM Top 10 defenders at each position project (including honorable mentions).

How many top defenders at a position are on All Time RS teams -> All time teams:
Top Defensive Guards in Top 15 Defensive teams: 4 (regular season) -> 7 (postseason)
Top Defensive Guards in Top 25: 6 -> 12
Top Defensive Guards in Top 40: 15 -> 19

Top Defensive Wings in Top 15: 8 -> 6
Top Defensive Wings in Top 25: 14 -> 10
Top Defensive Wings in Top 40: 22 -> 16

Top Defensive Power Forwards in Top 15: 9 -> 9
Top Defensive Power Forwards in Top 25: 14 -> 15
Top Defensive Power Forwards in Top 40: 20 -> 23

Top Defensive Centers in Top 15: 7 -> 7
Top Defensive Centers in Top 25: 12 -> 9
Top Defensive Centers in Top 40: 16 -> 14

So this is clearly a noisy measure, and I’m not sure we can trust the trends here. But for what it’s worth, the number of all-time defensive guards increases on top postseason defenses the most. The number of (larger power) forwards increases slightly, centers decrease slightly, wings decrease the most. Of course, bigs are the most represented here, supporting that they’re generally the best defenders. But guards and wings aren’t massively far behind. And the number of guards does increase the most in playoff teams, supporting (but certainly not proving) the idea that great guard perimeter defense is resilient in the playoffs.

That’s interesting! And it definitely comports anecdotally with things we’ve seen in the playoffs, such as Gobert’s defense seeming to not be as impactful in the playoffs. It would also make sense to me for perimeter defense to become more impactful in the playoffs, simply because refs call the playoffs a little differently. We might expect the best perimeter defenders to be able to derive more value than normal in a context in which they’re allowed to get away with more.

(3), How does defensive longevity play a role here? I’m reminded of a Engelmann’s full career RAPM, and DPM, which at least anecdotally I recall being higher defensively than these 3-5 year impact metrics on big man defense compared to wing and guard defense. If perimeter players are closer in 5-year defensive RAPM to bigs than in full-career RAPM (assuming these aren’t due to differences in the RAPM versions themselves), then it seems perimeter players have a greater drop off in non-peak/prime samples.

I think we can see secondary evidence for this in DARKO DPM. DARKO DPM also has perimeter players slightly lower in defensive value than bigs, relative to these other stats (e.g. 5-year RAPM, on-off, EPM). Since DPM is a predictive stat, not a descriptive stat, it may be that perimeter players have less defensive longevity than bigs, and so are more likely to fall off. If so, I imagine athleticism plays a big role here. Perhaps guards who are impactful defenders rely more on their athleticism. When this athleticism falls off, the defensive impact falls off. Bigs, on the other hand, might rely more on their size or back-in communication, which would drop off less with age.

Yeah, I definitely agree that the top bigs seem to generally be able to sustain their top-tier defensive impact for longer. One potential theory on this is discussed above—if perimeter defenders’ defensive impact is more dependent on having good defenders around them, then they might appear to have less defensive “longevity” by virtue of not always being in a context where they can get that top-tier defensive impact. Another theory is that perimeter defense and disruption relies on athleticism, motor, reaction time, and reading situations quickly, while big-man defense relies a lot on sheer size. This may result in a relatively shorter window for perimeter defenders, where they need a little time in the league to develop the ability to read situations quickly, but then their athleticism, motor, and reaction times start decreasing with age, so their window is when those two things coincide. Meanwhile, big men’s size is always there. That’s definitely just a theory though, and I don’t really know if it maps onto the information we have. I’m sure there’s other explanations as well.

eminence wrote:I find it's worth noting that the top apm guards tend to be more specialized (lower minutes, used in more specific situations, consistently appearing on the lower end of the offensive side of the ball than you'd expect given the null) than the top bigs. So the total impact gap seems likely to be wider than an apm can make it look at first glance.

But generally in agreement that the top defensive guards/wings seem at least comparable to the ~2.5th tier of defensive bigs.

There's also a subset of players - mostly guards - who have their defensive apm raised by what I would consider an offensive skill - limiting turnovers - MJ/CP3/Conley guys I immediately think of.

This is a great point. Elite defensive centers with limited skill can still be big time contributors to an offense with screen setting, offensive rebounding, and being a vertical threat -- see the offenses Rudy Gobert has been a part of for instance. Subbing these guys out for a "good" offensive center rarely has much impact on offense.

But take out Allen or Caruso for an offensive guard and the impact gap is significant offsetting some of their defensive impact. Defensive guards with limited offensive skill always play on cheap contracts. There is a reason for this, the NBA isn't stupid and undervaluing these guys on the market.

This is an often overlooked reason why defensive bigs are so much more valuable than defensive guards.

Factor APM would be another nice stat to look at here imo. Which players stand out in team defensive turnovers, and how they do in DRAPM/RAPM overall. Then coming back to see if they are guys who look good in individual steals numbers as well.

Using nbarapm: https://www.nbarapm.com/datasets/six_factor

Top samples (1 each) of guys with 2+ def TOV Value and 8k+ possessions in 3 year samples. (8k chosen to include the beast that is Caruso, but leave out real low sample guys - if you'd like a different number, try for yourself)

Player: sample years, possessions, def TOV Value, DRAPM, RAPM
Caruso: '21-'23, 8350, +3.1, +4.3, +3.7
Rubio: '13-'15, 9954, +2.7, +2.2, +4.3
Allen: '10-'12, 9049, +2.5, +3.9, +3.0
Thybulle: '22-'24, 8411, +2.5, +3.3, +1.3
Brevin Knight: '04-'06, 10441, +2.3, +0.6, -0.2
Stockton: '00-'02, 15136, +2.2, +4.2, +8.1
Varejao: '06-'08, 9082, +2.2, +3.9, +3.5
Chalmers: '14-'16, 12243, +2.1, +0.4, +0.4
CJ Watson: '09-'11, 9808, +2.1, +1.0, +1.0
Shumpert: '12-'14, 9353, +2.0, +2.3, +2.8
Ariza: '07-'09, 8872, +2.0, +1.4, +0.7
CP3: '11-'13, 15328, +2.0, +0.5, +6.3
Manu: '05-'07, 14643, +2.0, +2.2, +7.4
Thad Young: '18-'20, 14355, +2.0, +1.2, -0.2

I would say that there's certainly a trend of the top per possession team turnover forcers being small, they generally have good defensive apms (none grading out as below average defensively), and look pretty good in overall apm (-0.2 the worst).

The specialist note also seems to bear out here (I believe this applies to rebounding as well). When looking at offensive TS%, limiting offensive turnovers, and defensive TS% you're more likely to see the top of the factor RAPMs being populated by big minute superstars, but here there's a lot of guys consistently averaging under 30 mpg.

Off for now, but may come back to look at how the above fellows do in box-score steals.

Excellent post by OP. The more I think about it, the more I land on a case of Gerald “Crash” Wallace being one of the most underrated players of all time, and basically a mini-KG in terms of impact on what were horrible surrounding rosters at the time. One of the rare players who was able to truly impact both the initiation and ending of offensive possessions.

Just as a coaching thing, stopping an action from beginning is often harped on as the most important piece of defense. Obviously, in practice, help defense specifically in the form of rim protection and deflections leads to the biggest impact; but in terms of every basketball coach I’ve ever been around, stopping the play from happening in the first place is just as important.

Basketball is a phase game; initiating action, developing action (the trade offs from the initial action), finishing action, transition. Obviously, the players who have the most impact on each of those four phases have the most impact overall.

Good thread.

I think in the modern game, the gap in defensive impact between bigs and smalls is smaller than ever due to pacing, space, defensive 3 second rule etc. Bottom line is bigs are less able to contest shots at the rim which is where the lion's share of their defensive value comes from.

Djoker wrote:Good thread.

I think in the modern game, the gap in defensive impact between bigs and smalls is smaller than ever due to pacing, space, defensive 3 second rule etc. Bottom line is bigs are less able to contest shots at the rim which is where the lion's share of their defensive value comes from.

But the best 3-pt shots continue to come from inside out. Drive and kick, offensive rebounds. Getting a team into rotation. OKC today can rotate as well as any team I've ever seen and even they can be had. Most teams once you get them cycling are going to give up a good 3. A big that contains penetration and clears the glass continues to be very valuable even against the high volume 3-pt attacks of today's offense. Not to mention an ability to switch a PNR without getting hunted. Attack guards today live to hunt centers in the PNR. Luka will pick and repick trying to get a guy he can eat.

I'm glad we have a thread recognizing the value of elite perimeter defenders. But we needn't minimize that elite defensive anchors still effect defense to a greater overall degree and when you consider basketball to be a game where each end impacts the other that edge only magnifies.

Texas Chuck wrote:

Djoker wrote:Good thread.

I think in the modern game, the gap in defensive impact between bigs and smalls is smaller than ever due to pacing, space, defensive 3 second rule etc. Bottom line is bigs are less able to contest shots at the rim which is where the lion's share of their defensive value comes from.

But the best 3-pt shots continue to come from inside out. Drive and kick, offensive rebounds. Getting a team into rotation. OKC today can rotate as well as any team I've ever seen and even they can be had. Most teams once you get them cycling are going to give up a good 3. A big that contains penetration and clears the glass continues to be very valuable even against the high volume 3-pt attacks of today's offense. Not to mention an ability to switch a PNR without getting hunted. Attack guards today live to hunt centers in the PNR. Luka will pick and repick trying to get a guy he can eat.

I'm glad we have a thread recognizing the value of elite perimeter defenders. But we needn't minimize that elite defensive anchors still effect defense to a greater overall degree and when you consider basketball to be a game where each end impacts the other that edge only magnifies.

Sure. The bigs are on average still more valuable than smalls for the reasons you stated but the gap in impact is smaller than it used to be. That's what I was saying.

eminence wrote:Factor APM would be another nice stat to look at here imo. Which players stand out in team defensive turnovers, and how they do in DRAPM/RAPM overall. Then coming back to see if they are guys who look good in individual steals numbers as well.

Using nbarapm: https://www.nbarapm.com/datasets/six_factor

Top samples (1 each) of guys with 2+ def TOV Value and 8k+ possessions in 3 year samples. (8k chosen to include the beast that is Caruso, but leave out real low sample guys - if you'd like a different number, try for yourself)

Player: sample years, possessions, def TOV Value, DRAPM, RAPM
Caruso: '21-'23, 8350, +3.1, +4.3, +3.7
Rubio: '13-'15, 9954, +2.7, +2.2, +4.3
Allen: '10-'12, 9049, +2.5, +3.9, +3.0
Thybulle: '22-'24, 8411, +2.5, +3.3, +1.3
Brevin Knight: '04-'06, 10441, +2.3, +0.6, -0.2
Stockton: '00-'02, 15136, +2.2, +4.2, +8.1
Varejao: '06-'08, 9082, +2.2, +3.9, +3.5
Chalmers: '14-'16, 12243, +2.1, +0.4, +0.4
CJ Watson: '09-'11, 9808, +2.1, +1.0, +1.0
Shumpert: '12-'14, 9353, +2.0, +2.3, +2.8
Ariza: '07-'09, 8872, +2.0, +1.4, +0.7
CP3: '11-'13, 15328, +2.0, +0.5, +6.3
Manu: '05-'07, 14643, +2.0, +2.2, +7.4
Thad Young: '18-'20, 14355, +2.0, +1.2, -0.2

I would say that there's certainly a trend of the top per possession team turnover forcers being small, they generally have good defensive apms (none grading out as below average defensively), and look pretty good in overall apm (-0.2 the worst).

The specialist note also seems to bear out here (I believe this applies to rebounding as well). When looking at offensive TS%, limiting offensive turnovers, and defensive TS% you're more likely to see the top of the factor RAPMs being populated by big minute superstars, but here there's a lot of guys consistently averaging under 30 mpg.

Off for now, but may come back to look at how the above fellows do in box-score steals.

Makes the beast that was Stockton really stand out with the highest and the 4th highest score . . . and that's old Stockton, not even mid prime Stockton.

penbeast0 wrote:

eminence wrote:Factor APM would be another nice stat to look at here imo. Which players stand out in team defensive turnovers, and how they do in DRAPM/RAPM overall. Then coming back to see if they are guys who look good in individual steals numbers as well.

Using nbarapm: https://www.nbarapm.com/datasets/six_factor

Top samples (1 each) of guys with 2+ def TOV Value and 8k+ possessions in 3 year samples. (8k chosen to include the beast that is Caruso, but leave out real low sample guys - if you'd like a different number, try for yourself)

Player: sample years, possessions, def TOV Value, DRAPM, RAPM
Caruso: '21-'23, 8350, +3.1, +4.3, +3.7
Rubio: '13-'15, 9954, +2.7, +2.2, +4.3
Allen: '10-'12, 9049, +2.5, +3.9, +3.0
Thybulle: '22-'24, 8411, +2.5, +3.3, +1.3
Brevin Knight: '04-'06, 10441, +2.3, +0.6, -0.2
Stockton: '00-'02, 15136, +2.2, +4.2, +8.1
Varejao: '06-'08, 9082, +2.2, +3.9, +3.5
Chalmers: '14-'16, 12243, +2.1, +0.4, +0.4
CJ Watson: '09-'11, 9808, +2.1, +1.0, +1.0
Shumpert: '12-'14, 9353, +2.0, +2.3, +2.8
Ariza: '07-'09, 8872, +2.0, +1.4, +0.7
CP3: '11-'13, 15328, +2.0, +0.5, +6.3
Manu: '05-'07, 14643, +2.0, +2.2, +7.4
Thad Young: '18-'20, 14355, +2.0, +1.2, -0.2

I would say that there's certainly a trend of the top per possession team turnover forcers being small, they generally have good defensive apms (none grading out as below average defensively), and look pretty good in overall apm (-0.2 the worst).

The specialist note also seems to bear out here (I believe this applies to rebounding as well). When looking at offensive TS%, limiting offensive turnovers, and defensive TS% you're more likely to see the top of the factor RAPMs being populated by big minute superstars, but here there's a lot of guys consistently averaging under 30 mpg.

Off for now, but may come back to look at how the above fellows do in box-score steals.

Makes the beast that was Stockton really stand out with the highest and the 4th highest score . . . and that's old Stockton, not even mid prime Stockton.

Cool website eminence! I hadn't seen that source of RAPM before. It's nice to be able to break up the RAPM into different 6 factors like that. A few of the other pages of that site are fun:
-each player's dashboard on the home page have 2, 3, 4, 5 year RAPM, along with a few other advanced stats, with each value plotted out vs season. Usually we just have 3/5 year RAPM, if that, and they're not plotted out.
-We have 28-year RAPM from Engelmann, along with their four factors Not sure which version of Engelmann full-career RAPM, since he's published quite a few iterations.
-And an experimental RAPM vs strong/weak opponents page. It's still preliminary, but it's a nice idea.

In this version of RAPM, it looks like their 3-year Defensive RAPM rankings are a little more filled with defensive specialists generally. Among guards/wings, it has Andre Roberson (5th best unique peak in 3-year DRAPM stretches since 1997), Robert Covington (8th, +5.5), Tony Allen (~20th, +4.5), Caruso (~25th, +4.4), Bruce Bowen (~26th). For context, old Garnett is 1st, Draymond is 6th (+5.6), Duncan 9th, Gobert 10th (+5.4), Mutombo 15th (+4.7), Ben Wallace 22nd, Dwight Howard 23rd, Giannis below that.

5-year RAPM has a bit fewer specialists among the top, and looks a bit closer to expectations. Andre Roberson is 6th (above Ben Wallace, Draymond, Mutombo, Dwight), Tony Allen is 15th.

Getting more general, do people have a sense for what particularly the highest-impact players (likely Tony Allen and Caruso among guards; Roberson and Covington among wings on this version of RAPM, but perhaps other wings in other stats) are doing specifically to distinguish themselves, and how generalizable that is?

As previous posts suggest, these players do seem to be in somewhat defensive-specialist roles and highly disruptive (so generate lots of turnovers).

But what is it about the defensive specialist roles that allows them to flourish? Does it enable higher motor/energy every defensive possession? Does highest-impact guard/wing defense require a higher motor moreso than big man defense? If a player could have a higher motor on defense while still shouldering a larger offensive role, would we expect them to be able to post this high-impact defense, or is there something about the diminished offensive role that allows them to flourish in the metrics?

Would we say these players are the best at generating turnovers, or are they doing something else simultaneously to distinguish themselves defensively from the other high-turnover players? Would we project other high-turnover players before the plays minus era (Jerry West, Stockton, and Jordan come to mind among guards) to also be able to reach these kinds of defensive impact heights?