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I honestly still don't understand how a player with such weak rebounding could be considered the best defensive player in the league. He has always been one of the worst rebounders in the league. who has been worse?

Pretty much any guard who finished as DPOY is probably ahead of him for worst DPOY.

One_and_Done wrote:Pretty much any guard who finished as DPOY is probably ahead of him for worst DPOY.

I will take Gary Payton, Marcus Smart, Jordan 10/10 over JJJ defensively. Not even close either.

bigboi wrote:

One_and_Done wrote:Pretty much any guard who finished as DPOY is probably ahead of him for worst DPOY.

I will take Gary Payton, Marcus Smart, Jordan 10/10 over JJJ defensively. Not even close either.

Nah. A guard can't influence a team's D as much as a big.

One_and_Done wrote:

bigboi wrote:

One_and_Done wrote:Pretty much any guard who finished as DPOY is probably ahead of him for worst DPOY.

I will take Gary Payton, Marcus Smart, Jordan 10/10 over JJJ defensively. Not even close either.

Nah. A guard can't influence a team's D as much as a big.

Yes, they can. They do all the time. I honestly don't know where y'all got that lie from. Plus a poor defensive rebounder is always a defensive liability.

One_and_Done wrote:

bigboi wrote:

One_and_Done wrote:Pretty much any guard who finished as DPOY is probably ahead of him for worst DPOY.

I will take Gary Payton, Marcus Smart, Jordan 10/10 over JJJ defensively. Not even close either.

Nah. A guard can't influence a team's D as much as a big.

Any big? It’s not like we comparing these guards to Duncan, Dwight and Gobert tiers.

Jordan, Kobe , smart, Payton, artest are tiers better than JJJ.

Give me prime Jrue over JJJ

bigboi wrote:I honestly still don't understand how a player with such weak rebounding could be considered the best defensive player in the league. He has always been one of the worst rebounders in the league. who has been worse?

Easily the worth among the dpoy of the year imo.

I seen JJJ contain wing players consistently. In a pick and roll and space era i think that’s more important than getting a couple more rebounds.

bigboi wrote:

One_and_Done wrote:

bigboi wrote:
I will take Gary Payton, Marcus Smart, Jordan 10/10 over JJJ defensively. Not even close either.

Nah. A guard can't influence a team's D as much as a big.

Yes, they can. They do all the time. I honestly don't know where y'all got that lie from. Plus a poor defensive rebounder is always a defensive liability.

The Grizzlies had the 2nd best Defensive Rating in the season JJJ won DPOY and they were a good rebounding team. Of course it's not great if your big is a bad rebounder if the rest of the team is as well, bad Memphis was totally fine. Are you really trying to argue that JJJ was a defensive liability that season, as the best defender on a team that was 2nd in DRtg?

-Luke- wrote:

bigboi wrote:

One_and_Done wrote:Nah. A guard can't influence a team's D as much as a big.

Yes, they can. They do all the time. I honestly don't know where y'all got that lie from. Plus a poor defensive rebounder is always a defensive liability.

The Grizzlies had the 2nd best Defensive Rating in the season JJJ won DPOY and they were a good rebounding team. Of course it's not great if your big is a bad rebounder if the rest of the team is as well, bad Memphis was totally fine. Are you really trying to argue that JJJ was a defensive liability that season, as the best defender on a team that was 2nd in DRtg?

That’s a team effort. If they were a good rebounding team and JJJ was still a poor rebounder, what does that say?

bigboi wrote:

-Luke- wrote:

bigboi wrote:
Yes, they can. They do all the time. I honestly don't know where y'all got that lie from. Plus a poor defensive rebounder is always a defensive liability.

The Grizzlies had the 2nd best Defensive Rating in the season JJJ won DPOY and they were a good rebounding team. Of course it's not great if your big is a bad rebounder if the rest of the team is as well, bad Memphis was totally fine. Are you really trying to argue that JJJ was a defensive liability that season, as the best defender on a team that was 2nd in DRtg?

That’s a team effort. If they were a good rebounding team and JJJ was still a poor rebounder, what does that say?

It does say that the Grizzlies didn't need more rebounding from JJJ to have a good defense. The claim that he is a defensive liability is ridiculous. They were one of the best defenses in the league with a defensive liability at center? How does that work?

bigboi wrote:

One_and_Done wrote:

bigboi wrote:
I will take Gary Payton, Marcus Smart, Jordan 10/10 over JJJ defensively. Not even close either.

Nah. A guard can't influence a team's D as much as a big.

Yes, they can. They do all the time. I honestly don't know where y'all got that lie from. Plus a poor defensive rebounder is always a defensive liability.

That rather depends on what you mean.

Defensive rebounding is, I believe, typically thought of as a team venture. That is, the collection of the rebound by the defense, the prevention of an offensive rebound is much more important than who grabs it. Thus the the maintenance of a defensive shell, boxing out is crucial. Conversely whilst coaching may dictate some intent, offensive rebounding, which isn't the default, is more typically generated by an individual.

Thus, a player who compromises team defensive rebounding is, if not always (there may be some trade off, allowing for an even greater benefit), then at least typically something like "a liability". But a player who is not a productive box-score defensive rebounder needn't be one if they nonetheless contribute to effective team rebounding.

I couldn't say where Jackson's 18.8 Dreb% would put him on an individual productivity level. But at a glance in each of the last three years Memphis has been better at securing defensive rebounds with him on the floor than off it. That could be a product of lineups, something like Four Factors RAPM is probably better suiting to parsing that sort of thing out. But at first glance it's hardly clear that he's "a liability".

No. Smart the year before was certainly worse. Mobley last season on about the same level. It was on the weaker side though.

Jackson is a notably better team rebounder than his individual numbers look - though still probably a bit below average (for a starting 4/5). Still, Adams was basically the perfect fit as a GOAT tier rebounder who controls the paint and doesn't do much else, shouldn't have let him go.

There is a difference between individual and team rebounding and there has been articles about this since over a decade ago:

https://thebrooklyngame.com/brook-lopez-rebounding-underrated/

This is not an excuse for JJJ though who is also a negative on team defensive rebounds per 3 factor RAPM. But the impact of his subpar rebounding is fairly minimal in contrast to everything else he provides. There is a reason why he was one of three players at the top of the league at -7.5 on-court defense (Caruso, JJJ, Lopez). Personally, I would have given the DPOY that year to Brook Lopez because of his higher minutes without fouling, larger team dropoff, and stronger defense in higher leverage situations. But JJJ wasn't an awful pick. Few guards can reach his level - Caruso did after all - but Caruso is basically the GOAT defensive guard per possession and no guard scoring 20 a game is close to that level.

bigboi wrote:I honestly still don't understand how a player with such weak rebounding could be considered the best defensive player in the league. He has always been one of the worst rebounders in the league. who has been worse?

I’d point out that:

A) only defensive rebounding matters in this context.

B) individual defensive rebounding impact is a minor thing compared to actually affecting shots. Defensive rebounding is really a team thing in contrast with Offensive which is mostly an individual thing.

C) the Grizz don’t actually have awful defensive rebounding.

I might also get into the fact looking at an individual players defensive rebounds is not a good way to evaluate defensive rebounding impact… but in the case of JJJ I don’t really want to imply his rebounding is great.

It’s never been great, but the effect of that on his overall defense also shouldn’t be overblown.

Also, I’m not in love with JJJ as a DPOY so I again don’t want to talk him up too much, but I’ll also say I find his win to be less problematic than the choice of Smart the year prior, Marcus Camby a couple decades back, or basically any DPOY of the Alvin Robertson era that doesn’t involve a big.


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bigboi wrote:

One_and_Done wrote:

bigboi wrote:
I will take Gary Payton, Marcus Smart, Jordan 10/10 over JJJ defensively. Not even close either.

Nah. A guard can't influence a team's D as much as a big.

Yes, they can. They do all the time. I honestly don't know where y'all got that lie from. Plus a poor defensive rebounder is always a defensive liability.

We’ve got 80 years of evidence telling us that bugs rule on defense - prior to that point this was not known because there were no “bigs” as we know them today.

This was a known thing thing before they had any real stats for it, so just go look up an article on Bill Russell from the time and you’ll see it.

If you can grapple with data, plenty of it supporting that this long held belief is generally correct. Starting place for new researchers is basketball-reference.com.


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Marcus Smart had no elite attributes the year he won.

At least in the mid 2010’s he was more athletic, and could keep guys in front.

bigboi wrote:

-Luke- wrote:

bigboi wrote:
Yes, they can. They do all the time. I honestly don't know where y'all got that lie from. Plus a poor defensive rebounder is always a defensive liability.

The Grizzlies had the 2nd best Defensive Rating in the season JJJ won DPOY and they were a good rebounding team. Of course it's not great if your big is a bad rebounder if the rest of the team is as well, bad Memphis was totally fine. Are you really trying to argue that JJJ was a defensive liability that season, as the best defender on a team that was 2nd in DRtg?

That’s a team effort. If they were a good rebounding team and JJJ was still a poor rebounder, what does that say?

That JJJ was part of the successful team strategy for defensive rebounding.

I get you’re implying that if the team was good at this despite JJJ being bad, it must mean that everyone else was even better than we’d otherwise suppose, but the reality is that if your big is truly catastrophically negative in his defensive rebounding impact, then there’s no way for the smalls to make up for this.

A guy like Westbrook ( or Ja ) isn’t getting defensive boards by virtue of individual greatness but because the team strategy is for others to do the dirty work so that he can get the ball to start the offense quickly.

Any time you see a guard get a defensive board in the interior note what the bigs were doing to allow him to get it.

And any time you see a guard get a defensive board further out, remember this is mostly just about lucky bounces.

This is not to say that one guard can’t be more impactful at defensive rebounding than another, but we should always keep in mind that if max rebounding were the goal of NBA basketball, no one with Ja’s diminutive size would be in the arena unless they bought a ticket.


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-Luke- wrote:

bigboi wrote:

-Luke- wrote:The Grizzlies had the 2nd best Defensive Rating in the season JJJ won DPOY and they were a good rebounding team. Of course it's not great if your big is a bad rebounder if the rest of the team is as well, bad Memphis was totally fine. Are you really trying to argue that JJJ was a defensive liability that season, as the best defender on a team that was 2nd in DRtg?

That’s a team effort. If they were a good rebounding team and JJJ was still a poor rebounder, what does that say?

It does say that the Grizzlies didn't need more rebounding from JJJ to have a good defense. The claim that he is a defensive liability is ridiculous. They were one of the best defenses in the league with a defensive liability at center? How does that work?

He’s in his prime currently yet his rebounding has gotten worse pretty much every season and the paint is literally wide open. So your argument holds 0 weight. JJJ just isn’t a good rebounder point blank.

Doctor MJ wrote:

bigboi wrote:I honestly still don't understand how a player with such weak rebounding could be considered the best defensive player in the league. He has always been one of the worst rebounders in the league. who has been worse?

I’d point out that:

A) only defensive rebounding matters in this context.

B) individual defensive rebounding impact is a minor thing compared to actually affecting shots. Defensive rebounding is really a team thing in contrast with Offensive which is mostly an individual thing.

C) the Grizz don’t actually have awful defensive rebounding.

I might also get into the fact looking at an individual players defensive rebounds is not a good way to evaluate defensive rebounding impact… but in the case of JJJ I don’t really want to imply his rebounding is great.

It’s never been great, but the effect of that on his overall defense also shouldn’t be overblown.

Also, I’m not in love with JJJ as a DPOY so I again don’t want to talk him up too much, but I’ll also say I find his win to be less problematic than the choice of Smart the year prior, Marcus Camby a couple decades back, or basically any DPOY of the Alvin Robertson era that doesn’t involve a big.


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In no world should a DPOY level big be grabbing similar rebounds per game as their 6’2 point guard who isn’t even known as a strong rebounder. Jjj is not a good rebounder

bigboi wrote:

-Luke- wrote:

bigboi wrote:
That’s a team effort. If they were a good rebounding team and JJJ was still a poor rebounder, what does that say?

It does say that the Grizzlies didn't need more rebounding from JJJ to have a good defense. The claim that he is a defensive liability is ridiculous. They were one of the best defenses in the league with a defensive liability at center? How does that work?

He’s in his prime currently yet his rebounding has gotten worse pretty much every season and the paint is literally wide open. So your argument holds 0 weight. JJJ just isn’t a good rebounder point blank.

This is about his DPOY season, so how he plays now doesn't matter. I'm also disappointed by his (lack of) development since then, but you specifically asked about DPOY.