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Raps fan here, found this article from yesterday on ESPN:

LINK

But poor Garnett -- probably more than the other candidates -- suffers from a very real flaw of conventional basketball statistics: they don't measure defense beyond steals, blocks, and defensive rebounds. So when it's time to tally up his contributions with some numbers, his numbers look smaller than the other candidates, and a lot of what he does best is missed.

Or, it was missed, until Celtic owner Wyc Grousbeck leaked some internal Celtics numbers on the radio in Boston last week.

At about the 6:30 mark of this interview on WEEI's Dale and Holley show, Grousbeck says:

Players that KG is guarding are shooting 13.1% below the league average at their position. So he's guarding power forwards, and they're shooting 52% league-wide, or whatever it is. Guys that he's guarding are shooting 39% all year. That's just KG, one on one, against his man, when he's on the court.

LeBron's guys are shooting 2% below the league average for their position. Kobe's are 3% below. Chris Paul's are 4% below. And KG is keeping people 13% below. In other words, he's snuffing them out.

The Celtics are one of the league's most sophisticated teams when it comes to using statistics. A Celtics staffer verified for me that these numbers sound right. Assuming these numbers accurate, I guess we have two things: a nice new set of statistics to support a Kevin Garnett MVP candidacy, and some insight into some ways teams are measuring defensive contributions.

Pretty amazing.

I knew about Garnett's defense and the effect it would have on the rest of the team but I realized about 20 games into the season I was severely underrating Kendrick Perkins' defense. Rather, I was severely underrating the combination of Perkins and Garnett on defense. Together, they have been absolutely nasty.

Something even more amazing, as of 30 March 08:

Kevin Garnett (w/ Perkins)

Team ORtg 112.30
Team DRtg 94.09
Team OReb% 28.09%
Team DReb% 74.21%
Expected Win% .922

Kevin Garnett (w/o Perkins)

Team ORtg 111.75
Team DRtg 103.30
Team OReb% 27.85%
Team DReb% 69.14%
Expected Win% .750

Now realize that 80.65%, on average, of the oppositions starters have been in the game when Perkins and Garnett have been paired. IOW, the Perkins/Garnett pairing has been doing their damage against 4.03+ starters on the floor and not feasting on back-ups.

Here is hoping KG to win DPOY this season, and maybe Perk could also win the award in the future. Is it possible?? This year, both play better defense than Camby imo, especially one on one defense.

it was real cool of Wyc to call up unprovoked too. he made a real good case for KG

If that's not an MVP, what is?

i wonder what Amare's percentage is??

A few more numbers in comparison to the other DPoY candidates:

Kevin Garnett: 12.3 PER allowed, defense gives up 4.3 fewer points/100 possessions with him on the court

Marcus Camby: 16.5 PER allowed, defense gives up 1.6 fewer points/100 possessions on-court

Shane Battier: 15.3 PER allowed, defense gives up .2 more points/100 possessions on court

Tim Duncan: 16.1 PER allowed, defense gives up .9 fewer points/100 possessions on-court

Numbers from 82games.com. Translation. PER is a measure of efficiency, and a PER of 15.0 is the league average. KG is the only of the group of outstanding defenders who holds his individual opponent well under league average. When KG leaves the court the Celtics team defense is more than 4 points worse than when he's on the court, much bigger margins than for the others. In other words, KG is locking his own man up and also anchoring a stifling team defense on a level well beyond any of the other main candidates for DPoY.

Screw the MVP...I want a championship. Kobe or LeBron can have it as far as I am concerned. And as far as KG goes, his legacy is more hinging on a championship than an MVP.

Good stuff! Thanks for the link bro.

Holy crap, those are some amazing stats. 13% below normal? man, i knew KG was good but that is some ridic ish. nice stats frmo Pogue too, i do think Perk is nearly as big a reason why our team is a top defensive club.

Wow that's impressive. I often criticize Garnett playing outside too much and I even find his "enthusiasm" a bit alienating but you can't really argue with this. He really is a unique and uniquely dominant player.

Collinto wrote:Screw the MVP...I want a championship. Kobe or LeBron can have it as far as I am concerned. And as far as KG goes, his legacy is more hinging on a championship than an MVP.

I agree, I'd rather have a championship, but he should at least be in the serious discussion for MVP, and he isn't (it's all Kobe, LeBron, and Chris Paul)

MyInsatiableOne wrote:If that's not an MVP, what is?

Probably DPOY, which is something to be proud of, IMVHO..... I'd be shocked if he didn't get it this season.

BadMuthaCeltic wrote:-= original quote snipped =-
Probably DPOY, which is something to be proud of, IMVHO..... I'd be shocked if he didn't get it this season.

Here's my thing. KG is a very good offensive player. You could make a very legitimate argument that he would make the All NBA team on his offensive talents alone. So if he wins the Defensive Player of the Year and is acknowledged as THE best defensive player in the NBA on top of being one of the best offensive big men in the league...doesn't that really strengthen the case that Garnett is the MVP?

I like counterpart PER, but it needs to be taken in context with other measures....counterpart PER, if you look at it league-wide, also seems to be dependent partially on one's team, indicating that team defensive schemes tend to proportionately affect this measure aside from individual differences. (quick note: I'm not sure how 82games comes up with the figures for this, for example, on the by position page it shows that KG's opponent counterpart posts a PER of 13.5 when he is at PF, and 16.6 when he is at C).

Looking at defensive +/- concurrently helps to balance this impact, because being on a team with a good defensive scheme makes it tougher to post one of the team's better +/- figures. Moreover, guys like Kobe and Lebron, who tend to post better counterpart PERs partially because their counterpart has to spend so much effort guarding them, tend to be hurt by defensive +/- because their teams score so much when they are in the game their opponent is liable to score at least X many extra points for every extra point scored when they are in the game.

Ray Allen for example is posting an even better counterpart PER, but has one of the worst defensive +/-'s on the team. Whats extremely impressive about KG, is aside from his really low counterpart PER, and his respectable enough box score stats, he's got the best +/- on the best defensive team in the league. (whats also interesting here is this would indicate that Ray Allen is a good man defender but poor team defender, but Perk and Rondo complement that, perhaps a large part of our success....another random note from 82games.com - Posey has a poor defensive +/- and one of the poorer counterpart PERs, but his counterpart PER seems to be a bit lower when he is @ SF, his offensive +/- is poor as well, which objectively means that those calling for no Posey @ PF are on target for the most part).

You could argue KG's counterpart PER is more impressive since we often have him guarding the opposition's best big man, but I don't buy into that because you also have the phenomenom of, opposition knows he's ur best defender, they are more likely to attack our other guys, and that balances things out IMO.

Anyways, I like KG for DPOY. But IMO he has too much help elsewhere to be my MVP. I think calling him MVP is disrespectful to PP (and vice versa). I'll add, PP also has a real low counterpart PER and a solid enough +/- - thats a solid statement about his defense. It might be different if guys like Kobe and Lebron weren't so damn good and so important to their teams. But IMO one of them should be named MVP.

I'll add further, last year when I played around with the defensive (and offensive) composite scores posted on 82games.com and really made my first foray into being a stat geek, the end results would have indicated that according to last year's stats and performances, KG was the best player in the league - but factoring in positional depth and the fact that he couldn't be considered a C or SF, he was the league's third most valuable player behind Duncan and Lebron, respectively. This season he's done more in some respects, but has done less in others (rebounding, for example) because he hasn't had to.

Here are KG breakdowns, by pairing, at the PF and C positions. In the instance of 'Others', it is a catch-all of players not named Scalabrine, Perkins, Powe, Davis or Posey at the PF or C positions.

What's fascinating about that chart is how strong Powe's #'s are; we know how good KG is.

cloverleaf wrote:What's fascinating about that chart is how strong Powe's #'s are; we know how good KG is.

What you are looking at is the team numbers when Powe and Garnett are combined in the frontcourt.

What was surprising to me was that Scalabrine and Garnett did so well as a pairing despite not rebounding much as a unit (outscoring the opposition by 57 points when combined.) Granted it was in just 82 minutes. Powe and Garnett have only been combined for 73 minutes (I think, I am on my laptop so I will have to double-check my PC later.)

Davis has been paired with Garnett for ~180 MP. Now realize outside of that one real good showing in Detroit, the Garnett/Davis pairing hasn't been all that special. In fact, it hasn't been very good on the whole.

Posey has been paired with Garnett for over 330 MP with Posey playing PF to Garnett's C. While they have certainly been a good pairing, as compared to the rest of the league, they haven't necessarily been the best pairing for the Celtics.

I just found it interesting how the pairings were working.

[sidenote]I would do it for the entire team but the stupid phpbb that RealGM uses is absolutely terrible for utilizing the code command. Formatting would be terrible. Maybe I can come up something. Stupid phpbb.

Ya Scal played early when we were like totally destroying teams earlier in the season.

I think Doc's thinking with Scal and Posey playing the 4 allows KG to play in the post more by spreading the floor or whatever.