AEnigma wrote:Will quickly add McGrady’s defence was undersold a little in that write-up. It was not amazing that year or anything, but his boxscore defensive numbers were still better than you would see from most players in that role (if not Wade or obviously Lebron), and I feel that his history before 2003 (i.e. without a historically high offensive load) evidences good to respectable defensive value, and that shows up in the 2005 postseason against Dirk too.
I am going off a couple games i recently watched of him to analizehere, so i easily could be underating McGrady. For a lot of these players i am trying to analize 1-2 games in depth which is what i can manage time-wise
I will mention somethingh i disagree with you here tho.
All players can do more in defense (unless they are inept in that area) the lower their offensive load is. But we cannot take Rockets McGrady Defense and combine it with Orlando McGrady offense because those two thinghs cannot happen at the same time (due to offensive load)
Could McGrady have been even more valuable in 2003 with a smaller load offenseively and more energy to spend in defense? Is a possibility. But not one we can necesarrily assume
Now, back to Mcgrady i dont think he was bad from what i watched. But was not a significant positive in my view
The mistakes off ball were not that many but also not as few as the best off ball defenders i have noticed. The individual defense was solid and pistons didnt target him which is a plus. But i think there is only so much value a wing who is guarding a static shooter in most possesions can provide even if he himself doesnt get exploited
Roamers who guard few possesions but dont provide much in help defense of some kind are slight positives at best in my view (which is the impression i got from Tmac). Not a weakness for the defense but not a needle mover either which
That is why i made the comparision to lebron who may not guard all that many possesions but adds a lot of value in rim protection as a help defender. Not all athletic tall wings can be effective rim helpers which is why the ones that can are so valuable
So while l think defense is an advantage for tmac in comparision to luka and westbrook specifically i dont think he was what i would call a "impactful defender" or clearly above average
I have McGrady defense ahead of luka precisely because he didnt get targeted by pistons the way teams succesfully target luka (and ahead of westbrook who makes too many mistakes off ball on top of his man defense being just meh)
There is really no shortage of peak options if people want to stick with it and truly try to give all the top guys their due. Seem to be five consensus names right now for the current group, then you have five current players who have been discussed, the Penny/Pippen/Mourning group from the 1990s, Frazier and Barry as the title winning lead creators, and legitimately like eight pre-merger bigs or forwards who all have been heavily considered in the past… Pretty easy to get right around fifty even without looking at atypical peak options like Reggie or Manu or Drexler or Moncrief or Marques Johnson or Grant Hill or D-Will or Lillard or Isiah.