Post#399 » by yoyoboy » Wed Feb 22, 2023 3:57 pm
People frankly just don’t care about actually being on the court as much as they should.
I think JJJ is the most impactful per-minute defender in the NBA. But he’s played a total of 1088 minutes this season. 39.6% of the team’s possible minutes this year.
Compare that to a guy like Mobley who’s played 2016 minutes this season. Almost 1000 more minutes and near twice as many as JJJ. And the 5th most minutes in the league this year.
For one, it’s much harder to maintain the same defensive performance the more minutes you play. That’s not just due to the fact it wears you down over the course of the season and you can’t expend the same amount of energy, but also because variance is less of a statistical factor, so things such as opponent offensive efficiency can regress and you won’t have as extreme of values across defensive measures. Furthermore, for guys who don’t miss time who are also on teams with backups who can adequately replace them in lineups for short stints, you don’t give your team the chance to “miss you” and that’s reflected in the plus-minus data maybe not being as impressive.
But more importantly, you’re providing ZERO defensive value to your team when you’re not on the court. For a guy to play half as many minutes as other contenders (for MVP, DPOY, or any other award) and still win it, he would have to theoretically be so far ahead of the rest of the competition it’s not even funny.
I think it shows time and time again on this board that people really don’t value sample sizes or availability. Which is why you’ll see people extrapolating to per-36 minute figures often, dismissing the habit of missing significant time every season, and being willing to crown one guy better than another player based on the first 5 games of the season or a short playoff series.
