Can any math expert explain what Jokic is doing to get such high defensive advanced stats?

[Lockdown504090]

I dunno, he might. I'm always up for a little contrarian argumentation.

Embiid does take a lot of plays off, too. Might be some elaborate stat argument based on that. Don't think it would end well but I'd hear the case out.

The only one I can think of is that the Sixers are one of the worst defensive transition teams (5th worse in PPP allowed), which may be partially explained by Embiid sometimes not hustling back on defense. I'm sure there are other factors of that stat which I'm unaware of.

I dont think you can pin bad transition defense on the center..they are usually the slowest guys out there and the least agile. You want embiid to be the first guy back on the break or something?

In the 76ers case, i think they have harden and joel who both fail at flops a lot, which is essentially a free fast break. They also both have live ball turnovers a lot, and doc teams have been bad since he left boston in this regard because he famously is one of the most chill coaches when it comes to preseason and rs fitness..... and embiid is too tired from grifting free throws for 8 months to get back on D.

[HotelVitale]

I watch a lot of both players and I think Jokic is the better player.

You think Jokic is the better defender than Embiid?

Nope. I said that I think Jokic is the better player in response to the bolded above.

100% of that post was about defense, think it was implied that sentence was about that side of the court.

[HotelVitale]

The only one I can think of is that the Sixers are one of the worst defensive transition teams (5th worse in PPP allowed), which may be partially explained by Embiid sometimes not hustling back on defense. I'm sure there are other factors of that stat which I'm unaware of.

I dont think you can pin bad transition defense on the center..they are usually the slowest guys out there and the least agile. You want embiid to be the first guy back on the break or something?

In the 76ers case, i think they have harden and joel who both fail at flops a lot, which is essentially a free fast break. They also both have live ball turnovers a lot, and doc teams have been bad since he left boston in this regard because he famously is one of the most chill coaches when it comes to preseason and rs fitness..... and embiid is too tired from grifting free throws for 8 months to get back on D.

I understand why you’d pick on the Embiid ft hustle, but it’s not really happening much anymore. There’s an occasional rip through move still, usually when less experienced players are on him. But he's doing two new things for the majority of touches now: facing up from triple threat and getting pocket passes off pn'r. He's decisive and makes his move right from them. You really wont see it much if you watch an Embiid game (when hes not being super lazy agaibst a bad team).

TOs still a thing though, and they do lead to a lot of fastbreak opps.

[Harry Garris]

I dont understand this Embiid is a great defender narrative that has been thrown around lately. Are people ignoring how he gets killed on the perimeter. I would be willing to ignore it if the Sixers were an elite defensive team but theyve been closer to average all season.

His defense has ups and downs. He's an elite rim protector when he's engaged and that's extremely valuable. But he absolutely has games and even stretches where he's lazy on that end.

Also he's playing with Harden and Maxey....Harden isn't the defensive liability some make him out to be, but he's hardly good. And Maxey is that bad.

Also every 7 footer that isn't some freak alien athlete gets killed on the perimeter. It's just physics. Guys at that size are never going to have the lateral quickness and foot speed to stay in front of a world class athlete.

I don't know why this is such a common criticism of centers. The only centers in the NBA that can really even guard high level ball handlers at all are the guys like Bam Adebayo who play the 5 but are in reality like 6'9 and have the body and physical profile of an oversized forward more than a big. There is no true 7 footer who can stay in front of a guard for long.

[ConSarnit]

DBPM is a purely box score derived stat that doesn't accurately measure a player's defensive contributions and is weighted by position and compared to teammates. Jokic has high DBPM because DBPM is Total BPM - OBPM. BPM weights for centres more liberally than OBPM in the stats that Jokic is unusually high on such as assists and defensive rebounds. The box score stats are also compared against his teammates, and since his DRB% and AST% are both top two in the league it suggests he outpaces his teammates on those stats by a significant amount. All this is basically saying that when Jokic gets 10 assists and 12DRB his OBPM increases but his BPM increases much more which drives up his DBPM.

Jokic isn't the only centre with a high DBPM for this exact reason - Sabonis is 3rd in the league in DRB% and 19th in AST% and as such is 13th in the league in DBPM.

You can read through https://www.basketball-reference.com/about/bpm2.html and see the coefficients and an explanation of the calculations. They even say that BPM is generally pretty good for measuring offense but should be taken with a grain of salt in regards to defense.

"What does this mean? Box Plus/Minus is good at measuring offense and solid overall, but the defensive numbers in particular should not be considered definitive. Look at the defensive values as a guide, but don't hesitate to discount them when a player is well known as a good or bad defender."

This post needs more attention. BPM gives greater value to stats that aren’t usually put up at certain positions. If you are a C who gets a lot of assists your BPM (and DBPM accordingly) will go up. It’s why prime Westbrook was high in DBPM. He got a lot of rebounds for a guard, which (for lack of a better term) BPM designates as “more impressive”

Here’s Daryl Morey’s take on advanced defensive stats: All publicly available advanced defensive stats are terrible. Even the internal team stats aren’t good, they’re just ok.

If NBA teams think their own proprietary advanced defensive stats aren’t even good, we should never be quoting the public ones.

Morey also said: to measure big man defense they pretty much use rim protection fg%, the amount of shots altered or deterred and defensive rebounding. Outside of rebounding these numbers would not favor Jokic very highly.

[Pennebaker]

Defensive rebounds, steals, deflections, percentage of rim shots contested

[dhsilv2]

I dont understand this Embiid is a great defender narrative that has been thrown around lately. Are people ignoring how he gets killed on the perimeter. I would be willing to ignore it if the Sixers were an elite defensive team but theyve been closer to average all season.

His defense has ups and downs. He's an elite rim protector when he's engaged and that's extremely valuable. But he absolutely has games and even stretches where he's lazy on that end.

Also he's playing with Harden and Maxey....Harden isn't the defensive liability some make him out to be, but he's hardly good. And Maxey is that bad.

Also every 7 footer that isn't some freak alien athlete gets killed on the perimeter. It's just physics. Guys at that size are never going to have the lateral quickness and foot speed to stay in front of a world class athlete.

I don't know why this is such a common criticism of centers. The only centers in the NBA that can really even guard high level ball handlers at all are the guys like Bam Adebayo who play the 5 but are in reality like 6'9 and have the body and physical profile of an oversized forward more than a big. There is no true 7 footer who can stay in front of a guard for long.

yep and people don't want to accept that the reason some look better is due to the systems and teammates.

[Lockdown504090]

I dont think you can pin bad transition defense on the center..they are usually the slowest guys out there and the least agile. You want embiid to be the first guy back on the break or something?

In the 76ers case, i think they have harden and joel who both fail at flops a lot, which is essentially a free fast break. They also both have live ball turnovers a lot, and doc teams have been bad since he left boston in this regard because he famously is one of the most chill coaches when it comes to preseason and rs fitness..... and embiid is too tired from grifting free throws for 8 months to get back on D.

I understand why you’d pick on the Embiid ft hustle, but it’s not really happening much anymore. There’s an occasional rip through move still, usually when less experienced players are on him. But he's doing two new things for the majority of touches now: facing up from triple threat and getting pocket passes off pn'r. He's decisive and makes his move right from them. You really wont see it much if you watch an Embiid game (when hes not being super lazy agaibst a bad team).

TOs still a thing though, and they do lead to a lot of fastbreak opps.

57 percent on 2 pointers, even though some of it is due to harden, this is crucial for him. Doc has gone to the 2017-18 cavs playbook and put embiid in the middle of the floor, some of the isos are reminiscent of dirk.

[arh1109]

I have no idea how most advanced stats are calculated. Most of them seem like garbage that need to be tweaked every season to keep a solid regression line. Kind of like a stock trading strategy algorithm. Super detailed player tracking stats combined with physics data might be useful.

[BostonCouchGM]

this is why often advanced stats are misleading or lack context. Embiid is just about one of the best defensive centers and Jokic is just about the worst. Anyone who actually watches basketball can see this. And Embiid has much worse defenders around him which makes his impact stand out even more.

[moderndarwin]

i hate on jokic defense all the time.

but if you understand basketball and you’ve played many years you know what fake effort is and what stupid defensive plays are.

Jokic rarely does either of those. When he’s too late to contest a shot or someone has the physical advantage he simply lets it go. Doesn’t over exert himself trying for that 1/10 chance. He generally focuses his energy on the plays he can impact.

While this is a great way for him to play defense given his shortcoming of speed, lateral quickness, vertical jump etc it has two problems. 1 - it appears lazy and or makes you seem like a bad defender. 2 - if you’re a teammate it’s uninspiring usually. The best defenders inspire others with their effort and intensity. Defense more than offense is a team effort and you need people to give themselves up for the betterment of the team.

As a big man that above role is even more important. You have the back line defense and visuals of what’s going on and the most time to react usually. It becomes tough in the playoff with him as the anchor.

[GopherIt!]

DWS, DBPM, Defensive RAPTOR

if you aren't aware of these #s for Jokic I don't consider you a basketball fan

just thinking…

how the hell did we get a defensive metric called raptor?
raptors have short wingspans and have poor lateral quickness.

i will admit their on ball defense is ferocious and they have high IQ (clever girl.)

[toooskies]

DBPM is a purely box score derived stat that doesn't accurately measure a player's defensive contributions. Jokic has high DBPM because DBPM is Total BPM - OBPM. BPM weights by position more liberally than OBPM in the stats that Jokic is unusually high on such as assists and defensive rebounds. The box score stats are also compared against his teammates, his high DRB and high assists in comparison to his teammates increases his BPM more than his OBPM. All this is basically saying that when Jokic gets 10 assists his OBPM increases but his BPM increases even more which drives up his DBPM.

You can read through https://www.basketball-reference.com/about/bpm2.html and see the coefficients and an explanation of the calculations. They even say that BPM is generally pretty good for measuring offense but should be taken with a grain of salt in regards to defense.

"What does this mean? Box Plus/Minus is good at measuring offense and solid overall, but the defensive numbers in particular should not be considered definitive. Look at the defensive values as a guide, but don't hesitate to discount them when a player is well known as a good or bad defender."

The bpm2.html links has some neat stuff in it, including a plot of BPM .vs. RAPM that shows individual points and the overall r-value for the fit. You only need to click on individual players to see how far BPM can drift from predicting the actual RAPM value.

It may work out to be not too crappy on average, but any specific player may be an outlier, and I get the impression an r-value of 0.427 for DBPM2 suggests exactly what the author tells us (when in doubt do not trust this stat). The r-value for OBPM2 by comparison is 0.655 which is still not great.

All this before even deciding if we think RAPM is reliably telling us something useful or if this model is actually holding up after all the changes that have happened.

Here's a reddit thread on BPM and why it's awful for Jokic: https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1184q67/oc_why_nikola_jokic_is_in_fact_not_the_best/

Effectively, DBPM = BPM - OBPM. However, the positive value of some stats for OBPM are different from their coefficients for BPM. Assists seem to have... defensive value? From the basketball-reference page:

Assists are interesting. For guards, the BPM and OBPM coefficients are similar. For bigs, though, the offensive value of assists is less than the total value. Assists are a significant indicator of defensive skill for bigs.

So, because Jokic is getting a crazy number of assists for a big man, the stat is (erroneously) assuming he's an outstanding defender. It's just a flaw in the math.

(This is also probably why guys like Harden and Westbrook end up with positive DBPMs-- it both calculated that they're big men because of rebounds, and then gave them defensive credit for assists.)

Do not use DBPM. For that matter, don't use BPM at all. It's giving defensive credit for offensive stats that make no sense, and the creator thinks they are being clever because that's what the numerical regressions say happen.

Not sure about the other stats, especially ones that don't publish their formulas/methodologies.

[bearadonisdna]

Big man metrics are inflated by their 7 foot efficiency.
If Jokic is the supreme stat padder he makes his matchup with even 20 and 10 look weak .
Thats my guess for why he has the best DBPM in the league .
But handing out these mvps to big because their PER needs to stop .
Anyways the voters do what they do they want but they backed themselves into a corner making Jokic a transcendent mvp player when his teams aren’t competitive

[blabla]

It doesn't make any sense at all.

Embiid is averaging 10.2 rebounds (8.4 defensive), 1.1 steals, 1.7 blocks. The 6ers as a whole have the 9th best defensive rating in the league at about 113.2 points allowed per 100 possessions. Their defensive rebounding is 7th in the league in terms of %.

Jokic is averaging 11.9 rebounds (9.5 defensive) 1.2 steals, .7 blocks. The Nuggets as a whole have the 16th best defensive rating in the league at about 114.4 points allowed per 100 possessions. Their defensive rebounding is 9th in the league in terms of %.

By purely WATCHING the game, no one would pick Jokic as a better player than Embiid and yet all the metrics paint Jokic as this elite defensive presence. I watched Embiid have 4 incredible blocks last night and watched Jokic be a revolving door in the paint vs. the Raptors not too long ago.

I think this has to be related to the team composition both deal with. Jokic plays with a team that is worse overall defensively but does so much rebounding and improves them so much in the on/off numbers that the elite offense and scoring that he is delivering is making their defense look better because his team is out pacing an opponent.

I can't think of any other reason why. Outside of maybe Bruce Brown and KCP who are solid, the guys that Jokic has are not good defenders at all, but with Jokic they win off of offense.

Denver is allowing 113.6/100 with Jokic on, and 117.5 with Jokic off
Philly is allowing 112/100 with Embiid on, 116 with Embiid off

That's virtually identical.
Philly may be 10 spots higher in DRtg rank, but it's only a single point difference per 100, & the blame gets spread out across the team

As other people have mentioned, steals are usually a very important part of the formula - Jokic has a bit of an edge there. He's got the edge in DReb% as well, which makes it 2 out of 3 among the more often looked at defensive stats (STL, BLK, DRB)

Lastly, a lot defensive formulas give assists a decent weight, because high assist numbers help predict defensive performance, probably because it's a proxy for basketball IQ, or playing more team-oriented basketball

[76ciology]

His teammates are setting him up for deflections.

Slow down the drive, clip the wings, the drive becomes slower and the lift would be lower. This makes it easy for Jokic to generate his deflection.

These deflections and +/- (because of bad bench play) is making the stats think it’s his deflections that is the reason why the team plays great defense when he’s on the court.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

A few things should be considered, on top:
1) I am not so sure Embiid is much than Jokic, on average, during the regular season. he can be great when he wants but he doesn't try really all the time
2) I think it's extremely complicated to fully grasp what's Jokic's real defensive impact, during the regular season. He's extremely bad at the "loud" things (move his feet, meet a player a high to protect the rim) while being excellent in less obvious or even more gimmicky things (strip the ball, intercept it, kick it, prerotate, secure the defensive rebound)

[pipfan]

I love Jokic but his defense is a huge issue-I just don't think he can be a solid defender and it might hold him back.

I can't stand Embiid-his flopping is off the charts-but he is very good on D. Now, we're not talking about Hakeem/DRob level of D, but he's very good. I think he should win the MVP at this point, with Denver slipping a bit

[Gusto1903]

After reading some of this thread, i guess Jokic should clap the ground some more lol

[jasonxxx102]

He's totally defensive stat padding

He sort of is.

DBPM weighs center assists about the same as blocks. So everytime he goes for those triple doubles, he's padding his defense.

I had no idea DBPM included ast% in the calculation.... that makes no sense