youngcrev wrote:76ciology wrote:Somethings I saw on ISO defense that is quite interesting
- Tatum is a very good ISO defender .72ppp (sorry about my earlier take)
- marcus smart (1.11ppp) wow
- jaylen brown (1.16ppp) wow
- brogdon (1.15ppp) wow
2 most targeted on their ISO defense
- Grant Williams and Al Horford (.98 each)
Sixers
- maxey (.78ppp) wow
- most targeted Niang, (.86ppp) wow
- 2nd-3rd most targeted Tobias and Harden (.87 and .93 respectively)
- Tucker (1.09ppp) wow so bad
We’re tied for 6th best based on ppp on ISO defense (.92), Celts are 22nd .96
Bucks? 25th at .99ppp
We’re second best team in the league on ISO, behind the Mavs. 4th in ppp and 2nd in the league in iso pts per game.
The numbers are too small to derive much meaning IMO, and even if they weren't I'm not really sure what the takeaway would be. Teams don't tend to leave bad defenders in isolation, which causes problems elsewhere while scrambling to cover for them.
If we actually were good in isolation I don't imagine we'd play so much zone.
Not only that, there is a lot of context missed in there.
Maxey defends an ISO with a 4.8% frequency, Smart with almost the double 8.0%. If you consider we're one of the slowest teams on the league, that makes a lot of difference in possessions between both (and even then, in both cases this results in below 1 possession per game).
Not to even think about the fact that guys like Smart/Brown/Tatum are normally assigned to great/the best players on their opponents, which means they're defending above average ISO guys; so they probably are defending guys that score above 1 or 0.9 ppp on ISO anyways. If Smart, to name one, can reduce the ppp of an opponent from 1.20 ppp (to say a number) to 1.11 ppp that's a great result for the defense.
Guys like Maxey or Niang have good ppp defending ISO because you're hiding them on defense and letting them guard bad ISO/low frequency ISO players like FVV and your objective, in fact, is to try to negate switches hunting them, hence the low frequency. That's why their ppp looks good even if their defense is bad.
This is the same reason why Tucker looks like a bad defender there too.