Alperen Sengun is anchoring a top 5 defense. Is Jokic-like ceiling really out of the question?

[Sane]

Sengun is very flashy so his offense will always steal the spotlight but the reason he has elevated so much is that in the other 50% of the game, he is playing very good defense. This is a shocking development, most people thought he wouldn't be able to do that in his entire career.

I made this thread because I think the guy REALLY deserves his flowers for the defense he's playing. His #1 player comp was Enes Kanter who didn't play a lick of defense or have any playmaking ability. That was insulting and slightly racist.

Obviously, his defense is still in its early stages. We just started working on it 20-30 games ago and he's ahead of schedule. It will still get better. The one remaining step before he can elevate into unstoppable status on offense is 3pt shooting. He's already at 31% shooting, increasing his volume each season. He worked on it in the summer and his FT% is climbing fast, so I think he will finish above 33% for the season. A Sengun who can burn teams for leaving him open at the 3PT line is really game over for all his defenders.

Do you think there's a good chance Sengun can reach 90% of Jokic's level? Jokic is on the brink of becoming an All Time Great so to say he will become Jokic, it's not really fair to Jokic. Jokic is worth MORE than the max. However I think we can all agree that a 90% Jokic is still worth the max and probably a superstar level player.

Can Alpy get there?

[Bum Adebayo]

You don't realize the outlier Jokic is.

[HotelVitale]

Can you make an argument that his defense is good? Not saying it's not but it doesn't seem like you can just skip to 'his team's defense is good and he plays a lot on the team, therefore he's a killer defender.' If the point of this thread is to say 'he's arrived as a legit defender' I think you have to make that case before skipping to the implications of it.

(Also small thing but 'comps' are always, always stupid. If you're paying any attention to them to evaluate a player you're already lost.)

[tooler]

Great story and great player. The only thing that gives me pause about this line of thinking is Nikola Vucevic also anchored a top 5 defense at one point. (Looking this up again, looks like they fell to 8th that season.) I saw this blurb in ESPN's power rankings this week:

The 21-year-old Sengun, considered a defensive liability entering this season, has held up well on that end of the floor for a team allowing the sixth fewest points per 100 possessions (111.3). The Rockets, firmly in the Western Conference playoff race, scheme to protect Sengun as much as possible, and coach Ime Udoka credits the young center for using his intelligence and good hands (1.1 steals per game) to contribute defensively.

Like you said, there's still a lot of work to do, and modern coaching staffs seem to be really good at hiding weak links, at least in the regular season. But overall it seems very promising.

[HoopsterJones]

I wouldn’t want to cap or limit a 3rd year player’s potential, but Sengun reaching Jokic’s level of exceptional all around skills and shooting efficiency on all three levels isn’t favorable.

[Texas Chuck]

being on a top 5 defense is not the same as anchoring it.

Sengun is a really good offensive player. But the gap between him(and everyone) and Jokic is still massive. We can give him his flowers without damning him with this kind of hyperbolic comparison.

[Chuck Everett]

FVV, Dillon, Jabari, Tate, Eason and Jeff Green are all plus defenders around Sengun. He's gotten better but he isn't exactly the reason their D is better.

[MoneyTalks41890]

Sengun is a 28% three point shooter for his career, and 30% this year. Jokic has never been that bad of a shooter.

[Primedeion]

He isn't anchoring anything.

[Sane]

Sengun is a 28% three point shooter for his career, and 30% this year. Jokic has never been that bad of a shooter.

You are exaggerating. Jokic is slightly better on slightly higher volume in his early career. In his first 5 seasons (20-24 years old) he hit 33, 32, 39, 30 and 31% from 3PT range.

Sengun (19 to 21 years old) has hit 25, 33 and 30%.

Anyone would guess these two are roughly on the same shooting trajectory with Jokic ending up slightly better.

[whitehops]

he isn't anchoring the defense but he is smart and plays with physicality which helps on defense. he benefits from having great perimeter/wing defenders around him so that's perfect for the rockets. if he was tasked with covering more ground or covering up for other player's deficiencies i think that's where some of his limitations might show more.

i'm so glad that he's been one of my biggest "hits" when it comes to projecting players. i saw him in summer league and thought he was jokic-lite, just with how skilled he was and he was like three steps ahead of everyone else mentally. jokic has special passing and touch which i think separates them but i wouldn't be surprised at all if sengun has an all-nba impact for a long time.

[El Turco]

He is on the same trajectory (maybe be better) but it is really difficult to forecast someone to be a top 20 of all time type of player.

I hope he ends up better than him but I'll settle with 80-90 percent of his career.

[El Turco]

I made this thread because I think the guy REALLY deserves his flowers for the defense he's playing. His #1 player comp was Enes Kanter who didn't play a lick of defense or have any playmaking ability. That was insulting and slightly racist.

Whoever made that comp needs to stop watching basketball and find a new hobby, obviously cant comprehend this sport outside of ethnic and racial lines.

[Sane]

Can you make an argument that his defense is good? Not saying it's not but it doesn't seem like you can just skip to 'his team's defense is good and he plays a lot on the team, therefore he's a killer defender.' If the point of this thread is to say 'he's arrived as a legit defender' I think you have to make that case before skipping to the implications of it.

(Also small thing but 'comps' are always, always stupid. If you're paying any attention to them to evaluate a player you're already lost.)

No that's impossible with the way defensive advanced stats are measured, you can't prove someone is good regardless of personnel. What I can do is prove he is not bad. I can make an argument his defense is not bad because, first of all, Ime Udoka says his defense is good. That's like Thibs saying his defense is good. That's shocking. Even Rockets fans thought we'd have to wait till he's 25 years old for a coach to be happy with his rim protection.

Further, it's universally known you can't have a great defense without a good rim protector. It took Vucevic 11 years to be on a team that could finish top 5, and he had had better defenders around him in the past. Jokic was being called a bad rim protector till the season before he won the title (yes, I know he had improved way before then). You can pile up on other types of defense but how many top 5 defenses don't have a great rim protector? Do the Rockets have the greatest perimeter defense ever? Because that's about how good it would have to be to cover up for a bad rim protector.

We don't have another rim protector. We're not running a JJJ next to him. Jabari, Brooks and FVV can't protect the rim. Landale and Jeff Green are our backup C and they can't protect the rim. So who's protecting the rim? Did you think before the season that adding FVV and Brooks would shoot us up from #29 to #5 defensively?

Here are the other top 10 teams starters at C:

Gobert
Embiid
Porzingis/Horford
WCJ/Isaac (Orlando)
Holmgren
Valanciunas
Jokic
Allen/Mobley
Anthony Davis

That's really really really good company. His advanced stats are really good but as you know, they are really noisy and relate to the team a lot. You can watch the stats and the games and conclude it for yourself. However, it's not a small feat to be the rim protector for a top 5 defense on a team that starts 3 players under 22.

You wanna know the truth? We all know he improved since last season. The only difference is, he was not actually bad before. We were yelling to you that he's not bad at defense, the perimeter is just the most porous in the NBA and he's not elite enough to match that like a Gobert or a Ben Wallace.

Finally, it's 30 games in. It's highly highly unlikely he won't keep improving since he doesn't have that many games under his belt in general and he's still 21.

[Sane]

You don't realize the outlier Jokic is.

I do. I stated it. That's why I said it's not fair to expect Sengun to 100% become Jokic.

You don't realize the outlier Sengun is. There can be two outliers.

[Sane]

I made this thread because I think the guy REALLY deserves his flowers for the defense he's playing. His #1 player comp was Enes Kanter who didn't play a lick of defense or have any playmaking ability. That was insulting and slightly racist.

Whoever made that comp needs to stop watching basketball and find a new hobby, obviously cant comprehend this sport outside of ethnic and racial borders.

It's not one person bro, if you can search the board you'll find a couple dozen people saying it.

[ocelot17]

He’s even better than jokic was in his third season.

[HotelVitale]

Can you make an argument that his defense is good? Not saying it's not but it doesn't seem like you can just skip to 'his team's defense is good and he plays a lot on the team, therefore he's a killer defender.' If the point of this thread is to say 'he's arrived as a legit defender' I think you have to make that case before skipping to the implications of it.

(Also small thing but 'comps' are always, always stupid. If you're paying any attention to them to evaluate a player you're already lost.)

No that's impossible with the way defensive advanced stats are measured, you can't prove someone is good regardless of personnel. What I can do is prove he is not bad. I can make an argument his defense is not bad because, first of all, Ime Udoka says his defense is good. That's like Thibs saying his defense is good. That's shocking. Even Rockets fans thought we'd have to wait till he's 25 years old for a coach to be happy with his rim protection.

Well I wasn't saying 'can you make a super easy argument in 5 seconds by glancing at some advanced stats,' I was asking if HOU fans or Sengun supporters could make a case that Sengun has been a good defender. I would probably start by talking about his role and showing what he does within HOU's scheme in general, so non-HOU fans could understand more how he's been solid despite his limitations. Also maybe pulling up some tape and highlighting a few plays where he shows good impact. Then maybe looking at some lineup data or try to isolate what Sengun contributes even if it's partial and faulty (that might be annoying and time-consuming so makes sense to skip that).

Not telling you how to defend your players or anything, but the things you put here don't help imo. Udoka is obviously going to praise his own young center's defense, it's not only not 'shocking' he would do that it's 100% expected. And saying 'the defense is good and Sengun is technically their rim protector' feels weird. Does anyone think he's a good traditional rim protector and is actually doing traditional rim protector stuff really well? Doesn't seem like it, so again seems like you'd want to make the case that he's still a good defender despite not doing that.

Anyway, these are just suggestions and I'm not saying I'm skeptical or think you're wrong. I'm interested in the topic and would like to learn and talk about it, I don't think you've given us much to work with so far but it seems like you or some other HOU fans probably could since you arleady watch him a lot and know his game well.

[MrGoat]

He's not the one really anchoring that defense, but he definitely has a high ceiling

[Cubbies2120]

He’s even better than jokic was in his third season.

Hard disagree. Jokic was an elite player by Year 2 and was hamstrung by his coach (Malone). Jokic had superior WS/48, BPM, VORP, etc. This while enduring the disastrous season where Jokic recognized what Malone and the rest of the staff didn't - Nurkic and he couldn't coexist. So he asked to come off the bench to improve team chemistry.

Jokic in Year 2:
0.228 WS/48, 7.3 BPM, 4.8 VORP

Duncan in 2004-2005 (3rd title season):
0.245 WS/48, 7.6 BPM, 5.4 VORP

But beyond being an elite player for years 2-5, Jokic did something unthinkable - he took another leap and started one of the greatest peaks in NBA history (if not the greatest).

I love Sengun and think he's going to be a star and possibly superstar, but we're really minimizing the transcendent talent Jokic is by having every up-and-coming young big with some passing ability compared to him. There are night where Jokic has 5 assists and I'm more impressed with him than on nights he has 15+ assists because I watch him control the entire game, tell teammates where to go, make the hockey assists that only he's aware is even a scoring opportunity, etc.

Yes, I know Jokic is Sengun's favorite player and he plays similarly. But Kobe emulated Jordan and we saw he didn't really come close to matching the "magic" even though if you squinted he certainly looked the part.