I think that one thing missing in this analysis is the fact that Jokic contests a lot of shots. He’s consistently near the very top of the league in number of contested FG’s within 6 feet per game. He’s a very active defender. Some of the high FG% against him is reflective of the fact that he’s contesting attempts that other people just wouldn’t contest.
Jokic fans will try anything to twist a clear negative into a positive with convoluted logic.
This is patently false. Jokic faces a high number of FGAs on defense simply because the opposition repeatedly go at him because he is a poor shot defender, and has been for years. This season's defensive FGM/FGA allowed data is no outlier - look at the data at stats.nba.com for Jokic for previous seasons.
Furthermore, Jokic is great in other ways on defense. His defensive rebounding is fantastic, and that is a really big deal.
Defensive rebounding is after the fact, and in no way constitutes good defense when your shot defense is poor.
Jonas Valanciunas, Jusuf Nurkic, even Kevin Love are all similar defensive rebounders to Jokic on a per minute basis this and the past few seasons. You advocating for them too being good defenders because of their defensive rebounding? Or is it just Jokic because you are a fan of his?
He has really good hands, especially for his position, causing a lot of turnovers.
"A lot" of turnovers? What evidence do you have for this? Cs like Andre Drummond and Paul Reed have
much higher per minute steal rates than Jokic does, I don't hear anyone beating their drums for them to be recognized as top defenders.
And Jokic on defense does not draw many offensive fouls from the opposition.
So what turnovers are you talking about?
And he’s a smart defender who pays attention and is active, leading to him being positioned well.
Maybe if he was even smarter he would stop more shots from going in.
Players like Rudy Gobert completely deter a player from shooting in the first place, which is why his shot contest numbers are lower.
Exactly - Gobert, Porzingis, Walker Kessler, these are your best shot defenders <10' of the basket. Jokic is one of
the worst among Cs, whether Jokic fans want to admit it or not.
Jokic DBPM since 2022: 4.5, 4.5, 4.4 Giannis DBPM in his three best years: 4.1, 4.1, 3.5
Which clearly tells you how useless some of these calculated metrics are.
Read how DBPM is calculated:
https://www.basketball-reference.com/about/bpm2.htmlAnd let us know if any individual player shot defense data is used (Hint: No).
Jokic, right now, doesn't really have any weaknesses.
Defense is half the game, whether Jokic fans want to admit it or not.
And defense is a very big weakness for Jokic.