Sell me on Nate Thurmond

[trelos6]

Most publicly available data, shows that Thurmond was a pretty good defender.

I’ve seen some breakdowns of how he’s guarded Kareem, Wilt etc., but his overall stats never impressed me as much as lots of other big names defensive anchors.

Some have called Nate the second best defender all time, while most have him around the 6-7 mark.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I have guys like Dwight Howard, Alonzo Mourning as well as the usual suspects ahead of him (Hakeem, D Rob, Wilt, Eaton, Ewing, Gobert etc)

So can y’all help me out? What am I missing here?

[OhayoKD]

I’ve seen some breakdowns of how he’s guarded Kareem, Wilt etc., but his overall stats never impressed me as much as lots of other big names defensive anchors.

By overall stats you mean his blocks and steals?

The first is often misleading sometimes even presenting below average rim protectors as elite:

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=113791345#p113791345

The second doesn't happen often enough(and the process of steal-hunting bleeds value) and accordingly has little correlation with results(none defensive) at a team-level
https://statpadders.com/do-team-steals-really-matter/#:~:text=The%20answer%20is%20pretty%20clear%20%E2%80%93%20no%2C%20at,values%2C%20which%20act%20as%20a%20measure%20of%20correlation.

Generally using these as "overall stats" is bad practice imo.

Ultimately, as for why Thurmond's defense is rated so highly. Considering he doesn't offer much on offense:

Same for Thurmond who was still in his "Nate the Great" mindset taking 20 shots a game at a ts% efficiency of .460 while leading his team to a .500 record (which is good for a team with that talent level, but not amazing).

Not trying to argue for Thurmond > Russell, but this is a very misleading representation of what happened in 1969 Warriors season...

Warriors finished 41-41 in the RS, so techically it's true. The problem is that they went 38-33 with Thurmond (who missed 11 games), which puts them around 44 wins pace, but they collapsed without him and went 3-8 when he sat out. It's not a one year small sample thing either:

1967 Warriors with Nate: 38-27 (48 wins pace)
1967 Warriors without Nate: 6-10 (31 wins pace)

1968 Warriors with Nate: 32-19 (51 wins pace)
1968 Warriors without Nate: 11-20 (29 wins pace)

1969 Warriors with Nate: 38-33 (44 wins pace)
1969 Warriors without Nate: 3-8 (31 wins pace)

1970 Warriors with Nate: 21-22 (40 wins pace)
1970 Warriors without Nate: 9-30 (19 wins pace)

Across 4 straight years, we see a very consistent pattern - Thurmond was extremely valuable to the Warriors, they played extremely bad without him (even with Barry on the team):

1967-70 Warriors with Nate: 129-101 (46 wins pace)
1967-70 Warriors without Nate: 29-20 (25 wins pace)

RS Unseld did take the worst team in the Eastern Conference the year before to the best record in the league despite losing All-Pro forward Gus Johnson halfway through.

He did and I will always praise Unseld for his tremendous non-boxscore impact, but it should be noted that the raw jump in wins overrate his impact a little bit:

1968 Bullets: -0.23 SRS (40 expected wins, 36 actual wins)
1969 Bullets: +4.05 SRS (51 expected wins, 57 actual wins)

The jump was probably bigger than 10 wins that SRS suggest, but it's also likely smaller than 20 wins which raw record suggests.

It seems dubious to be putting the list of players you are above someone who frequently output top 3-5 impact signals over large sample sin the regular season...

and then saw his teams improve in the postseason (1967, 1969, 1973 in particular).

That said, when one is taking positions like "peak wilt>russell", they probably are not so interested in likely impact as they are in adhering to conventional theories about what skillsets and sorts of production matter, even when there's little evidence those theories actually have value predicting and describing winning.

[One_and_Done]

He was good for his era, though he'd obviously be much worse today. A physical specimen in any era though. A good chance he'd still start today, though he's certainly worse than guys like Dwight, Zo, etc.

[OhayoKD]

He was good for his era, though he'd obviously be much worse today. A physical specimen in any era though. A good chance he'd still start today, though he's certainly worse than guys like Dwight, Zo, etc.

That's true. Still it's pretty laughable how often people would outright leave him off ballots in years he posted top 2-4 impact and then played an elite team or even a historically excellent one(again in-era) closer than they should have citing rationale like "well a similar player struggled in the playoffs 50 years later" as opposed to "hmm i wonder if there's a similar player from the same era effectively monopolising my ballot".

[LukaTheGOAT]

He's the best man defender ever, regardless of position.

Nate Thurmond’s Defense vs. Star Bigs:

» Wilt Chamberlain 1966-70: 20.0 pts/36 on 57.2 TS% ➡️ 15.7 pts/36 on 51.5 TS%

(-4.3 pts/36 / -5.7 TS% vs Nate)

» Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 1970-74: 25.7 pts/36 on 58.2 TS% ➡️ 20.7 pts/36 on 50.7 TS%

(-5.0 pts/36 / -7.5 TS% vs Nate)

[migya]

The footage available show him to be a goat level defender. Fast, strong, agile, skilled, high iq, just characteristics of among the best at the part of the game. A difference maker obviously and if he had Rick Barry a year or two earlier, might have won one and probably stuck around to get the one the Warriors got.

[FrodoBaggins]

I'm trying to think of what he'd look like in more modern eras. Maybe something like a Dikembe/Rudy type with more mobility, passing, and some shooting capacity? How about a bigger Alonzo Mourning that can pass and rebound way better? I don't imagine there's any tracking data or Nate's jump-shooting and post-up scoring.

I wonder what 70sFan thinks. He's probably watched more Nate footage than anyone.

[70sFan]

I'm trying to think of what he'd look like in more modern eras. Maybe something like a Dikembe/Rudy type with more mobility, passing, and some shooting capacity? How about a bigger Alonzo Mourning that can pass and rebound way better? I don't imagine there's any tracking data or Nate's jump-shooting and post-up scoring.

I wonder what 70sFan thinks. He's probably watched more Nate footage than anyone.

I don't have any tracking data for Thurmond unfortunately and I'm not sure if we have enough footage to make it reliable. I will do my best when I find enough time though.

He was definitely a better passer than Dikembe and Rudy, he was also more mobile than either. He possessed more scoring moves than them, but wasn't super efficient post player and overused jumpshot. Mourning was a significantly better finisher and more agressive offensive player, so even though Nate has some advantages over him on offense, Zo clears him on that side of the court.

[Owly]

He's the best man defender ever, regardless of position.

Nate Thurmond’s Defense vs. Star Bigs:

» Wilt Chamberlain 1966-70: 20.0 pts/36 on 57.2 TS% ➡️ 15.7 pts/36 on 51.5 TS%

(-4.3 pts/36 / -5.7 TS% vs Nate)

» Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 1970-74: 25.7 pts/36 on 58.2 TS% ➡️ 20.7 pts/36 on 50.7 TS%

(-5.0 pts/36 / -7.5 TS% vs Nate)

TS% will include FT% shifts (in whichever direction) unlikely to be caused by the defender. FG% will miss out fouls which may well be by (or a result of) the usual primary defender, but the poster could include that as well, whilst including free throw defense will tend to mislead at the margins (or else require readers to manually undo it and basically redo the work of gathering the data themselves).

This isn't going to shift the underlying point here of Thurmond hurting star opponents scoring (indeed depending on free throw luck in the sample it may further enhance it) but I think it would be more accurate to do something like fg% and FTr.