dhsilv2 wrote:Well, you do make a good point on the minutes played. Of course that makes the first point, that teams actively are looking to shoot against him weaker. So if we take the one we need to take into account the other. But I'll leave it that I think teams do want to target shooting against Jokic. They however get into a world of hurt with his hands.
I'd say the fact that players shoot really high percentages against him still makes a strong argument that players are happy to score against him. It really just discards your argument that Jokic is such a great defender because he's "present" to defend the most shots, despite seemingly not grasping the absurdity that despite being present to defend over 20 shots he's only actually defending 5....while playing significantly more minutes then all of his cohorts. This is measurably the bottom of the barrell.
dhsilv2 wrote:Now to the activity and you can do your minutes thing and just this if you want. But Jokic is 3rd among anyone listed at center in terms of distance traveled on defense and first in defensive field goals against.
According to the data:
Distance in miles on defense ranked:
Sabonis, Gobert, Towns, Poetl, Wemby, Bam, Markkanen, then Jokic, MPJ travels more. None of these players have anything in common. I'm not sure where your getting your data from. And again when you consider that he's averaging three to four minutes more than all these players, this doesn't mean anything. It's like your assigning value to metrics that don't mean what you think they do while undermining the importance of very clear metrics illustrating his lack of effort defensively. He is 7th out of the 14th players I looked up, and If i looked up more he'd likely be in the lower twenties in FGA relative to minutes...but as those FGA per minute drop show do those contested shots..i.e it might look like defending 18 shots and only contest 3. I'm sure we can both agree this reflects really poorly on his defensive effort more than the distance he travels.
dhsilv2 wrote:The two are important together because on most plays, teams dont take a shot against Jokic. But they are hunting the paint. Jokic does a great job of NOT being a matador in that his big wide body stays between the basket and the driver and teams have to pass out vs risking offensive fouls and despite Jokic being who he is, teams still often choose to kick back out.
Jokic hasn't drawn a single charge this season. And how can you say a player is good at keeping himself between the basket and drivers when last year he was second to last in defending drives and among the worst at actually contesting, which is still a part at staying between a drive and the basket. This is the part when he becomes an absolute matador, from drive to layup...and its measurable.
dhsilv2 wrote:And again Gobert is a DPOY, a defensive god, but he looks like a poor defender in highlight packages when his teammates fail to do their jobs so lets not run these highlights of jokic without seeing the defensive breakdown.
Gobert looks like a bad defender when he has to defend on the perimeter. He's elite at doing what you want your C to do. Jokic is bad at defending on the perimeter and bad at defending the rim, and these highlight packages (the one I sent was one game against the wors offense in the league) highlight the latter.
dhsilv2 wrote:But Jokic doesn't just keep between the rim and the player but he has those active hands and he's great at disrupting passes as players pass by and over him. Even if he doesn't get a hand on it, he makes it a harder pass. When you pass over someone, sometimes it takes long to get there, giving teammates more time to recover for example. And back to being active
Again, according to the metrics he does not to a good job of keeping between the rim and the player. He has great hands no argument here, but that doesn't make up for showing embarrsinly low effort at actually contesting shots. You whole argument seems to be, he's great at being position, mine is maybe but once he's in position he's god awful at actually defending...which in my opinion makes him not a plus or average defender but a bad one.
dhsilv2 wrote:...while consistently staying in defensive position, he's (or he was when I looked it up) 3rd in the league in steals AND deflections. Again, Jokic isn't a guy gambling to high levels.
I'd would say swiping down on drives instead of putting two hands up or going vertical is gambling. But agree to disagree
dhsilv2 wrote:I don't have this year numbers he but he gets like 50-75 kicked balls a year, which while kinda shady and iffy imo...
that's resetting the shot clock to 16 and that's like 1 a game. It's a LOT. There's no reasonable person who could take the above and not give Jokic credit for hustling on defense and being in the top 25% of big men in hustle. If maybe you want to use that verse effort...ok. Just trying to get us on the same page with this.
So once a game he resets the shot clock and the other team can just score on the next possession? Playing defense with your hands and feet has always been considered lazy. And kick balls, deflections and steals don't impact and intimidate offenses the way that actual rim protection and man to man defense does. Sure, its great that he does it and i'll give him all the credit in the world for it...but how can you say with a straight face that this makes him in the top 25 percent in big man hustle, when he's also only actually defending 25 percent of FGA against him. At most, these things have to cancel eachother out, but in earnest defending more shots - i hope we can both agree - would be more impactful than a deflection a game.
All of these little things add up. Now, I've tried to get you to offer ANY even acknowledgement that there's something other than contested shots. As we both agree that in a perfect world, a contested shot without a foul is better. Where I think we're not seeing eye to eye is that, I don't think Jokic is very good at contesting most shots. So I don't see the big deal with him not contesting. He isn't someone like say Wiggins who actually was built for defense who not contesting is terrible. Jokic is tall but he doesn't seem to have enough value in his vertical defense. I'd much rather he uses his hands, stay as best he can between the ball and the rim, and not foul.
Kentucky, you don't think the bold is a weird statement. Honest question. It's a huge deal that he isn't good at contesting shots, and an even bigger deal that he isn't even trying. While giving him credit for swiping at the ball. Look at the highlight reel, most of these layups are after Jokic swipes down and when he fails it leads to an easy layup. How many of these does he do versus how many he actually gets? How much more valuable would it be if he remained between the player and the basket instead of taking himself out of the play by swiping down - which is not staying between the ball and the rim? If he isn't good at contesting, than that's a point against how good he is defensively. We can't just throw copium on it.
[/quote]Also and just because I just thought of it. But Jokic even seems to get back on defense better than about half of centers. And we both know he's not the fastest guy out there. For the love of god give this big dude some love there! I've seen AD who's way faster have games where he's the last man back way too much. And heaven forbid we talk about some of the guys you listed as better than Jokic....still not letting you get away with Drummond![/quote]
This is nothing but an opinion.
