Is Defense Half The Game?

[bisme37]

Defense is 50% of basketball. You're either on one end of the floor playing offense, or you're on the other end playing defense. And both are equally important.

Seems like most everyone gets and agrees with that. It's just basic. And we've all heard the saying "defense wins championships." And a lot of fans lament what they see as a lack of defense in the league, and seem to value and support playing defense.

But then when we start ranking players and assigning value, defense somehow only counts for like 5% of the discussion. Why??

If Player A is the somewhat better offensive player, and Player B is the vastly better defensive player, doesn't that make Player B the somewhat better overall player?

The math makes sense to me, but the discussion never follows that logic. And it drives me up a wall lol.

If you agree that defense is 50% of the game, why is it not 50% of what you look at when evaluating players?

[NZB2323]

Defense is half the game, but a great player can have a greater impact on offense than defense.

For example, Jokic and SGA. Take Jokic off the Nuggets and their offense craters. Take SGA off the Thunder and they still have an elite defense.

[UcanUwill]

Great offense beat any defense, so I wouldnt say its 50/50, but as for poll question, I don't see how anyone wouldnt vote "yes" unless they are trolling.

[slick_watts]

it's just easier to measure individual contributions to offense using simple box score stats. i agree that shai is a great example here. he's playing on one of the best defenses ever. how much do you credit him? other than block and steal numbers there's nothing in a traditional boxscore that will lead you to any conclusions. so most people are probably driven by narrative imo.

[UcanUwill]

Defense is 50% of basketball. You're either on one end of the floor playing offense, or you're on the other end playing defense. And both are equally important.

Seems like most everyone gets and agree with that. It's just basic. And we've all heard the saying "defense wins championships." And a lot of fans lament what they see as a lack of defense in the league, and seem to value and support playing defense.

But then when we start ranking players and assigning value, defense somehow only counts for like 5% of the discussion. Why??

If Player A is the somewhat better offensive player, and Player B is the vastly better defensive player, doesn't that make Player B the somewhat better overall player?

That math makes sense to me, but the discussion never follows that logic. And it drives me up a wall lol.

If you agree that defense is 50% of the game, why is it not 50% of what you look at when evaluating players?

I do not think its straight line scaling. When player A reaches some point in his offense, his value will be greater than any defender imo. Like look at Luka Doncic, you simply cant compare his Impact to Jrue Holiday, or maybe even to DPOY bigmen, only one man in this world would take AD over Doncic...

[UcanUwill]

Defense is half the game, but a great player can have a greater impact on offense than defense.

For example, Jokic and SGA. Take Jokic off the Nuggets and their offense craters. Take SGA off the Thunder and they still have an elite defense.

Thunder is by committee defensive team. Jokic is number one offensive player in the world, SGA not even close to being number one defensive player in the world. I agree with your overall setiment, but I dont think comparison is valid. We should rather compare Jokic to Wembanyama. Who has more vslue, Jokic's O, or Victors D? The answer to me is still offense for sure, but thats debate to be had.

[lessthanjake]

I actually think the answer isn’t exactly yes. Obviously there’s a certain sense in which defense is clearly half the game. It’s certainly the case at a team level. But when we talk about the impact of star players individually, I don’t think it’s really half the game, because the fact that there’s one ball and the offense gets to decide who has it means that star players can naturally exert more influence on offense than they can on defense. The gap does get a bit closer when you talk about bigs, who can exert pretty consistent influence through rim protection, but the individual high-end offensive impact is still just generally higher.

[EmpireFalls]

No, I think the game is slanted more towards offense than defense nowadays. It’s more like 60-40 or maybe even 65-35

Ask yourself, why is a team happy to play Steph Curry at PG instead of Dennis Smith Jr.

Or why Jarred Vanderbilt doesn’t start over Luka

If it was truly 50-50 these would be real discussions. QED

[Patches Perry]

Defense is half the game from a team perspective, but it's not from a player evaluation perspective.

This is because offense has control of what happens and defense doesn't, so you can put the ball in one players hands every play offensively, but a great defender can be avoided to a greater extent.

With offense, you can utilize a player as much as you want. With defense, you're at the mercy of what the offense does, so a great defender may not get to be utilized as often.

I still think defense is very important individually, maybe 20-40% but not 50%.

[cupcakesnake]

I have 3 connected thoughts on this.

1. Defense is undervalued. Casual fans don't care about it much at all. Even more intensive fans tend to value team defense but less so the impact of individual defense. I have a belief/assumption that in 20 years when we have a different/new understanding of basketball (and more advanced measuring tools), we'll laugh at the prior generation for how stupid we were. This is a belief I can't substantiate yet. Just trust me, ok?

2. Statistical analysis that has tried to answer this question, generally finds individual offense and defense to be close in most cases but for offense to have more access to high-end value. There's so many metrics that have great defenders topping out with numbers like +3 to +5, while the offensive side of the same metric can reach +7 or +8. The numbers sort of suggest that high-end offense allows 20-50% more value. Looking at the leaders in a couple numbers:
- EPM: Jokic and Shai over +7 O-EPM. Caurso +4.3 D-EPM. No other defender hits even 4. While 10 players are over 4 in offense.
- DARKO: Shai, Jokic, Tatum, Mitchell all over +5. Gobert and Draymond over +3.
- DRIP: Luka, Shai, Jokic over +4. Wemby and Gobert at +2.7.
Generally every metric I look at has the top offensive players contributing 2-3 points per 100 more than the top defensive players.

3. At this point in basketball analysis history, all of our statistical tools have been based on offense. Defensive metrics are primarily built based off an offensive metric. Defense is still inherently more mysterious to us, and we don't have the same level of measurement tools to deal with it. Basically, we can't assume our current statistical models are giving us a great picture of defensive impact.

Other random though: Generally, I find the more "studied" someone is at basketball, the more they value and watch defense. Casual fans don't watch defense except for on-ball stopping, blocks, and steals. Most fans are watching the ball, and are interested in how the ball gets scored. You have to get pretty nerdy before you're spending a position watching stuff away from the ball, or looking at scheme shape, rotation, and what a player did to disrupt an offensive action. We're guaranteed a major offensive bias in this sport. The only question to me is how wrong our bias is. It might end up close to the truth, or not. I'm not really sure, but I don't get why other people feel so sure.

[dhsilv2]

It is but you can't separate offense and defense like that.

First off, lets just address the first part here. There is one ball and an an elite playmaker/ball handler will have disproportionate value as a result. Similarly, an elite rim protector who's elite off ball will on defense have a larger but not nearly as disproportionate role. This means big men on offense and small guys on defense just don't add that much value or take away that much value as long as they aren't severely lacking. Conversely, you can work around poor guards on offense and big men on defense with team systems. So even there, not being elite isn't damning as many want it to be.

Second, the difficult part. It's easier to score off a miss than it is a make. As a result elite offensive players actually have a large impact on defense, even if they ultimately suck on that end. How do you go about assessing that? Do you add that to their defensive value or do you add bonus points to offense to skew it?

Third, defensive turnovers create more offense than they get credit for. Much like a great offense forces teams to take the ball out and that reduces the expected return on the next play. A steal has disproportionate value because you're more likely to score off a turnover than a normal possession. Perhaps even more than a defensive rebound. So again, how do we value this? The data will tell the story of the offense being better with you on the court, but the value actually came or started at the defensive end.

It's really hard to get everyone on board with how to address team systems to can turn player weaknesses into strengths. It's even harder to explain how value one end can lead to more value on the other. And then how do we communicate this in a way that everyone can digest and discuss? And this might be our biggest issue. We just don't have terms and words that we all agree on to explain all this.

[Mavrelous]

GMs pay defensive specialists peanuts and offensive specialists max money, either they are all hopelessly confused, or defense isn't in fact valued as much as offense.

[prolific passer]

Third choice is the most obvious and right answer.

[Billl]

It's half the game obviously, but the gap between good vs bad defender is just not as impactful as good vs bad offensive player. I mean, a really good defender might hold his man to 5 points less than his normal scoring average and that would be massively impressive. Meanwhile a great offensive player can be out there dropping 30 and be 20 points better than an average offensive player.

[Lenneth]

No. Defense is 50% of basketball for the team, not the individual. It's 5 on 5 team game with one basketball, and the superstar can directly impact offense every time, while the superstar defender can't. That's why the defense doesn't get the same emphasis as the offense when it comes to individual ranking. And if the defense is truly half of the game, players like Gobert, Green, JJJ would get max for their defense alone.

[MarcusBrody]

Defense is half the game, but a great player can have a greater impact on offense than defense.

For example, Jokic and SGA. Take Jokic off the Nuggets and their offense craters. Take SGA off the Thunder and they still have an elite defense.

I generally agree with you that offense can be more affected by a single player than defense. Offense has the initiative, so they can ensure that their best player is involved and making the decisions/taking the shots, etc.

But I think the example misunderstands SGA's role on OKC. He's actually the elite offensive guy and when he's off, the offense craters. A more Jokic/offense example for defense would be Wembanyama on the Spurs.

[xdrta+]

It seems obvious that it's impossible to avoid a great offensive player, while far easier to avoid a great defensive player. An offensive player can affect every single play. A defensive player can't. How does that make it 50-50?

[SpreeS]

Team context is 50% and 50%
Individual context is around 70% and 30%

Offences are organised around teams A players.
Defences are more about units.

The best offensive player could win championship.
The best defensive player can win one or two playoff series.

[Texas Chuck]

Defense is 50% of basketball. You're either on one end of the floor playing offense, or you're on the other end playing defense. And both are equally important.

Not actually true. There is also after shots go up, loose balls, and then while transition is technically offense or defense, it can be quite different.

Then we get too simplistic. Take my homebody Dirk, by traditional evaluation he's not a good defender, as he himself is happy to tell you. But, he was a great defensive rebounder. That helps. But mostly, he was a very efficient scorer who never turned over the ball and so during his tenure the Mavs were among the very best teams in ball security every year. And thus Dirk's offense absolutely helped his team defense. And of course we saw Dallas pivot from offensive lineups to defensive ones while keeping elite offenses, once again Dirk's offense directly helps the defense by allowing the team to play guys like Damp/Diop/Deshawn/Marion etc...

Which is why all the KG/Dirk debates got stupid. The argument was always Dirk is an elite offensive player, KG a very good one, but then KG is elite at defense and Dirk is neutral at best therefore KG was clearly the better player. Despite on court results telling us that might not have actually been the case.

So I think Jokic can and is absolutely the best player in the world even if we would say he's a below average defender at the most important defensive position because his impact on the offensive end absolutely carries over to the defensive end.

Just as Bill Russell was the GOAT until Lebron surpassed him, because his defense had an impact on the offensive end as well, with his rebounding, shot-blocking that kept the ball in play leading Boston to be a really effective and frequent transition team despite the stats painting them as largely a mediocre offensive team.

It all matters. And unless its 1950 Iowa girls basketball which was which literally 2 separate 3v3 half court games where some players only played offense and others only played defense, its not 50% one and 50 the other.

[bisme37]

Defense is 50% of basketball. You're either on one end of the floor playing offense, or you're on the other end playing defense. And both are equally important.

Not actually true. There is also after shots go up, loose balls, and then while transition is technically offense or defense, it can be quite different.

Then we get too simplistic. Take my homebody Dirk, by traditional evaluation he's not a good defender, as he himself is happy to tell you. But, he was a great defensive rebounder. That helps. But mostly, he was a very efficient scorer who never turned over the ball and so during his tenure the Mavs were among the very best teams in ball security every year. And thus Dirk's offense absolutely helped his team defense. And of course we saw Dallas pivot from offensive lineups to defensive ones while keeping elite offenses, once again Dirk's offense directly helps the defense by allowing the team to play guys like Damp/Diop/Deshawn/Marion etc...

Which is why all the KG/Dirk debates got stupid. The argument was always Dirk is an elite offensive player, KG a very good one, but then KG is elite at defense and Dirk is neutral at best therefore KG was clearly the better player. Despite on court results telling us that might not have actually been the case.

So I think Jokic can and is absolutely the best player in the world even if we would say he's a below average defender at the most important defensive position because his impact on the offensive end absolutely carries over to the defensive end.

Just as Bill Russell was the GOAT until Lebron surpassed him, because his defense had an impact on the offensive end as well, with his rebounding, shot-blocking that kept the ball in play leading Boston to be a really effective and frequent transition team despite the stats painting them as largely a mediocre offensive team.

It all matters. And unless its 1950 Iowa girls basketball which was which literally 2 separate 3v3 half court games where some players only played offense and others only played defense, its not 50% one and 50 the other.

Yeah I get that. I tried to be simple and get to the point, but maybe it would help if I said something slightly less simple, like: Defense is 50% of 90% of the game. With 10% being other stuff.