Chuck Texas wrote:I know I'm likely really alone here(tho drza stepped up on Kidd as well so maybe not) but Deke for me is the best big man on the board. I think we are still a couple spots too early with guys like Stockton, Pippen, Hondo, Kidd for sure deserving to be higher, but if we are talking about dominant defensive centers than Deke needs mention.
Elite shot-blocker.
Elite rebounder.
Elite defensive anchor
Was never a great scorer, but played well within his limits and 57% TS for his career. Came in and had huge impact as a rookie, led the Nuggets to one of the biggest upsets in playoff history over the Sonics, and was a huge part of that Finals teams in Philadelphia where he proved to be the missing piece and had a tremendous playoffs. And yeah peak Shaq put up big numbers in the Finals against him, but Deke was no slouch himself.
Dikembe Mutombo on the radar?I could support Deke being mentioned in this company. Someone asked a few posts back about whether Ben Wallace should start getting mentioned around the same time as Nash, and I pointed out that Mutombo was actually the closest that we'd seen to a defensive version of Nash (e.g. all defense, dominant defense) in the databall era. Nash just went in, so I think mentioning Mutombo is fair game. Just to put a few numbers to some of your qualitative descriptions above:
Mutombo has the 6th highest career rebound percentage (both total reb % and defensive reb %) in NBA history and the 5th highest career block percentage (stats not kept during Wilt/Russell times).
The 1991 Nuggets were dead last (27th/27) in the NBA in team defensive rating and 16th in team defensive rebound percentage, the year before Mutombo arrived. The 1992 Nuggets featuring rookie Mutombo jumped up to 13th in team defensive rating and 9th in team defensive rebound percentage. In '93 they were up to 8th in team DRTG and 9th in team defensive rebound percentage, and by '94 they were up to #5 in team DRTG and #6 in team defensive rebound percentage.
1994Let's spend a bit of time on '94. The Nuggets won 42 games and made the playoffs (they were a 20-win team in '91 and steadily built over Deke's first 3 years until they finally reached the postseason). Mutombo led the NBA in blocked shots and was third in total rebounds.
Thanks to the good work done by fpiii, El Gee and Colts18, we now have on/off +/- data for the 1994 season, as well as some rough estimates of what the RAPM might look like. Mutombo was fifth in the NBA in on/off +/- in '94 with a +14.3. Three of the top four players ahead of Mutombo in the '94 on/off rankings have already been voted in (David Robinson at +19.9, Karl Malone at +17.4, and Hakeem Olajuwon at +14.5). For posterity, Shaq was 28th with a +7.7 score, Stockton was 33rd at +7.3, Pippen was 36th at +7.0, and Barkley was 37th at +6.8.
Then, in the playoffs, Mutombo led his 8th seeded Nuggets past the #1 seed, 63-win Sonics that featured Payton, Kepm and Schrempf. Those Nuggets had very little in the way of team offense...Mutombo was actually third on the team in playoffs scoring at 13.3 ppg, and no one on the team averaged even 15 ppg that postseason (Laphonso Ellis led them with 14.8 ppg, with Reggie Williams second at 14.3 ppg). No, that team won entirely on the strength of its defense with Mutombo leading the way. Mutombo averaged 13.3 points, 12 boards, and a whopping 5.8 blocks per game in that improbable postseaosn run that saw the Nuggets not only upset the Sonics, but to also push the Malone/Stockton Jazz (who had just finished demolishing D-Rob's Spurs) to 7 games in the 2nd round.
Databall eraWe (currently) don't have full RAPM stats available until 1998. All of the above happened before '98. Also, Mutombo won two Defensive Player of the Year awards in 1995 and 1997, and even got a vote for MVP in '97 before the (current) databall era began.
However, from 1998 through the present, Mutombo still had the highest defensive RAPM scores on record over the period featuring his 30s and 40s (it should be pointed out that Mutombo came into the league as a 27-year ole rookie, and played until he was 42). Using Doc MJ's normalized PI RAPM dataset, Mutombo's top three years (corresponding to 1998 - 2000) averaged a
defensive RAPM score of +8.7. As a comparison, only three offensive players had three years of offensive RAPM that high: Nash (+9.6), LeBron (+9.3) and Wade (+8.7). So according to RAPM, Mutombo's defensive impact from ages 31 - 34 essentially matched the 3-year offensive peaks of the three most impactful offensive players of the last 15 years. And considering that this cuts off Mutombo's actual peak, and what we saw from the 1994 on/off data, it is very likely that Mutombo actually may have even better defensive RAPM scores that we just don't know about yet.
And for those giving any weight to the postseason on/off +/- scores that I've been posting for the more modern players that we've been ranking, Mutombo does very well there as well. If I add him to the career and best stretch playoff on/off +/- tables I've posted previously, we see:
Playoff on/off +/- career (starting in 2001), sorted by difference b/w post and reg seasonCode: Select all
Player Team Years Reg On/off PO On/off Change
Kidd Tot 01 - 13 6.3 10.2 +3.9
Deke Tot 01 - 09 4.0 7.9 +3.9
Kobe LAL 01 - 14 6.7 8.3 +1.6
Shaq Tot 01 - 11 7.7 8.6 +0.9
Duncan SAS 01 - 14 8.3 8.9 +0.6
Nash Tol 01 - 14 7.5 4.8 -2.7
Paul Tot 06 - 14 9.0 6.2 -2.8
LeBron Tot 04 - 14 11.2 8.1 -3.1
Wade Mia 04 - 14 7.8 3.7 -4.1
Dirk Dal 01 - 14 11.1 1.8 -9.3 And here, again, is a similar chart for these same players when focused on their best years. The following table will track important multi-year periods in these players careers...e.g. the Lakers years for Shaq, the "dynasty" years when Duncan's Spurs won the majority of their titles, the pre-LeBron years for Wade, the Cleveland years for LeBron, the Jersey years for Kidd, the post-Shaq years for Kobe, the Suns years for Nash and the post-Nash years for DIrk: We'll only use the Philly years for Deke, though he also shows up remarkably well in this stat in his Houston years into his 40s.
Playoff on/off +/- zoomed (starting in 2001), sorted by difference b/w post and reg seasonCode: Select all
Player Team Years Reg On/off PO On/off Change
Paul NOK 06 - 11 8.7 13.9 +5.2
Shaq LAL 01 - 04 12.6 16.3 +3.7
Deke Phi 01 - 02 6.8 10.4 +3.6
Wade p-L 04 - 10 8.4 11.3 +2.9
Duncan DYN 01 - 07 11.5 13.0 +1.5
LeBron Cle 06 - 10 11.2 12.3 +1.1
Kidd NJ 02 - 08 10.1 10.2 +0.1
Kobe P-S 05 - 12 7.2 6.2 -1.0
Nash PHO 05 - 12 10.8 6.6 -4.2
Dirk P-N 05 - 12 11 6.3 -4.7 As you can see, Mutombo slots in near the top on both lists. He had strong postseason on/off +/- scores, and a healthy improvement from regular season to postseason. Just the opposite, in fact, of Nash who's playoff on/off scores weren't quite as strong as you'd expect and were down from the regular season. Might this be another anecdotal piece of evidence to argue that defensive impact could translate as well or better than some offensive impacts, perhaps due to defenses in general cranking it up in the postseason? It'll be interesting to continue to track this as I add more names to the list, to see if this is a trend or just an anomaly.
ConclusionsWow. This is a case where I really learned some things about a player by looking into him further. I already knew how impressive Mutombo was in the RAPM studies, but upon review his entire career looks much stronger than I expected. He was clearly one of the bigger impact players of his generation, despite the fact that the majority of his impact came on defense. He had some major postseason successes...he carried those 8 seeded Nuggets over the Sonics and almost past the Jazz in '94. He had a major impact in Philly's 2001 postseason run. He was even looking great in the playoffs as a role player for the Rockets in his 40s. The more I look at it, the more Mutombo seems like a very viable option in the very near future.
