Ericb5 wrote:TTP wrote:Chris76 wrote:
Kobe and MJ we're tenacious at defense, Draymond plays that way.
Obviously Fultz shouldn't be compared to hall of famers. However, he should have some of their elite skills.
He could be our late in the shot clock scorer. He easily gets quick looks with his hesitation moves.
Kobe's defense was probably pretty overrated due to subjective awards. Even though he made nine defensive 1st teams (and three 2nd teams), it's more likely he was a negative defender than an all-time great defender, as that resume would suggest.
Kobe wasn't an alltime great defender, but he was clearly a very good defensive player. I watched him his whole career, and while he couldn't stop Iverson one on one, as nobody could, he did as good a job as any player that ever tried.
I'm not sure how clear it was. His teams weren't really better defensively when he was on the court.
For years where we have data prior to his injury, here's his opponent's on/off points/100 split. Negative means the opposing team scored less while Kobe was on the court.
00-01: -3.3
01-02: +8.9
02-03: -1.0
03-04: +0.7
04-05: +2.3
05-06: +6.4
06-07: -1.0
07-08: -0.8
08-09: +1.5
09-10: -3.4
10-11: +4.4
11-12: -2.9
12-13: +4.3
His team's defense was better when he was on the court for 6 out of 13 seasons. Throughout this entire sample, the Lakers' defense was 1.2 points worse when he was on the court.
Maybe he was good at certain aspects of defense but it doesn't seem to have resulted in the Lakers defense actually being better over a massive sample of minutes, which isn't the case for similarly regarded elite guard/wing defenders like LeBron, Bowen, Kidd, Kawhi, Tony Allen, etc.
It seems more likely that he was a merely average defender, which is understandable given how much energy he expended on the other end.
