#6 Best Defensive Point Guard of All Time - The ten best defenders in each position project

[pandrade83]

Stockton probably has more career defensive value but for me this is more of a primes project than the RGM Top 100 was.

I'll take Mookie Blaylock.

-Anchored Top 5 Atlanta defenses in the 90's ('94 & '95) that had no elite rim protector - a big piece of this for me is that the PG in question outkicks the coverage
-Finished Top 10 in DWS 4 X ('94, '95, '97, '99)
-Impact metrics find him extremely valuable: +1 or better in NPI RAPM from '97-'99. '94-'96 APM metrics find him highly impactful as a Top 10 player as well (note: No splits).
-Top 5 in steals 8 X (led league in '97)
-All D from '94-'99 (1st team in '94 & '95)

Passes the eye test:

Watch on YouTube

[kendogg]

CP3. He has the hardware, the advanced stats, the eye test, pretty much everything but length to be able to contest bigger guards, though he can still make it hard on them with his strength and quickness. He also has incredible basketball IQ as evidenced by advanced stats and other metrics like AS/TO. He's basically a slightly better Stockton IMO. Even past his athletic prime now he led Houston to the #5 defensive team in the league last year and they were #15 the year before with pretty much the same roster minus him.

[iggymcfrack]

Stockton probably has more career defensive value but for me this is more of a primes project than the RGM Top 100 was.

I'll take Mookie Blaylock.

-Anchored Top 5 Atlanta defenses in the 90's ('94 & '95) that had no elite rim protector - a big piece of this for me is that the PG in question outkicks the coverage
-Finished Top 10 in DWS 4 X ('94, '95, '97, '99)
-Impact metrics find him extremely valuable: +1 or better in NPI RAPM from '97-'99. '94-'96 APM metrics find him highly impactful as a Top 10 player as well (note: No splits).
-Top 5 in steals 8 X (led league in '97)
-All D from '94-'99 (1st team in '94 & '95)

Passes the eye test:

Watch on YouTube

Obviously, we have a hard time comparing Mookie and Stockton peak to peak on impact stats since both peaked before those numbers were available, but look at the years that we do have on DRAPM:

2001: Stockton +2.5, Blaylock +0.8
2000: Stockton +3.1, Blaylock +0.5
1999: Stockton +2.3, Blaylock +2.5
1998: Stockton +2.0, Blaylock +2.2
1997: Stockton +1.5, Blaylock +1.2

Now consider that those are ages 34-38 for Stockton and ages 29-33 for Blaylock. You really think Mookie was so much better a couple years earlier that it made up for all the difference between Stockton plus how much better Stockton was at peak than he was in his mid-30s? I don't see it. 1997 and 1998 were the years that Mookie led the league in steals. He was operating pretty close to peak capacity at that point. Stockton led the league in steals in 1989 and 1992. He definitely wasn't at his defensive peak in the late '90s. I'm not the kind of guy that likes to make everything about race, but I think this is one case where if Stockton was black, he would have had a much better defensive reputation compared to the Mookie Blaylocks and Gary Paytons of the world.

[ElectricMayhem]

Eric Snow doesn't belong at #6, but I appreciate that you have him on the list. Kobe Bryant once said that nobody in the league defended him like Snow. He always took the tough guard so Iverson could focus his energy on offense. Contextually, that's a hell of a lot of added value, although you can't blame the others on this list for not being able to offer their defensive services to Iverson. He may have been unassuming, but he locked people up and was a key cog in those great defensive 76ers teams.

As for the pick, I'd go with Stockton. He and Paul are neck and neck. It may be a cop out, but longevity is the tiebreaker for me.

[Gibson22]

We had 5 candidates tied at 2 as of post #13.
Now:

Chris Paul 5 (Knickfan33, trex_03, lost92bricks, drpositivity, kendogg)
John Stockton 4 (cecilthesheep, luigi, iggimcfrack, electric mayhem)
Mookie Blaylock 3 (penbeast_0, samurai, pandrade83)
Nate Mcmillan 2 (pistolpeteJR, lebron3-14-3)
Mo Cheeks 2 (SinceGatlingWasARookie, skyhookFTW)

[PigsOnTheWing]

Stockton again. I wish I had more time so as to make a more thoughtful post but in a nutshell I find Stockton particularly underrated on the defensive end (and a bit overrated one offensive, fwiw), though I'm not so comfortable with this vote because he struggled a bit too much in the playoffs. I'm intrigued by Cheeks, he was surely an excellent defensive player in his peak, but there's enough evidence to conclude that he was not so impactful after his 9th season, which is a big concern to me (all of his defensive numbers went down significantly). On the other hand, I'm quite comfortable with Stockton over Blaylock and McMillan, because as good as they were in their prime (maybe slightly better), they have not enough longevity (Stockton almost doubles them in DWS, the best cumulative stat we have for defense).

Here's my reasoning from previous threads.
John Stockton: STLx100poss 3.8, BLKx100poss 0.3, DRBx100poss 3.0, DWS 3.9, DBPM -0.7, DPIPM 1.7 (1988-1992, 1994-1995)
All-defensive 1st team 0, All-defensive 2nd team 5.
He peaked earlier on defense than on offense and it's highlighted not only by his own metrics but also on a
team perspective. Monstrous team defender, he seemed to always know where to be on the court to get a
steal or to bother bigger players even in the post. Him and Paul are similar on defense, they are smaller than
the majority of the players but they are smart and strong enough to overcome that issue. They also both
suffer from being consistenly posted up but this is to be expected so it isn't necessarily a big knock (though it
has prevented him from play well and Porter for example). In the limited RAPM years he posted good to great
numbers, usually +1.5.

[eminence]

Stockton

I think a couple of other guys were probably better per minute defenders, but at this point the longevity edge just takes over. He was rock solid for a long long time, such a smart defender, played extremely hard. 10k plus minutes on all the relevant competition puts him over the top.

The next spot is extremely interesting to me, no idea which way I'll go yet.

[trex_8063]

Eric Snow doesn't belong at #6, but I appreciate that you have him on the list. Kobe Bryant once said that nobody in the league defended him like Snow. He always took the tough guard so Iverson could focus his energy on offense.

Ten just isn't all that many players, so sadly that's gonna leave a lot of really fine defensive players as just "honorable mentions".

Totally irrelevant to discussion about defense, but I remembered Snow as a mostly awful FT-shooter (I think that memory is in no small part painted by his college career at Michigan St--->where he was indeed awful). Just looking at his bbref page and I was sort of surprised to see he was a career 76.3% in the NBA (peaking as high as an exceptional 85.8%, and had FOUR seasons >79%).

[migya]

Stockton.

People need to look at his Utah teams his whole career. Besides a very good defensive Center in Eaton and to a lesser extent Ostertag in later years, Stockton had average defenders around him, as it took Malone until the mid to late 90s to be a good defender. Stockton had such a great effect for his team his whole career on both ends, carrying much of the load.

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

Stockton.

People need to look at his Utah teams his whole career. Besides a very good defensive Center in Eaton and to a lesser extent Ostertag in later years, Stockton had average defenders around him, as it took Malone until the mid to late 90s to be a good defender. Stockton had such a great effect for his team his whole career on both ends, carrying much of the load.

Defensively, the Jazz whole was greater than the sum of the parts. Guys like Adam Keefe were not individually good defenders but they played well as a team.

There were some more good defenders; Bobby Hansen, Thurl Bailey, Tyrone Corbin, Jay Humphreys, Byron Russell, Shandon Anderson and Karl Moalone wasn't bad.

[Owly]

A scouting based perspective from the Barry handbooks, the following players were graded as triple A defenders (year refers to the year of the season after which the books were published and ranges from 89-96).

Blaylock 92-96
Randy Brown 95
Cheeks 89, 90
Gary Grant 94
Derek Harper 89, 90
Fat Lever 89-91 (Lever was injured for all but 4 games of 91, and would only play 31 games over the next 2 years - so it's presumably based on 90 and before - but many of his other grades were reduced)
McMillan 91-94, 96
Payton 92-96
Stockton 90-92
Darrell Walker 89, 90
Haywoode Workman 94, 96

(Bill Hanzlik, Mark Macon and Tony Smith also have such seasons - Hanzlik I think of just as a guard in that neither he nor Dunn had been playmakers, Macon played a little 1 but was mainly a 2 - Alvin Robertson also has one such AAA season. Some might dispute the "point"ness of Brown or Lever or Walker, or wish to put Dumars in for his minutes there, if one were including point forwards Pressey, Pippen and perhaps even Anthony Mason have AAA defense seasons.).

[SHAQ32]

Going with my guy, Mookie Blaylock

[pandrade83]

Stockton probably has more career defensive value but for me this is more of a primes project than the RGM Top 100 was.

I'll take Mookie Blaylock.

-Anchored Top 5 Atlanta defenses in the 90's ('94 & '95) that had no elite rim protector - a big piece of this for me is that the PG in question outkicks the coverage
-Finished Top 10 in DWS 4 X ('94, '95, '97, '99)
-Impact metrics find him extremely valuable: +1 or better in NPI RAPM from '97-'99. '94-'96 APM metrics find him highly impactful as a Top 10 player as well (note: No splits).
-Top 5 in steals 8 X (led league in '97)
-All D from '94-'99 (1st team in '94 & '95)

Passes the eye test:

Watch on YouTube

Obviously, we have a hard time comparing Mookie and Stockton peak to peak on impact stats since both peaked before those numbers were available, but look at the years that we do have on DRAPM:

2001: Stockton +2.5, Blaylock +0.8
2000: Stockton +3.1, Blaylock +0.5
1999: Stockton +2.3, Blaylock +2.5
1998: Stockton +2.0, Blaylock +2.2
1997: Stockton +1.5, Blaylock +1.2

Now consider that those are ages 34-38 for Stockton and ages 29-33 for Blaylock. You really think Mookie was so much better a couple years earlier that it made up for all the difference between Stockton plus how much better Stockton was at peak than he was in his mid-30s? I don't see it. 1997 and 1998 were the years that Mookie led the league in steals. He was operating pretty close to peak capacity at that point. Stockton led the league in steals in 1989 and 1992. He definitely wasn't at his defensive peak in the late '90s. I'm not the kind of guy that likes to make everything about race, but I think this is one case where if Stockton was black, he would have had a much better defensive reputation compared to the Mookie Blaylocks and Gary Paytons of the world.

I think the world of Stockton. I'm higher on him than most on this board. But so much of his value comes from the fact that he was very good for an incredibly long time. I don't view this the way I did the peaks project where I was looking at career value.

For me this is about 5 or so year prime (btw - the '00 & '01 data are post prime years for Blaylock). Stockton's defensive peak was more likely from '88-'92. And while he was good, he got lit up a few times both in the playoffs (Porter) & regular season (Isiah) in fairly notorious ways, whereas Blaylock has had stronger showings against other quality guards & could defend bigger guys than Stockton. Blaylock's impact on Team D is also a little bit more pronounced too.

Stockton should be in the Top 10, & if I took this as all about career value, Id've put him in already.

[cecilthesheep]

Stockton.

People need to look at his Utah teams his whole career. Besides a very good defensive Center in Eaton and to a lesser extent Ostertag in later years, Stockton had average defenders around him, as it took Malone until the mid to late 90s to be a good defender. Stockton had such a great effect for his team his whole career on both ends, carrying much of the load.

I voted Stockton, but I have to disagree with this. Malone changed as a defender as he aged, getting less athletic but craftier the way every great player does, but he was a really good defender one way or another for pretty much his whole career. He made an All-Defensive team all the way back in 1988. He was good.

[migya]

Stockton.

People need to look at his Utah teams his whole career. Besides a very good defensive Center in Eaton and to a lesser extent Ostertag in later years, Stockton had average defenders around him, as it took Malone until the mid to late 90s to be a good defender. Stockton had such a great effect for his team his whole career on both ends, carrying much of the load.

I voted Stockton, but I have to disagree with this. Malone changed as a defender as he aged, getting less athletic but craftier the way every great player does, but he was a really good defender one way or another for pretty much his whole career. He made an All-Defensive team all the way back in 1988. He was good.

Saw the Jazz and Malone for years and though he had some moments defensively, Malone was far from very good. Many a time the Kemp's, Buck Williams', Thorpe's, Coleman's, Brian Grant's etc. scored and scored well with little trouble on Malone, where they never did on the Olajuwon's, Robinson's, Ewing's, Shaq's, Duncan's, Garnett's, even Kemp's of the nba.

[Gibson22]

Hi guys, the deadline is near, vote if you want to

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[Gibson22]

[/quote]:

A scouting based perspective from the Barry handbooks, the following players were graded as triple A defenders (year refers to the year of the season after which the books were published and ranges from 89-96).

Blaylock 92-96
Randy Brown 95
Cheeks 89, 90
Gary Grant 94
Derek Harper 89, 90
Fat Lever 89-91 (Lever was injured for all but 4 games of 91, and would only play 31 games over the next 2 years - so it's presumably based on 90 and before - but many of his other grades were reduced)
McMillan 91-94, 96
Payton 92-96
Stockton 90-92
Darrell Walker 89, 90
Haywoode Workman 94, 96

(Bill Hanzlik, Mark Macon and Tony Smith also have such seasons - Hanzlik I think of just as a guard in that neither he nor Dunn had been playmakers, Macon played a little 1 but was mainly a 2 - Alvin Robertson also has one such AAA season. Some might dispute the "point"ness of Brown or Lever or Walker, or wish to put Dumars in for his minutes there, if one were including point forwards Pressey, Pippen and perhaps even Anthony Mason have AAA defense seasons.).

Very interesting, thank you. Tuo can see nate was really good

Anyway: Stockton 7, Cp3 5, Mookie 4, Cheeks and McMillan 2

[uberhikari]

I vote CP3.

[Gibson22]

Last minutes

[Gibson22]

John Stockton wins

John Stockton 7 (cecilthesheep, luigi, iggimcfrack, electric mayhem, Bounce_9, eminence, migya)
Chris Paul 6 (Knickfan33, trex_03, lost92bricks, drpositivity, kendogg, uberhikari)
Mookie Blaylock 4 (penbeast_0, samurai, pandrade83, BAMBA5)
Nate Mcmillan 2 (pistolpeteJR, lebron3-14-3)
Mo Cheeks 2 (SinceGatlingWasARookie, skyhookFTW)