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

[Dr Positivity]

Still voting Chris Paul. Best defensive PG of an amazing offensive era for PGs, elite impact stats, good team results. Is a great help and man to man defender, and has done it for a decade

[Owly]

The scale is AAA to D and has to allow for reviewing non-starters as well, of course. Interpret as you will ...

Hey, can I find these online somewhere?

No. Well, you could buy the physical books online.

And it was only for the start of the 90s?

Eight editions were done (after the season) from 89 to 96 (the titles would refer to the coming season).

[uberhikari]

Open to Chris Paul, good defender, advanced stats agree but if those same advanced stats say Ricky Rubio is better, what's the argument for Paul over Rubio? Open to change my vote if this can be explained away to my understanding.

Open to KC Jones, but if the Russell Celtics don't improve significantly on defense when they went from a bad defender in Bob Cousy to KC, is he really that impressive or just a product of Russell's dominance? Again, if someone can show me that the Celtics DID improve dramatically moving from Cousy to KC Jones, I am willing to change my vote because by reputation he should probably be top 5.

Open to Nate McMillan, as he is probably the best defender left per minute. But he just didn't play that many minutes compared to other candidates and he didn't cause the kind of disruption that I remember from the best of Walt Frazier or Gary Payton.

Vote: Mookie Blaylock. Hawks were a very good defensive team most of his years despite Dominique Wilkins (who was voted in a TSN poll by fellow players as the NBA player least interested in playing defense). With no strong defensive stats available and the eye test not making any candidate except possibly Nate McMillan stand out more (McMillan's size made him more of a shutdown guy), team defense results v. my expectations for that team is my fallback defensive backup to the eye test.

Some thoughts ...

On Paul vs Rubio: I don't have the best grasp on the various impact metrics (whether technically, whose versions of RAPM are best, interpreting it etc) so I'm not the guy for detail on this. Their DRPM's (for ease of use and not having to choose a version of RAPM and find out what years are available etc) for the past 5 years, at a glance, don't suggest a clear gap.

17-18
Rubio: 1.98
Paul: 1.63

16-17
Rubio: 0.76
Paul: 2.76

15-16
Rubio: 1.89
Paul: 2.44

14-15
Rubio: 2.33 (692 minutes)
Paul: 0.47

13-14
Rubio: 2.47
Paul: 1.95

Prior to that (or overall) Paul has massive minutes advantage. I guess I'd be inclined to Paul over Rubio, but wouldn't be averse to either, but don't see Rubio as eliminating Paul from the field. Fwiw, and it doesn't matter so much after the fact but based on the 97-14 RAPM Paul kills Payton, and is only a little worse than Kidd (and he seems to have lifted that number, probably above Kidd's, in the years since).

On K.C. hard for me to rank him. Just so much less information to go on (and so different - i.e. anecdotal) that it's hard to compare, and maybe that hurts him here. What I will say is that it's hard to gauge an "impact on arrival". You look at the year Cousy goes, but Jones' minutes jump up in small increments each year. His departure might be a better gauge, though still probably noisy.

On Blaylock-Wilkins: Blaylock plays 1 5/8 of a season with Wilkins (1992-3 and and about 49 games of 1993-94). For the full season, the Hawks weren't a great defensive team (110.2 Drtg in 108.0 average league - this ranked the 23rd out of 27 teams). For the partial season they are much better, without looking at the splits.

Also on Wilkins, I've heard you cite the Wilkins "least interested defender" poll out there before and I don't think it's "wrong" but it's maybe not the full picture and might color you too much on him (maybe it's just a specific instance you remember - maybe it's just a subtext that I read in that he's dreadful at that end) so I'll dig out some Wilkins review from this time and see what they say:

No one has ever doubted WIlkins' physical tools for D - strength, lateral quickness, jumping ability ... But, hey, he's a scorer and, except for the last few minutes of a game, doesn't consistently focus on defense... As one savant described it: Wilkins' defense can be "very good or very mediocre" ... Generally it tends towards the latter ... Best asset defensively is ability to play passing lanes (about 1 steal a game)
Grade: B-

A Clipper source aptly summarized 'Nique's D: "He can get after people when it's absolutely necessary. But if it's not absolutely necessary, he's leaking out" ... A minority opinion holds that his defense is "better than he's give credit for" ... He'll deny the ball, front the post, and so on ... The better view is that Wilkins saves himself for offense
Grade: C

The scale is AAA to D and has to allow for reviewing non-starters as well, of course. Interpret as you will ...

On Rubio vs. Paul.

I have PI RAPM going back to '14, but I don't feel like digging through them. Here are the cliff notes:

Rubio as early as 2014 had a massive DRAPM (2.2+), I believe. Then he tore his ACL in 2015 and his DRAPM remained flat (~.6) for the next 2 years, and didn't recover until last year (2.3).

At the very least, CP3 is way ahead in terms of career value.

[penbeast0]

Fair enough and I was very torn between the three of them. Can you do a direct comparison using the best tools that we have between Blaylock and Paul?

[trex_8063]

Open to Chris Paul, good defender, advanced stats agree but if those same advanced stats say Ricky Rubio is better, what's the argument for Paul over Rubio? Open to change my vote if this can be explained away to my understanding.

Open to KC Jones, but if the Russell Celtics don't improve significantly on defense when they went from a bad defender in Bob Cousy to KC, is he really that impressive or just a product of Russell's dominance? Again, if someone can show me that the Celtics DID improve dramatically moving from Cousy to KC Jones, I am willing to change my vote because by reputation he should probably be top 5.

Open to Nate McMillan, as he is probably the best defender left per minute. But he just didn't play that many minutes compared to other candidates and he didn't cause the kind of disruption that I remember from the best of Walt Frazier or Gary Payton.

Vote: Mookie Blaylock. Hawks were a very good defensive team most of his years despite Dominique Wilkins (who was voted in a TSN poll by fellow players as the NBA player least interested in playing defense). With no strong defensive stats available and the eye test not making any candidate except possibly Nate McMillan stand out more (McMillan's size made him more of a shutdown guy), team defense results v. my expectations for that team is my fallback defensive backup to the eye test.

Some thoughts ...

On Paul vs Rubio: I don't have the best grasp on the various impact metrics (whether technically, whose versions of RAPM are best, interpreting it etc) so I'm not the guy for detail on this. Their DRPM's (for ease of use and not having to choose a version of RAPM and find out what years are available etc) for the past 5 years, at a glance, don't suggest a clear gap.

Chiming in (basically in agreement with what Owly said in portions I deleted to save space): the advantage Paul has over Rubio is largely that he's been doing it longer (he's got 31k+ rs minutes to Rubio's 13k+); and although he perhaps wasn't always as stellar a defender as we've been accustomed to seeing in recent years, he was at least decent most of those earlier years. For me, that clearly edges out Rubio in career defensive value.

If you look at only the handful of best years, yeah: Paul probably doesn't have any clear advantage on Rubio (which is why I was the primary one pushing for Rubio's inclusion as a eligible candidate in the prep stages of this project [even though I'll likely not be giving him a vote]). He's a pretty disruptive defender, though.

[eminence]

Think I'll give this one to Chris Paul. Such a smart defender, like I've mentioned my favorite thing about his defense is his ability to direct teammates from the guard spot, very rare. Great individual defense as well, doing it against high level competition.

[PigsOnTheWing]

Chris Paul was neck and neck with Stockton for me in the last few threads so he obviously earn my vote for this spot.
He has an important resume, with barely any flaw, which, before the start of the project I thought would be enough to guarantee him a place in the top 5. It didn't happen but I don't feel bad with any of the players already selected to be before him, which says a lot about the historical quality of defense in this position (which I underestimated a lot).

Speaking of Paul, he is seen by basically everyone (his myriad all-nba selections speak for him) as the best defensive PG of the last decade in the era of the great PGs and, as some have pointed up, this is a big plus for him. He has always been loved by plus/minus derived metrics, which is no surprise because he's outstanding in what has the biggest impact on the scoreboard as far as defense goes, that is help defense and switchability.

I still have in my eyes his series against the Warriors in which he was matched up on Durant sometimes and he still bothered that cheat code. During that series he guarded KD in 32 possessions and in these, the Warriors posted a 103 ORTG (the Warriors ORTG during the whole series was 114.5), with Durant scoring 13 points. It's a super limited sample size but I feel it's worth to mention because we are talking about a 1 feet differential in their height and it was not against Looney or Pachulia, but against Kevin Durant.

Sometimes in the past he struggled a bit on D in the postseason but I'm pretty confident in saying it's not the reason why his team always fell short in the crucial moments. He also has good longevity to prop him up above some glue guys of the caliber of McMillan and Van Lier and beats Blaylock and Cheeks on pure prime value (basically imo he's simply better than them on D) so he wins this spot with a clear margin (the first time this happens for me in this project).

[Gibson22]

Chris Paul 8 (knickfan33, kendogg, homecourtloss, trex, cecilthesheep, dr positivity, eminence, bounce_9)
Mookie Blaylock 4 (penbeast, samurai, BAMBA5, pandrade83)
Mo Cheeks 2 (SkyHookFTW, SinceGatlingWasARookie)
Nate McMillan 1 (lebron3-14-3, SinceGatlingWasARookie)

[Gibson22]

If you guys want to vote

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[ElectricMayhem]

I'll go Chris Paul. I had him neck and neck with Stockton last time.

[Gibson22]

CP3 reaches 9 votes and wins the #7 place.

[Gibson22]

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