Scalabrine wrote:Chanel Bomber wrote:Scalabrine wrote:
If we had an average starting point guard in the FVV, Brogdon, Murray, even Lonzo Ball, this team everyone would be saying this team is legit. Payton is a good defensive guard, but offensively he does nothing, and often tries to do too much. We're a much better team when IQ/Rose are on the court.
Neither the stats nor the eye test show he's a good defender, although he does have stretches of nice defensive play. He generally lacks discipline and he just dies on every screen.
I mean, yeah, I agree with that, I was just trying to throw him some sort of bone.
What stats are you using out of curiosity?
Defensive impact is hard to measure and I don't think there's any statistic that accurately and consistently captures it.
Here's my thinking though.
LeFraud Payton has the worst defensive rating on the team at 110.9. Considering he shares most of his minutes with the starters, the fact that he's dead last shows how much worse than them he is defensively comparatively speaking. It's not particularly close either, and considering the Knicks are a good defensive team, it's not like his defensive rating is the byproduct of playing alongside bad defenders that cost him.
He is the one holding them back.
The Knicks are 4th in the league in defensive rating at 107.8. They drop to 11th when Payton plays.
In terms of defensive on/off, opposing teams outscore the Knicks by +6.7 points per 100 possessions when he's on the court vs off. It's
a lot. Consider this, Payton plays most of his minutes with Randle and RJ, right? Well, opposing teams score 1.7 fewer points per 100 possessions when Randle is on the court, and "only" (comparatively speaking) +1.7 when RJ is on the court.
I think all these numbers confirm the eye test, which really matters when it comes to evaluating defense imo.
Anyway, that's all I got personally.