Donatas Motiejunas the 8th best rim protector in the NBA. Dwight 3rd.

Davis (or Asik) is not the problem. Their perimeter D and especially the bench are laughably bad. AD/Asik combo (+Jrue Holiday) is very good defensively.

 

who cares. My point still stands. The stat is flawed if Davis is not on the list, cropped or not. How can you defend a stat that excludes (top 20 or whatever) the soon to be DPOY and top rim protector/shot blocker by far.

 

They are a top 5 worst defense, no way a DPOY has their defense play that bad. His D is overrated just gets some nice blocks here and there.

 

I don't understand the stat. How do you determine that the rim percentage is related to which defender? Most of the times, when the shot is close to the basket, there are likely more than one defenders there trying to stop the play. On teams with two good interior defenders (e.g. Pelicans, Grizzlies) I would imagine that the rim protection is high but hard to credit how much each of the two guys is responsible.

And what about teams with good shot blocking perimeter players playing great help defense near the rim?

 

So you really believe DMo is a better rim protector than Anthony Davis? by like 20 spots on the list of names.

r e a l l y

Then explain why Joakim Noah, last year's DPOY, is also not on the list.

Quit defending a stat that makes you say Noah and Davis are overrated on defense.

 

maybe because your assumptions about his defensive abilities can actually be incorrect

 

no, the stat is flawed. Joakim Noah didn't make the top 20 either. it is that simple. no way DMo is 20 spots better than Anthony Davis.

You can't possibly believe that

 

Not saying DMO is a better defender, this list is flawed for all I know. I've watched all of the Pelican games and he over commits to try and block a lot of shots. Players are figuring out that you can fake him and drop it off to your big man for a free dunk.

 

no, the stat is from a computer algorithm that uses SportVU data. And it is clearly a work in progress algorithm

 

And now explain why Joakim Noah is not on the list of top 20

 

I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that this stat (or any for that matter) tells the whole story individually. You have to combine stats of multiple things to see how good an overall defender someone is. That's more valuable than just analyzing one aspect of a multifaceted topic.

Noah and Davis are obviously great defenders. Being a great defender, however, does not necessarily equate to being a consistently great rim protector. I think there's a subtle difference there. The consistent part is pretty important. The OP mentioned he filtered for certain criteria that would eliminate small sample size.

That being said, this stat obviously has some flaws. And for that matter, it is unclear how they measure everything on an individual basis. Perhaps it is the case that some players are there that do not belong. Statistical bias is a very real thing.

On the other hand though, pretending that Noah and Davis not being there invalidates the whole stat is pretty ignorant considering 10 other "top rated" defensive specialists are definitely on the list.

Every form of statistical analysis comes with an error term. I think given the fact that this list includes a vast majority of the names you would expect to see on it, the erroneous term or whatever statistical bias may exist is probably minimal. That's just my opinion though.

 

Those are pretty horrendous rankings last year as well. You're just looking for a stat and not caring how accurate it is, just so long it uses a computer, you will then defend it versus what Jeff van Gundy, Carlisle and Thibodeaux would tell you.


stupid stats being defended by fans who want a simple number to settle an argument.

 

The problem right now for Davis is that he is still learning NBA defensive schemes. He will be absolutely frightening next season.

 

It still draws a part of the picture. You can argue about how much weight it carries, but it's still a valid deduction (in part). The source information comes from a solid base.

People on here like to go on crusades against metrics far too much because Morey is the GM and people like to be contrarian to the apologists. People will draw far too much weight from one certain metric and that's just fandom at play. You are fighting against homerism and bias, NOT analytics.

You can only tackle analytics with more accurate analytics.

 

The data posted by the OP is not statistically generated. It is a frame by frame digital analysis of each and every play in the NBA. Every team uses SportsVU generated data, and relies on SportsVU's analysis.