Given the defensive effort we are seeing from everyone on the court, I could see Dwight regaining his defensive player of the year title. Guy is a beast in almost every facet of the game: rebounds, blocks, positional D, help D, etc. The Dwight of old is back.
No, he's not even playing great defense. A lot of fouls, getting over late to help, blocking shots that he knows are goaltending etc. Not exactly DPOY material...
It's the truth, he's played okay but for Dwight's doing and all this MVP talk before the season, expectations are high and should be high. He should be better and can be better and once that happens, we have lift off!!
Davis' block might be flashy, but he's not an elite defender, not yet. Noah is looking like the only legit front-runner so far.
Too early to tell. They all played hard D last night taking pressure off of Dwight. And, honestly, if Dwight doesn't have to play perfect, game-changing defense every night because everyone else is doing their part, I'm fine with that, and I imagine Dwight is as well. He'll still be a major force, though, so who knows what things will look like by the end of the season for DPOY?
He stuffs the statsheet, yes. But it seems advanced stats are telling another story so far. It's a very small sample size though.
How good are his blocks if he is still giving up 50% opponents FG% at the rim? Asik is the rim protector on that team. Even with Asik, the Pellies are not a top 5 defense at the moment (this may change). Noah and Hibbert seem to be the best rim protectors this year. I tend to think it takes a lot to be a better defender than the top rim protector.
IF we are elite team(around 60 wins ), and continue our elite defense all season. It will be because of Dwight. and the media will give credit to dwight , like they did last year to Noah. So i can see him possibly winning DPOY , or no less then top 2-3 , assuming our D keeps up.
But individually he has looked kinda slow this season. late on help D , Ive seen him watch instead of contesting too many times. and hes not blocking shots like he used to. But as we witnessed last night in the 2nd half , when he comes out , that great defense we have , disappears.
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he's not gonna get dpoy with lesst han 2bpg. stats do matter. and he need stop fouling. looks like he's gonna have a slow start to the season, but i still believe he'll be a beast
Hard to use that as a gauge, as our backups aren't exactly noteworthy. I tend to agree that if we play great TEAM defense, Dwight will get a lot of credit, as he probably should. He doesn't really have a weakness on the defensive end, and he's got multiple elite strengths. Another factor.........if we are playing good defense, the media will likely say that it is in spite of Harden (regardless of his new found motivation). This will make Howard look all the more impressive.
