James Harden is the best isolation defender in the NBA

OK, took a bit of digging, but here are the stats from NBA.com (added filter of >= 20 ISO possessions defended).

http://stats.nba.com/players/isolation/?Season=2017-18&SeasonType=Regular Season&OD=defensive&sort=aFG&dir=-1&CF=Poss*GE*20&PerMode=Totals

Harden has defended 25 isolation possessions, and allowed only 0.56 PPP and 25 eFG%. Very good, best on the team, although not league leading.

For the Rockets only:

http://stats.nba.com/players/isolation/?Season=2017-18&SeasonType=Regular Season&OD=defensive&sort=aFG&dir=-1&CF=Poss*GE*10:TeamNameAbbreviation*E*HOU&PerMode=Totals

Edit:
I see the original tweet set the cutoff at 25 possessions (the number he has faced). In that case, yes, Harden has the lowest points per play given up for isolation plays at that cutoff.

 

I keep telling you that Harden needs to get better in order for that trade to happen

Harden (NBA player stats)
Steals (16th)
Minutes (10th)
Efficiency (3rd)
3PA (1st)
3PM (1st)
Points (1st)
Assists (1st)
Popcorn sales (1st)
Valet Service (top rated)

and now......
Iso Def (1st) -per Synergy-

Come back with more later Bruh. Then maybe

 

His defensive assignment is almost always the worst creator on the opposing team..

I'm not a Harden hater..
I love JH

 

I love it. Bzdelik earning his money. Lol

Remember when people laughed and said, but yeah, what is he going to do with James Harden and
Ryan Anderson? You can’t hide them. My apologies to all, btw

 

And Tucker is second.

Melo and Ryno are 8th and 9th respectively. So should we have traded Ryno for Melo?

 

Yeah. I'm looking at the stats for last season with a higher cutoff -- 60 possessions:

http://on.nba.com/2i8kaax

You've got known good defenders like Trevor Ariza, Andre Iguodala, Marcus Smart, Otto Porter, Jr. who have a pretty low percentile ranking by this stat. Clearly this is very context sensitive.

It would be interesting if there were On/Off team-level stats by play type. So that would tell us how good the Rockets defend against isolation plays when various combination of players are on the floor. Or they could include expected PPP based on isolation PPP for players faced and show the differential.

I kind of get the feeling that whoever designed the NBA.com stats site has access to this wealth of information, but they haven't put as much thought into how to actually present it in a useful manner.

 

Nah man that’s the cheke and swychild move.

 

Yes I found it myself, because luckily I know where and how to find the data.

The problem I have is, what where his qualifiers? Because when I put the qualifiers at 10 games played and at least 20 defensive possessions in isolation, filtered by ppp; he is not number 1 but rather #6. Change the qualifier from 20 to 15 and he drops to 11.

The only way you can make harden number 1 in defense against isolation is to put the qualifier at 25. He has been targeted higher than everyone else in the top echelon with only Marc Gasol being close at 24.

Just an odd tweet to not include the data or data set. Makes it seem unbelievable. Especially considerring his comments the previous day about being able to make things up.

I love harden, think he is amazing and phenomenal. He absolutely deserves respect and r cognition for his better defense this year.

It just doesn’t have to be fabricated.


He has defended isolation 25 times
He has held opponents to 0.56ppp
He has held opponents to 25 fg%
He has held opponents to 25 efg%
He is in the 89.7 percentile defending isolation

He is playing amazing, but let’s be honest with ourselves and the data. He isn’t the best, but being this good is great!!!

 

imo, these individual stats are fairly useless to compare individuals across teams. And useless for comparing wings to Bigs. One of many reasons is because NBA teams nowadays will trap the box on isolation. The player being ISO'd on the wing is instructed to force the ISO player to the baseline, where he is supposed to be met by a trapping Big (or inverse if a switch previously happened). Now, this doesn't give the primary defender the OK to matador the ISO player to the baseline, but he cannot let him go middle.

If your trapper fails to make the proper defensive read and do his assignment to meet the driver at the box, the primary defender is left out to dry, and blamed solely for the score.

So, I find comparing across teams when some teams trap the ISO player onto the baseline better than others is not very useful for measuring the primary defender. However, it is a fine data to compare Harden to last year and Harden to other Rockets this year, to see any regression or improvement.

One thing that stands out to me is the TO% on ISO vs the PPP. PJ Tucker is a monster leading the league at 25.9%, and was near top in previous years, too (same with Luc). TO% also bring guys like Butler up to the surface. So whether they are playing a trap the box defense, they are still actually disrupting the play.

thx for the links to where those stats are.

fwiw: that link is stats from 2 yrs ago

fwiw: That's what the tweet says. 25 minimum, with no qualifier of games played.

 

This must be some of that fake news I keep hearing so much about

 

Am I reading this right? Ryno is rated higher than Draymond?

 

Harden is usually guarding the other team's weakest offensive player.

 

And Ariza is the worst among Rockets rotation players. It just shows you that you can't just use this kind of isolated (no pun intended) stats to say, "Player A is a better defender than Player B..."

 

This is all a setup.

2nd again in MVP. Wins Defensive Player of the Year.

 

Haha bro, there are so many bitter Lin fans on here and it’s crazy....The hate is strong, they call all these Stats bullshit....Unreal.

Bet most of them feel if they walk too far west/east, they will fall off the edge of the earth....

We should come up with a inside nickname for all these guys.

 

It’s because he leaves his guy to help on Harden’s guy.

 

*new stat thread

fwiw:
Eric Gordon is 5th in Def WS
James Harden 37th in Def WS

https://stats.nba.com/players/defense/?sort=DEF_WS&dir=-1

Bzdelik x DCOTY

 

Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t remember that being there yesterday lol

 

Yeah ... somehow I also don't remember that. I assumed I had overlooked it before.

 

Harden is 3rd in TO’s/per game

behind............?

1) DeMarcus Cousins
2) Westbrook (the greatest MVP of all time)