1. Kevin Garnett, Celtics: Boston has the most dominating defense in the league, and KG is the engine that makes it all work. Not only does he give maximum effort on the defensive side of the court, he demands his teammates try to match him. 2. Shane Battier, Rockets: He closes out on shooters as well as anyone and never takes a play off. After he slowed down Bryant on national TV, high school coaches around the country started telling their players to simply put a hand over a shooter's eyes instead of trying to block the shot. He's out at the moment with a foot injury. 3. Marcus Camby, Clippers: Not only does he pile up the blocks and steals and erase his teammates' mistakes, he also is an exceptional rebounder. The trade from Denver won't hurt his defensive value at all, although Chris Kaman could take away a couple of his boards. 4. Josh Smith, Hawks: He might not be a great one-on-one stopper yet, but when it comes to stuffing the stat sheet with hustle plays such as drawing offensive fouls (he drew 38 of them), blocks, steals and rebounds, Smith gets the job done. 5. Ron Artest, Rockets: When it comes to ranking the best on-the-ball defenders, Artest has to be near the top of the list. With Yao patrolling the middle and Battier up to his usual stuck-on-you tricks, it is going to be a lot tougher to score on Houston this season.
If we end up having 2 of the top 5 defenders in the league this year, we will have a better defense than the Celtics had last year. And remember, defense wins championships, baby!
Actually, i think thats baloney, whoever scores the most point in a championship game wins the championship
This is what has always puzzled me about defensive player and defensive team awards. guys like marcus camby and josh smith have no business on that list. just because you rack up great defensive statistics doesn't mean you are a great defensive player. camby is an awful defender and routinely let's his man beat him to try and go for the block. same with some guys who rack up gaudy steals numbers - just because they gamble alot and play the passing lanes doesn't mean they are better defenders than a guy like mario elie who i can't remember ever getting a steal. josh smith and camby have no business on that list with the likes of battier, artest, and garnett - guys who anchor defenses.
I agree completely. Another guy that consistently gets constantly overrated for his defense is Kobe. When he wants to, he is a great man to man defender, but the majority of the time he just gambles excessively and tries to use his athleticism to recover after he is beaten gambling, trying to come up with steals. In the Olympics, etc he was a great lockdown defender, but in the NBA it seems like he spends a lot of time just gambling for steals.
i agree with those last two opinions, but it's also important to not blow it out of proportion. stats are still a good measure of defense. not as good as "anchoring" or "locking down" but...still. just don't get carried away disregarding stats.
the problem is all the ap voters don't actually watch the games! and it's not their fault, it's just simply they have to cover other sports as well and they simply don't have the time to watch all the games. The games that they probably do watch are the primetime games on espn and tnt or they focus on marquee teams. There's simply no other reason how Battier finished 3rd on the dpoy but was not even on ALL NBA 1st team.
It's my fault,man. I should have established a company that live all the rockets games around america.
actually, it's more like the one who wins 4 games in a championship series. you can win a championship without scoring the most points in a series, and you can also score fewer points in a championship game, then play the next championship game and win it
Or, the team that holds the other team to the least amount of points wins. I guess i'm just pessimistic.
