durvasa, in terms of versatility shane battier is hands down the best defender of the rockets. chuck is a solid #2. but ariza is nowhere close to those both. battier has guarded almost any position. we've seen him on chris paul and steve nash (pg). we've seen him on kobe and lebron (sg/sf). and we've seen him on dirk (sf/pf) as well. there's no other perimeter defender who can do this. also you have to consider that battier is an excellent shot blocker for his position and he's elite as a help defender and on transition defense. the chuckwagon is great, too. he's an elite post defender and his pick and roll defense is just superb. he's also a good team defender and takes a lot of charges as well. but overall battier is more versatile because there are certain matchups where chuck has his problems. sometimes shooting bigs give him some trouble. other times big and strong players with some skills just overpower him. and sometimes he gets into foul trouble too easily.
Agree to disagree - Basketball IQ is important, but it's certainly not twice as important as any other attributes. Ben Wallace, Ron Artest.. DPOYs.. neither would be considered to be a "smart player". IQ is important, but I think you're really overvaluing it and Battier in the process. What does who Battier has to guard factor into his length? Ariza guards those same players, and rates much higher on the wingspan/reach scale.. he should be much higher than only .5 than Battier on that alone. I just posted you an article that says how Battier has below-average length, yet you rate him as an 8? Just because he uses what he has doesn't make hm any longer, nor should it garner any points in the "length" category. Blocks is also a fallacy to use in judging this; length doesn't tie into blocks or steals - it's merely your wingspan/standing reach. You get blocks/steals by being active and knowing where to be/timing.. you could use his block ratio as a reasoning for his perfect score in intelligence, but not in the length argument - Battier is below-average there. Then you're punishing Lowry for being a guard and it has nothing to do with strength. For his position, Lowry is one of the strongest. I guess I just have a problem that the scale isn't completely balanced.. your strength factor essentially favors big men. I think the best indication would be for you to judge each factor against the player's position rathern than overall. How mobile is Andersen compared to other centers, not how mobile he is compared to Shane Battier - that would be a better indication of the player's defensive worth, IMO.
Great effort, but many holes in the system, leaving it seeming very arbitrary. Appreciate the effort though.
Perhaps you have a more narrow view of "intelligence" than what I'm referring to. I consider Artest and Wallace to have intelligence, but in a different way compared to Battier. Artest in particular has good defensive instincts and anticipation, which I consider a type of intelligence. He communicates on the floor. And he's a veteran who understands team defensive principles. All things considered, I don't consider him a dumb defensive player at all. In his prime I may have given Artest an 8 for mobility, 8.5 for length, 10 for strength, let's say a 6 for intelligence, and a 9 or versatility. Using my proposed system, Artest would get a 7.9 rating in his prime. If I weight them all equally, as you suggest, then Battier would have gotten a 7.7, and Artest would get an 8.3. Those results do make sense to me. Where did the article say he had below-average length? What is considered average length for a swing-man? The type of players he's asked to defend matters for straight-forward reasons (e.g. if Chuck was defending PFs instead of Cs, his lack of length would not be nearly the same disadvantage). I'm interested in the ability of a player to make plays with his length. Raw physical measurements help in that regard, but so does timing and technique. I would rather keep those qualities separate from the intelligence category. I'll put it this way: the first 3 attributes (mobility, length, strength) refer to a player's playmaking ability as a defender. Intelligence refers to a player's understanding of where he needs to be on the floor, where his teammates need to be on the floor, and what type of play needs to happen. Punishing? No. You could say Adelman is "punishing" him by asking him to defend SGs, but that's just what the makeup of this team requires. The goal is to arrive at a rating which captures how much a player helps his team's defense. If strength matters less at certain positions than others, then I think that should be taken into account somehow. I could alter the weights depending on the type of role they are asked to fill as one person suggested. Or I could adjust the ratings, subjectively, based on how I feel a player's abilities is helping/hurting his team. Lowry may be the strongest 6'0 player in the league, but if (1) he's guarding SGs half the time and (2) he's typically not asked to defend post players or box out rebounders, I can't give him that much credit for his pound-for-pound strength. I agree, and that is what I was trying to do: "I'll rate our 9 rotation players, again subjectively, for each of these categories. I also take into account which positions they are asked to defend (e.g. Kyle Lowry and and of course Chuck Hayes are asked to defend out of position quite a lot, which will help their mobility and versatility rating but bring down their length/strength rating)."
I don't think it's narrow viewed, I just don't think either player is very intelligent. Battier is in another world compared to those two - having good instincts/timing doesn't equate to intelligence. Intelligence to me is following the game plan, pushing players to spots they don't want to go and into lower percentage shots -- I don't really think of Big Ben or Artest doing either of these. Artest would just be as physically as possible with you, but he never really played smart or within the system. The article said: Not only is he below-average for his position, he's also below average for his height. There's no real debating that. Battier guards the exact same players as Ariza does, and Ariza is a lot "longer" than Battier; There's no way he should only be .5 above him in that category or even that Battier should be so high. He needs to be around 5 or perhaps lower. I don't really think timing or technique factor into a length argument, that should be a separate issue or perhaps something to divide the intelligence issue on as it seems to encompass a lot. If that's what you were trying to do, how does Lowry rate so low? As I've said, he's probably among the strongest PGs in the league. You admit that you don't rate him high because he doesn't guard post-up players, but that just conflicts with you agreeing to rate players by the position they play. You should rate Lowry by the PG/SG position, and not by his inability to defend the PF/C. In that case, his strength should be somewhere ~ 8 - 8.5. Even when he's guarding SGs, he isn't being backed down.. he's too strong.
After rethinking the ratings (a loss will do that) and considering some of the feedback thus far, this is how I'm seeing it right now. I think perhaps I gave Battier too much credit for mobility/length. While I still maintain that timing/technique will factor in to those particular ratings, I do see LongTimeFan's point that what allows him to make those type of plays is, in part, his ability to be the right spot at the right time (which goes to his IQ). I decided to drop his ratings for the first 3 attributes, and I've also knocked his intelligence down to 9.5. No one's perfect, and Battier's conservative style isn't necessarily the best approach at all times. I made some other modifications as well (so, for instance, Scola is now smidgen ahead of Landry on defense). This includes reducing MOB and LEN ratings for the wings, and reducing MOB rating for the PGs. I've also added DRTG2, which weights MOB, LEN, STR, INT, and VER equally, as per LongTimeFan's suggestion. You can decide which ratings look more correct. I've added a bottom row, which is a weighted average of all the player's ratings for each attribute. Again, it is subjective, but based on this my impression is that the defensive strengths of the Rockets personnel is mobility, intelligence, and versatility. While the "bigs" (Hayes, Landry, Scola, and Andersen) collectively have a LEN rating of only 3.7, as a team they aren't completely outsized because their wings (Battier, Ariza, Budinger) do possess good size. With a total team rating of 5.5, I subjectively feel that this team's personnel is good enough to be compete at a slightly above average level on the defensive end. This is more or less what they've been doing. Pos player min MOB LEN STR INT VER DRTG DRTG2 G/F Battier 1409 6.0 6.5 5.0 9.5 8.0 7.4 7.0 C Hayes 929 8.0 1.5 7.5 9.5 8.0 7.3 6.9 G/F Ariza 1575 6.5 7.0 4.0 5.0 8.0 5.9 6.1 G Lowry 1051 7.5 3.0 6.0 5.5 5.5 5.5 5.5 F/C Scola 1271 5.5 4.0 4.0 6.0 5.0 5.1 4.9 F/C Landry 1112 6.5 5.0 5.0 4.0 5.5 5.0 5.2 G/F Budinger 613 6.0 6.5 4.0 4.0 4.5 4.8 5.0 PG Brooks 1494 7.0 2.5 4.0 5.0 1.0 4.1 3.9 C Andersen 612 3.0 4.0 3.5 4.5 4.0 3.9 3.8 total 6.4 4.5 4.8 6.0 5.6 5.5 5.5
Your article said he has below average wing span "for his height and position". But what is his position? As a defensive player, it would be inaccurate to say he is a forward. He is really a guard/forward -- the vast majority of the time he is defending SGs or SFs. The league average height for the type of defensive role he takes with our team is more like 6'6. Is his wing span below average for that height? And I will maintain that my interest here isn't raw physical measurements. I explained the distinction between what I'm considering as "intelligence" in this system and the first three attributes. Like you said, we can agree to disagree on that. You did sway me to alter the ratings for Battier (his LEN is now a 6 instead of an 8), but it doesn't make sense to me for his length to be considered at 5 or lower. I suppose it doesn't make that big a difference ultimately, though. That is what I'm doing. You must be misunderstanding my explanation. I'll try again. The main thing we want to understand is how a player's defensive strengths/weaknesses help his team. We agree, I'm sure, that certain attributes are less important at some positions than others. The way I am adjusting for this is to "compress" the ratings towards 5 where I deem the attribute less important (e.g. strength for guards). So, in my latest revision, I've increase Aaron's STR rating to 4, because despite his slight build I don't feel his lack of strength significantly hurts the team. In contrast, David Andersen gets a STR of 3.5. Obviously, in absolute terms, David is stronger than Aaron. But relative to their position, Andersen's lack of strength hurts the Rockets more than Aaron's lack of strength. Returning to Lowry, he must rank in the upper 10 percent of PGs in terms of strength. I do not dispute this. But, where does he rank in terms of strength amongst the players he is asked to defend? Well, half the time he is asked to defend SGs (perhaps the smaller ones, but still bigger guards), so may be his strength amongst that group would put him at around the 70th percentile. That's still very impressive for a 6'0 guy who's asked to guards 2s. When I couple that with my belief that strength isn't quite as important for guards, he gets a STR rating of 6. Any more than that, I think I'd be giving him too much credit for a category that isn't as important for his position.
I think a lot of people are underrating Andersen's defense. While he by no means is a good defender, he's not entirely a bad one. He makes fairly good rotation and is fairly aware. He's just not strong or athletic enough to make a difference though.
Upon considering how Yao would fair by this system, the flaw becomes evident. Subjectively, I'd give Yao: MOB:1.5, LEN:9.5, STR:9.5, INT:6, VER:0.5 He would end up with a DRTG of 5.7. This, to me, severely undersells his value. I need to rethink the attributes and how I weight them.
Here is an alternate defensive rating system taking a very different approach. Instead of evaluating players based on physical skills, intelligence, versatility, I rate them based on: transition defense, on-ball defense, off-ball defense, and rebounding. The logic is that a good team defense stand consists essentially of those four components: Transition D: Players (especially the guards) must run back and matchup as quickly as possible to prevent quick scores from opponent. On-Ball D: Once the play shifts from transition to a half-court set, at any given point one or more players must be defending the player with the ball. Off-Ball D: The constitutes help defense while not losing sight of one's off-ball duties. Also how well the player rotates to the open man, being opportunistic to swipe lazy passes, and providing "intimidation" to dissuade an offense from attacking a particular zone on the floor (especially the interior). Rebounding: Once a shot is taken, you need to close out the possession by getting the ball. One thing I wanted to do this time around is apply explicit weights on these defensive components based on one's position. I'll propose, in general, that 15% goes to transition defense, 35% to on-ball defense, 35% to off-ball defense, and 15% to rebounding. But depending on one's position, the weights (or the importance depending on one's defensive role) shift in the following way: Code: [B]TRAN ONBALL OFFBALL REB[/B] PG 23 47 23 8 SG 19 35 35 11 SF 15 35 35 15 PF 11 35 35 19 C 8 23 47 23 G 21 41 29 9 GF 17 35 35 13 FC 9 29 41 21 Here is how I rated each player, this time on a scale of 0-100: Code: [B]player pos min TRAN ONBALL OFFBALL REB DRTG[/B] Brooks PG 1525 50 40 40 20 41 Ariza GF 1614 60 65 60 60 62 Battier GF 1433 85 65 80 35 70 Scola FC 1310 70 40 60 70 57 Hayes C 939 65 75 75 45 68 Landry FC 1150 45 55 45 30 45 Lowry G 1077 55 60 70 70 63 Budinger GF 641 50 45 45 60 48 Andersen C 618 50 35 45 30 40 total 60 54 59 47 56
