He weighted the height data based on minutes played. So he did limit it to rotation players only. If Milicic isn't playing, then his height isn't accounted for in this chart.
I would have thought the Thunder would be on the smaller side, are you classifying bigs by height or by position, like what would Jeff Green fall under, hes basically their 4 man. Maybe looking at the teams most frequently used lineups would be more informative.
Jeff Green is classified as "F" in HoopData, so he got counted as a "wing" rather than a "big". Here are all the lineups he was a part of: http://basketballvalue.com/player.php?year=2009-2010&id=715 Basketballvalue now slots the players according to position (for the most part). Classification based on individual lineups would be more accurate, but I'm not sure if the differences would be big enough to warrant the effort.
True. I think defense has a lot more to do with the players' skill sets, coaching, and effort, as well as the synergistic relationship between players' defensive talents. I can't help but remember the 1996 Bulls absolutely destroying teams in the 4th quarter with lineups of Harper, Jordan, Pippen, Kukoc, and Rodman. That's an average front-court height of about 6'8"....but they still shut down teams like no one i've ever seen because of their aggressiveness and combination of players. Harper made a point guard's life miserable, Jordan and Pippen could double team and recover like few others I've seen, and Rodman cleaned up the boards. They had the speed and aggressiveness to make up for a lack of size. On the other side of the coin, the warriors play with lineups about that size...and...well...we know how they defend.
Instead of using height, it would be interesting to come up with a metric that describes how "imposing" or "intimidating" the front line is for each team. Ideally, one would use all sort of athletic metrics like standing reach and leaping ability, but that sort of data isn't easy to come by. But I came up with something simpler which, for now, I'll call "intimidation index". It is simply a score which combines, in equal parts, a player's height and shot-blocking ability. It is basically the average of the players standardized height and standardized block% (by "standardized", I mean number of standard deviations above the average). Here is a top 20 for players who've played at least 1000 minutes: Rk Player Ht BLK% HEIGHT BLOCK INTIM_IDX 1 Roy Hibbert 7-2 5.3 1.9 2.2 2.1 2 Samuel Dalembert 6-11 6.2 1.1 2.8 1.9 3 Andrew Bogut 7-0 5.7 1.4 2.5 1.9 4 Dwight Howard 6-11 6 1.1 2.7 1.9 5 Chris Andersen 6-10 6.2 0.8 2.8 1.8 6 Brendan Haywood 7-0 4.9 1.4 2.0 1.7 7 Shaquille O'Neal 7-1 3.9 1.7 1.4 1.5 8 Marcus Camby 6-11 4.8 1.1 1.9 1.5 9 Kendrick Perkins 6-10 5.2 0.8 2.2 1.5 10 Zydrunas Ilgauskas 7-3 2.9 2.2 0.8 1.5 11 Brook Lopez 7-0 3.9 1.4 1.4 1.4 12 Erick Dampier 6-11 4.3 1.1 1.6 1.4 13 Marc Gasol 7-1 3.3 1.7 1.0 1.3 14 Pau Gasol 7-0 3.7 1.4 1.2 1.3 15 Jermaine O'Neal 6-11 4 1.1 1.4 1.3 16 Emeka Okafor 6-10 4.4 0.8 1.7 1.2 17 Joakim Noah 6-11 3.9 1.1 1.4 1.2 18 Andrew Bynum 7-0 3.4 1.4 1.1 1.2 19 Tim Duncan 6-11 3.8 1.1 1.3 1.2 20 Andrea Bargnani 7-0 3.3 1.4 1.0 1.2 It may not be perfect, but I think its closer to what we think of as "Imposing Defensive Presence" than just looking at height. Here is the same thing for Rockets players: Rk Player Ht BLK% HEIGHT BLOCK INTIM_IDX 1 David Andersen 6-11 0.9 1.1 -0.5 0.3 2 Shane Battier 6-8 2.2 0.3 0.3 0.3 3 Luis Scola 6-9 0.8 0.5 -0.5 0.0 4 Trevor Ariza 6-8 0.9 0.3 -0.5 -0.1 5 Chuck Hayes 6-6 1.7 -0.3 0.0 -0.1 6 Chase Budinger 6-7 0.6 0.0 -0.6 -0.3 7 Jermaine Taylor 6-4 1.4 -0.8 -0.2 -0.5 8 Kyle Lowry 6-0 0.6 -2.0 -0.6 -1.3 9 Aaron Brooks 6-0 0.4 -2.0 -0.8 -1.4 So I think I'll use this instead of height. And I'll also consider Chronz's idea of looking at individual lineups rather than entire teams. It will provide more data points, and maybe a more interesting pattern will emerge. When I get some further results, I'll post it here.
