Harden edged out by Irving for No Defense Player of the Year, but makes No Defense First Team

Lloyd was a good defender. In fact he played Magic Johnson as well as anyone.

 

aelliott, Sweet Lou was the original Harden... He was so gifted on offense, but on defense he was (Mr. Help)... All you would ever hear is Help Help Help...

Now Wiggins played Magic better than anyone... Lloyd was never consider a defender... No where close to good..

T_Man

 

Meeks' defensive ratings were bad this year because D'Antoni used him as a hedge for Kendall Marshall. Those two were always on the floor together because Marshall was horrible on D and Nick Young's never improved his D. So Meeks ended up being the only decent wing defender and was forced to cover for Kendall's rookie mistakes while also guarding the other team's best offensive wing.

I hate it when writers just look at stats and don't watch games. Kawakami's a moron

 

Disagree. Lloyd wasn't a bad defender. Wiggins was indeed a great defender but he was too small for Magic. Lloyd was a couple of inches taller and had really long arms.

Here's a couple of references to Lloyd's defense.

it was Lewis Lloyd, the Rockets' versatile guard, who is a fast-emerging NBA star by virtue of his offensive and defensive consistency.

another from the same article:

But Lloyd adds the key to his success has been "my improved defense."

yet another :


Golden State's Eric Floyd has been impressed with Lloyd's play this season.
"He just plays well all around," Floyd said. "He attacks on defense and gets the shot."

http://articles.latimes.com/1986-01-12/sports/sp-27322_1_lewis-lloyd

Here's Allen Levell talking about Lloyd and Wiggins:

Allen Leavell (guard, Rockets): They were both amazing. Good rebounders, played good defense. Lew was a flat-out scorer. Mitchell could shoot the ball. He never got credit for it.

http://grantland.com/features/an-oral-history-hakeem-olajuwon-ralph-sampson-1980s-houston-rockets/

Truthfully, no perimeter player on that Rockets team needed to call for help because they always had Sampson and Olajuwon as a safety net behind them. Here's a Robert Reid story to illustrate (from the same Grantland article):

Reid: The late, great Dennis Johnson, one time he brought the ball up to half court and I opened up the gate. He said, “Reid, what are you doing? You ain’t going to play no defense?” I said, “Look down there. Do you feel lucky?” He cussed me out.

 

This is why the Rockets won't win a championship anytime soon. Notice...that champions like Lebron, Kobe, Duncan...play offense AND defense.

Still it's fun to the watch the Rockets over an 82 game season, win or lose.

 

Tony Parker?

 

Come on "a" we can both articles that can support what we are saying....

I use to sit court side with my cousin laughing as we mocked Lloyd on defense calling for Help..

Basically Lloyd played the same defense as Harden does now, because both have a big man who can clean up their mess....

Quote from Grantland

Lew was never known for his defense, not even in Golden State... He was the original Harden, a pure scorer.. Wiggins on the other hand was the original Pat Bev, a pure junk yard dog on defense....

T_Man

 

Not the same. The quote that you cited was Lloyd saying that he'd sometimes intentionally let his man go so that Ralph or Hakeem would block their shot. Same thing as Robert Reid said that he did in the quote I referenced. That's not playing bad defense, that's having a little fun at your opponents expense. You don't think Robert Reid was a bad defender too do you?

I showed you several quotes where people commented on Lloyd playing good defense. That Grantland article doesn't say that he played bad defense.

You are correct that Lloyd was known for his offense but that alone doesn't mean that you play bad defense...those two things aren't mutually exclusive.

 

Come on "a", now you're saying I can't use a quote that came from the same site that you quoted... Lew and Harden are the same, they both had the athleticism to play D but neither put the effort into it. Both are gifted offensive players that payed little to no attention to Defense.

So I will say that I will agree to disagree with you on this matter.

T_Man

 

He actually got a vote for All-NBA Defense..... I almost fell out of my chair.

 

The three worst defensive players I've ever seen (who where otherwise All-Star caliber) were Bernard King, Dominique Wilkins, and Steve Nash.

 

Don't know about last year's defensive DRPM since espn just rolled out the RPM metric (the metric the author used to select his Non Defense Team) but based on DRPM (defense-Real Plus Minus) Curry is the better defender.
Name.......................ORPM..............................DRPM.....................Total RPM........................WAR
Steph Curry..........+6.61 (#1 of 86PGs)....-0.38 (#26 of 86).......+6.23(#2 of 86)............+15.46 (#1 of 86)
See http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_/sort/DRPM/position/1
James Harden.......+5.97 (#1 of 90SGs)....-2.84 (#77 of 90)......+3.13 (#6 of 90)............+9.67 (#2 of 90)
See http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_/page/2/sort/DRPM/position/2

On offense, both Harden and Curry are the best in the game at their respective positions, but defensively it's not close. Steph is 7.5 times better than Harden. Harden is one of my favorite players but his defense (statistically) is really bad. Still, if you have the #1 scoring SG in the league, you must keep him on the team at all cost. That means you find ways to improve his defense or you surround with elite defenders to cover his deficiencies. What else can we do?

 

By the way, Tony Parker's DRPM is also negative at -0.16 (#21 of 86 PGs in the league). Although DRPM doesn't tell the whole story, I don't think that number is worthy of a place on the NBA Defensive Team.

 

DRPM says that LeBron James is the 171st best defender in the NBA. I wouldn't put too much stock in that stat.

 

That vote was a writer trying to be funny. Harden got two votes.

 

Now this we agree on....

I hate when guys rely strictly on stats on the GARM....

T_Man

 

There's no publicly available good metric for individual defense. So using stats to argue individual defense is suspect. And that's too bad. The only recourse we have is the eye test.

 

Check it out, DWade has his very own compilation from the 2014 Finals

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/T6awLLLgeYM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

NBA Stats aren't so bad. They can be useful when deciding on a starting lineup, determining minutes played, etc; and they are particularly useful for situational offense and defense. Lots of people trust offensive stats; e.g., box score stuff like PPG, ASG, RPG, etc but don't trust defensive stats (DRPM) as much (with reason; they prefer the naked eye). Remember when everybody relied on Player Efficiency Rating (PER) because it was the first accepted metric that measured both offensive and defensive impact? That formula is pretty simple and relies on box scores so people understood and accepted it. PER does a fine job of predicting player performance and impact per game but is not as good at predicting the outcome of games. See the following: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/nba-statistics_b_5190651.html. RPM, espn.com's newest metric, also utilizes both offensive and defensive stats, does a good job predicting the outcome of games but isn't as good at predicting player performance. For example, Steve Ilardi, one of the architects of RPM (Jeremiah Engleman is the other architect) utilized RPM to predict that the Spurs would defeat the Heat in five in the NBA finals this year. See http://espn.go.com/nba/playoffs/2014/story/_/id/11036920/san-antonio-spurs-favored). Too early to know for sure but tonight his RPM prediction is looking prophetic.

Here's a fun stat that may or may not be useful but might interest Rocket fans complaining about Beverley's lack of offense and play making. Did you know that Patrick Beverley was ranked #2 in the league this year among players with the highest differential between PER and RPM? This means that Beverly, despite the fact that he doesn't put up big numbers (low PER), is absolutely essential if the Rockets are to win (high RPM). See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/nba-statistics_b_5190651.html. Morey and company probably see sabermetrics as pure gold. Me? I just like stats.