In DEFENSE of Alperen Sengun - Analysis on why Sengun may already be an above average defender

While I don't think Sengun is a good defender or will ever be a good defender, I do believe that he is smart enough to consistently be in the right place at the right time. If we ever get a coaching staff smart / tough enough to implement an effective and disciplined defensive system for the team and hold players accountable to their roles within said system that Sengun will highly benefit from that, more so than anyone else on the team. At the same time, Sengun will never, ever be a guy that can serve as the anchor or captain on D. He simply lacks the lateral speed and vertical burst for it.

 

Do you think anyone other than Alpi, Jabari, Tari, Garuba and sometimes Tate actually plays defense?

 

Sengun doesn’t play defense, so exclude him. The 5 man is crucial when it comes to defensive coverages. Tell me what can we do with Sengun on defense? How should he be used? Bc I don’t think he can do anything

 

He does play defense. Other than him and the four guys I mentioned, nobody does.

 

What a dumb take. Sengun does play defense. You can argue about how effective he is at it, but not about whether or not he is out there defending or not. As for what we can do with Sengun on D, holding Green accountable about guarding his own man so he doesn't always have a free lane to the hoop would be a fantastic start, but we all know Silas isn't about that. Having a team defensive scheme that looks to funnel guards and wings into congestion would be another smart move as Sengun is tall and bulky enough to make it hard for non-star guards and wings to easily shoot over.

 

I don't think you're necessarily disagreeing with me except that you seem to be weighing more heavily on the fact that stats are flawed. That is certainly true, and moreso for some players/positions than others. But that is also true for pretty much every way to measure a player's output, and as I said, even moreso for defense... but I think my point stands that the "eye test" is still even worse. You said yourself that the numbers don't back up Alp being a good defender, so at worst, stats confirm your eye test in this one, particular, anecdotal case.

Still, I think when taken as a whole, stats will tell you a more complete story. Stats pretty much unequivocally tell us which teams are good at defense and which are not, for example. You don't really have to look any further than DRtg. It just gets much harder to give individual players credit, but when every advanced and box score stat in the book is pointing at one or two players on an above average defensive team, it becomes pretty tough to deny.

 

We know publicly available defensive stats are flawed. Morey even came out and said that in the early days when he first took over and had to bring in his own system of trying to gauge defensive prowess. The only thing we as fans looking in from the outside can gauge is, did a player blow their assignment or not and if someone was late rotating over. That and whether a player shuffles their feet trying to take a charge, if they fouled on a shot you can't foul, or reached.

 

Can’t wait

same goes for Sengun lol. Wanna bet jalen is gonna be here for years to come, while Sengun is playing **** defense on another team?

 

If Jalen can't become an efficient guard and keeps being the worst defender in the entire league he won't be here for too long tbh. He is not even a traffic cone on defense atm that would be insulting to cones.

 

sengun plays defense ( avarage ) so exclude yourself

 

An above average defender shouldn't b struggling to guard the pNr and guards. That's just my take. Whether it's bc of the defensive scheme or his teammates lacking, sengun has quite a few weakness at defense to b considered above average.

I know for sure sengun puts in more effort at d than the guards at the perimeter but more effort doesn't always equate to being above average at defense.

He's serviceable at the moment.

 

aka the best defense is the offense!

 

The problem is people tend to have all kinds of unconscious biases that cause them to blow occasional, memorable defensive failures out of proportion. Especially when they're put together in a low-light reel (Exhibit A: How much Harden struggled to get over his poor defensive reputation after 2014's virally bad defensive plays). People also tend to overblow the value of certain "effort" plays (Exhibit B: people still think Kobe was a good defender). You also literally can't see many of the things that make for good defense.

I strongly disagree that's all we have as fans. Intuition and common sense can help you put together a reasonable (even if flawed) picture of someone's defense from available info, and stats are a necessary part of that, as even Morey would admit (as he has cited many stats himself in support of various players). Statistical measures have no unconscious biases. They do have other types of biases that we can identify as humans, and we can find other stats that account for that. Our analyses will never be perfect, obviously, but they can still be a helluva lot better than any amount of "eye tests" of blown assignments from a bunch of angry forum fans.

EDIT: I want to be clear that none of this is meant to defend Sengun's defense. I don't know enough to have a strong opinion there.

 

Our franchise player is playing tonight! @maj21 must be SO HAPPY!

 

So why do we have 13 wins?

 

Simple.
1 young Sengun = 13 wins. (1 adult Sengun = 17-18 wins.)
If we had 5 Senguns this season, we'd have 13 x 5 = 65 wins.

 

Same reason Kevin Durant led the OKC Thunder to a 23-59 record in second season. Simply too young.

 

I just find it funny that everyone sits around here debating about defense. The rockets problem is not defense but the simple fact that we just can't score. No one can make an open shot: which then leads to fast break points on other end. The kings defense with sabonis is terrible but at least they use him for offense. They have most efficient offense in the league. And they really fun to watch. I would love to have that.

 

Are we gonna win 23 games? Lmao

 

The Sengun Triple-Double Watch is officially ON.