Amen IS the best defender in the league outside of Wemby(who as mentioned has a different role in his defense being a rim protector). He really is the full package - can guard 1-5 effectively in ISO, fights through screens well, is a wonderful help defender, can be a rim protector from the help side. I mean, Alex Sarr was projected as a top 2 pick because people thought he might be able to do what Amen is already doing. I think the fascinating part about it is we drafted him for his scoring and playmaking upside and next to no one was talking about his defensive upside. It was always a "he has the athleticism to be an elite defender if he wanted to" but no one saw THIS coming. Hats off to Amen for being so focused on doing whatever it takes to win and applying his gifts across the board. I don't think Tari and Brooks are as good defensively, but they do bring different skills to the table that makes us hard to beat. Brooks is just a physical cover and Tari is so unpredictable defensively and has the elite skill of disruption that forces players to think about where he came from/who is open and meanwhile guys like Amen are diving at the ball while you are trying to process what the defense is doing. Tari blows up the flow of the offense - the execution, the reads and makes players who aren't elite at reading defenses look bad in the process. The ONLY downside to that, is he can get exposed by great offensive players but Tari is still SO well timed with his doubles that you often times don't know when he is hunting you until he is already swiping at the ball in the periphery of your vision. Yeah man, I really like this team defensively. Offensively however.....
I looked at the head-to-head matchup stats through 21 games, and Amen's numbers are better than I thought. Tyrese Maxey is the only player to make 5 FGs against Amen on 5-10 shooting with seven assists, but only 1 shooting foul committed (SF)—a few other stars vs. Amen: 2 games -- SGA 3-5 (1 assist, 1 SF) 2 games -- Jalen Williams 2-5 (3 assists, 1 SF) 2 games --Edwards 2-5 (0 assists, 1 SF) 2 games -- Harden 2-6 (1 assist, 0 SF) 2 games -- Wiggins 0 points (0-1 3 assists, 0 SF) 1 game -- Brunson 2-6 (2 assists, 0 SF) 1 game -- Donicic 1-4 (0 assists, 0 SF) 1 game -- Lillard --1-4 (3 assists, 0 SF) Elite scorers don't even try to hunt for shots when he's on them, and he doesn't put them on the line.
There’s a difference between best and most valuable. This wemby season is more valuable than any season any guard has ever had, because wemby just impacts way more plays. Caruso is probably the *best* pure defensive player, but he will never touch the impact a center makes. It’s possible amen is the best or 2nd best though even if he’s not the most valuable.
Wemby and Amen have different roles. It's like comparing a defensive lineman and a linebacker. The linebacker may have more tackles because of the position he plays. But the lineman puts pressure on the other team in every play. Wemby's impact is blocking and altering shots. But Amen is better at guarding one on one because he has quicker lateral foot speed and quick hands.
Ya for sure, but there's only one DPOY award. In football, an elite DE is always more valuable than any secondary player or linebacker. JJ Watt's 5 year peak is far more valuable than Champ Baily (just a random example). In basketball, there can only be one "best defender in the nba" and so the question is whether you are looking at it as "best at their job" or "brings most value to the team". You could give me trae young, zach lavine, chandler parsons, terrance jones and prime dwight howard at center and you'll have a top 10 defense. Only an elite rim protector can do that, because they alter what the opponent does far more than anyone else.
That may have been the case in the past. Houston and OKC are both trending toward more perimeter defense than rim protectors. Stopping a team's 3 pt shooters has become much more important than in the past.
Houston is doing it as a group. If you took away everyone except Amen, our defense would be trash. OKC also has multiple really good/elite guys AND the 2nd best rim protector in the league.
The world champion Boston Celtics play defense in much the same way as the Rockets with superior perimeter defense. Both Wemby and Chet are unicorns that can play passable perimeter defense and protect the rim and are deserving of DPOY consideration. Rudy Gobert is the only center to win the award in the last 10 years and he has to be sat in the playoffs, because of his lack of perimeter defense. The NBA is a constantly changing league and the new cap rules are going to change dramatically how teams approach team building. Team defense, especially wing players, that create offense out of their defense are going to be highly covetted and celebrated. Wemby will probably dominate the award in the immediate future unless he gets hurt like Chet has 2 out of his 3 years. The NBA desperately wants him to be the next wonderkid. Maybe he will deserve it, maybe not.
Rudy has never had an issue defending on the perimeter, that's just a myth because people don't like him. He was on HORRIBLE defensive teams in utah and by himself made them great. You keep talking about teams, but that's irrelevant to the question here. Would i rather have 5 good/great defenders or one amazing center surrounded by all trash? Ya i'll take the 5 good ones. We're just talking about completely different things i think.
I don't know enough about ALL the other players in the league, but he really impresses me. Likely one of the best already. He has very quick hands and feet, and he is BIG.
Yeah, probably not worth arguing about. I don't buy that center is always the most important defensive position in today's Nba. I think a defender like Amen that can guard at least 1-4 one on one and shut down the league's best scorers as well as start so many transition opportunities is worth more than someone that's main attribute is to play goalie. I might be wrong, but that is how I see the NBA trending. DPOY, MVP and even all-star awards are at least 50% media driven.
While this is true, numbers do not lie. Someone is always deserving. Is it possible Jokic gets robbed this year? sure, did Smart win a disgraceful dpoy? Sure, but that doesn't matter. If Wemby plays a 70 game season, he is completely untouchable to me.
I know you are big on math. But there is simply no publicly available metric that accurately measure individual defense. This is because defense is very much team oriented. The fluidity of defensive rotation makes individual measurement extremely noisy. I don't disagree that a rim protected big man has a larger proportion of influence than a single perimeter player. However, that's just a commonsense opinion rather than objective fact. It is also arguable that in today's NBA, switchability is more valuable than rim protection.
Rudy is fine as long as he is not switched onto guards like Chris Paul, James Harden, Luka Doncic, SGA......anyone with heightened ball handling skills and shot making. As I said he is also easily to game plan against. He is one of those drop bigs and rim protectors that look good when your whole team is making shots but when it is not......and opposing guards are having a good time fooling Gobert, then it is over!!!! And he is probably pretty below average on Offense which makes this even harder to watch, he is a lob threat and that is all.
Sure, that's all fair. Wemby is so special though, he's not just rim protection. He's really not much worse than amen guarding on the perimeter because his insane length allows him to play further back, and people are just terrified of him. At the end of the day though, would you take peak Kawhi or peak Hakeem?
Choosing between Kawhi and Hakeem is not a fair question on a Rockets board. Hakeem is so untouchable in our mind. But if I was honest, I'd think it's not that clear cut. Back in Hakeem's day, there would be no question that he would be the better defender. But if Hakeem was to play in today's game, he would have to play a lot more perimeter defense than he did. His quickness against most big men would not be as useful as in the old days.
He would play more but if you have the Terror Twins, Alperen did not have to play a whole of Perimeter D ...... massively personnel dependent..... If you let Hakeem play mostly Perimeter D then your GM has failed to shore up with wing defenders.
