Quantifying Harden's defense using Player Tracking

Very interesting. Thank you. What to make of Ariza's numbers?

 

does this data assume Harden is always guarding the opponents 2 guard?

Ariza is always guarding the better offensive player. Harden is usually hidden against the weakest offensive guard.

 

Ariza does play the passing lanes aggressively.

Overall, still a small sample size and it's best to take stats into account collectively to paint a better picture.

 

It means some advanced stats are very reliable. Eye test is enough, just rewatching games.

 

There is a limit to the usefulness of these numbers. What does "guarded by ____" mean? Does it mean that ____ is the closest player to the shooter? If so, a player may well lower opponents' FG% when "guarding" them and still not be very good at defense because he, for example, is too often not guarding the guy that he should be guarding. Harden last year did stuff like forgetting his man while ball watching and allowed back-cuts for layups and wide open Js. It also doesn't account for other aspects of defense, like getting deflections on passes and blocking out on rebounds.

 

I would say many players don't get their shot off vs. Ariza. So maybe he conceded very few shot attempts, and the ones that they do are the result of him being too aggressive in some other aspect of team defense?

 

I'm with you. I'm wondering how many times players are even pulling the trigger against Ariza. We've all seen his defense, so the numbers for him are a bit confusing. He's usually guarding their best player too. Either way, interesting.

 

How do they determine who Harden is defending? Is this only for shots that Harden is contesting? Or is this for shots from an opposing player which some algorithm determines is most likely to be matched up against Harden?

 

Lots of good questions by the people in this thread.