he’s been there."

Are almost always lower than those of guards regardless of who’s better?

a defensive system as much as they played an offensive system. The goal was to encourage jump shots and never foul. You can run off made baskets, especially if they come early in the shot clock,but you can’t off of made FTs. It’s well designed and plays on the natural desire of players to take open shots.

The problem with Drtg is that it’s forced to give everyone the same credit for team defense. Players get credit for defense they didn’t play. So the only thing differentiating the players on the team is their steals, blocks, and rebounds. Those are categories that Stoudemire is pretty strong in. So for instance in 2006-07 Stoudemire and Kurt Thomas had the same DRtg. So Thomas’s better rebounding neutralized Stoudemire’s better steal and block rates. But, general consensus is almost universally going to agree that one of those guys is a better defender than the other. And I don’t think the general consensus would be wrong about that.

So you have to go to 82games and get a sense for what happened when each guy was on the court. In the two years Thomas played for the Suns, they were 7 and 5 points better per 100 possessions on defense. The Suns have been worse with Stoudemire on the court defensively every season of the Nash era, including about 3 points worse in 06/07. So it’s a good bet that Stoudemire is getting credited with Thomas’s defense by Drtg. When the defense is worse with you on the court every season, that’s not a good indicator. Nash has been just a little worse than neutral so he’s isn’t likely to be the one dragging Amare down. (Until last season Nash and Marion also always had significantly better raw +/- overall when all three played a full season than Amare)

When I combine the plus/minus stats with the unimpressive PER counterparts and the assessments of people I trust, I don’t know how I can say that Amare is even average defensively. That still means he can be better than the general opinion of his defense, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable claiming that Amare is even average. The good news is that he has always still been a net positive because of his stellar offense, but his defense has really limited the magnitude of his impact. He’s generally been a +2 in both raw and adjusted +/- where Nash and Marion were generally +5 or better. And a big part of that is that the Suns were able to replace Amare with Kurt Thomas or Boris Diaw without losing much in overall team performance.

Here’s a one other thing I wonder about. Stoudemire collecting 4 fouls per 36 minutes in a system where you’re encouraged not to foul isn’t a good sign. It fits with a lack of defensive discipline that I’ve seen from Stoudemire. What would happen in a defensive system where he has to be more engaged and he’s asked to protect the rim? A good portion of his fouls are offensive, but that isn’t great either. There aren’t many great scorers that play good defense when they’re in foul trouble.