Why do we dismiss Defense?
by Basketball on Aug 19, 2010 9:40 PM CDT
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PrintRecently, I was reading the post by Basketball Smurf which commented on Dwyer’s list of the top 30 SGs in the league and one statement stood out to me that made me think of various points I have argued in the past.
Last year shooting guard was by far the Bulls least productive position, with an average PER of 12.8 a game. By comparison, other top point guards (guys ranked 1 thru 4 on Dwyers list ) received better production out of their back court mates than Rose
What sprung to mind is how much of a bias offensive production receives counter to defensive production. Most arguments I hear arguing about which player is better than another player almost always start on the offensive side of the ball, in fact, I can’t remember the last time I saw an unprompted discussion about a certain player’s worth start defensively except when said player is known as a "Defensive Specialist".
PER is known mostly to be a measure of offense and from what I read in the Dwyer article every player mentioned either got an entire blurb on offense or a blurb that started on offense and afterwards threw in a mention of the "Defensive Specialty" (Thabo Sefolosha) or Anti-Defensive Specialty (Gilbert Arenas).
Simply, I think that defense is just as valuable as offense is, as you have the same number of possessions on both sides of the ball over an entire game and that each player's total value should stem from their relative usefulness compared to what others bring in alternative cases.
There are a few reasons that I believe people shy away from defense or understate how important it is.
1) The "Defensive Specialist", I mentioned earlier that the only time I hear of defense as a beginning argument is usually regarding a "Defensive Specialist" the issues that stem from this are twofold. First, there is no magnitude assigned to the point that someone is a positive (or negative) contributor on Defense, when someone brings that up people can simply say that the offensive contribution "outweighs" the defensive, a completely subjective argument that will get people nowhere very quickly. The second issue, since magnitudes are difficult to assign, I have the impression that people lump all the players not given a reputation as a specialist into the same category which really is not even close to being the case and promotes a culture of dismissal.
2) A Lack of Tools to help define how good players are at specific aspects of defense. On offense, there are an array of stats that help such as True Shooting Percentage, Usage Rate, Assist Percentage and even percentages for player tendencies and zone shooting percentages. On defense, not only are there metrics that are not as easy to understand but many times the ones said have a questionable logic to them to begin with.
3) What really turns everything into a murky state is how to measure Team Defense. Team defense is a huge part of the game and being able to defend off the ball is a skill just as important as on-ball defending, if not more important. I've mentioned before on this blog that if you are basing a player solely how well they defend on the ball you can really only affect a game to the point of what the offensive players USG rate is, in that case a player like LeBron James at a 32 USG rate would dictate that the defensive player can only impact a game at a 32 USG rate. Now, that number isn't exact in man to man defense as a player can prevent a better player from using more possessions but the point I am trying to make is that a lot of individual defense is how well you play team defense and team defense is hard to measure.
4) The aesthetics of offense versus defense. People do not pay attention to defense as much as they do the offensive side of the ball. The moments in a game that are fun to watch on offense, such as a made shot, a great pass, or a crossover happen all of the time. Those moments on defense are less frequent, such as a steal or a block. I think that people tend to overrate what looks prettier.
Fortunately for all, there are some numbers out there that help people rate others defensively: dMULT attempts to composite how good a players man defense is and APM and Raw APM are good tools to use as a reference to how good a players overall defense is (they all have their qualms but still, useful). You can break things down further into STL%, BLK%, and REB% but those can only tell you some parts of an individual's defense when there is really so much more. I have read interesting tidbits by people, especially on this blog, who use Synergy Sports and have presented very interesting and probably useful breakdowns of different players but that tool is a little more exclusive than the others so I understand its lack of citation.
I hope that we can all incorporate defense into our arguments for how good a player is or how good a player may fit with the team. I don't think that the Bulls NEED a better offensive player to make the Bulls better as a whole, a good defensive player can do the same. In the case that the other top point guards in the league had better offensive SGs seems like a moot point to me, a better offensive SG helps the team's offense but does it help the team overall?
Note: I understand that many of my assumptions are based off of anecdotal evidence, the point of this post isn't to say anybody is wrong (it just so happened Basketball Smurf's post prompted this) but rather to express my own opinion on the subject and hopefully to start some sort of discussion.
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if I had to guess
I’d say the bias comes mostly from your items 2 and 3. It’s easy to quantify offense, but defense is largely qualitative outside of steals and blocks. Those that write/talk about sports professionally (Dwyer in this case) would need to be a lot smarter about what makes a good defender, and would need to be able to communicate those qualities effectively. In short, it’d be a lot more work.
I agree, it would be a lot more work.
but they should be more specific and upfront with what they (journalists/bloggers) are not taking into account. Dwyer I think makes the assumption clear that he is ranking these guards as overall players.
It isn’t just Dwyer though, my point in this post is really for most people who argue only one side of the ball, I personally don’t believe defense is any less qualitative than offense, but more so that not enough attention is paid to it.
I'm not sure that they're willfully leaving out the defensive side
I think they just (for the most part) aren’t capable of competently assessing defensive prowess. Either because they just don’t understand defense without lots of stats to measure it for them, or because they get sucked in by offense being more exciting so they don’t pay as much attention to defense.
i agree for the most part
but i dont think its jsut a matter of “a lot more work” to write about these things, the defensive side is more…its probably the wrong word to use but its the one i want to use…..philisophical. Great defense doesnt always get presented or noticed. Often times, good team defensive practices are considered the “little” things, even though its a pretty huge deal. I think people notice great defense, and people notice bad defense, but few people can notice average or good defense…unless they try to…especially when its off ball. Good team defense might be more about the prevention of something, as opposed to cause of something (in this case a turnover, block, steal, or made shot by the offense). THe problem with the prevention aspect is, most dont notice it, until they fail to prevent something. if a players defensive job is to prevent a player from getting to his sweet spot, and so he does a good job to occupy that space, most people wont notice. Until the defensive player stops taking up that space, hte offensive player gets to his sweet spot and scores…then millions say…oh that team let him get to his spot.
So defense comes down to being more of a philisophical argument. If this player wasnt playing defense the way he was, what would occur? Its easy to look at a kirk hinrich, and say well he couldnt guard the quick guard at all, and he got lit up, but a coach might look at it and say man if he wasnt playing we wouldve gotten blown out. The coach has his philosophies and opinions on what happened on the defense end, and a writer or fan might see it in a different light. Its impossible to objectively look at defense when not comparing some sort of objective stat. And the problem with objective stats in terms of defense is the fact that it doesnt take all of the defense into account it only takes the moment the other team scored into acccount.
I dont care what the D.N.A. Says, the Guy wearing number 12 Cannot be Kirk Hinrich, he is definetly Kurt. Kirk can actually play basketball!
by piccolomair on Aug 19, 2010 11:45 PM CDT up reply actions
Defense is only philosophical in so much
as the parts we aren’t certain about, but isolating how a player may impact a game is possible using regression (i.e. APM) and it is also possible to understand specific parts of defense like how well a player does vs a specific player when matched up as opposed to everyone else in the league (i.e. dMULT).
Now, I agree that the nuances are much harder to figure but I don’t think it’s impossible, from what I understand of Synergy, since you can look at everybody’s possessions as a whole, you can take into account specific situations that each player faces and compile what happened on a play and why a play went a certain way relative to other plays.
This may not be practical to an avg fan but the fact that some people can explain components of D just like people can only explain components of O it should make it that people have caveats in their explanations for why they think the bulls should do any certain thing.
I dunno, maybe I am trying to take the fun out of ad hoc arguing.
Im not much of a stat head
so i dont understand a lot of the nuances in terms of where some of these advanced stats come from, but from my understanding they all have some sort of limitation. On the defensive end, i feel, that a players individual defensive ability is also dependent on the defensive abilities of the rest of his team and the defensive schemes in place. A guy like raja bell spent his time in the suns being known as a great defender on a team that played no defense. Years later that defensive reputation seemed a bit overblown, while at the same time a guy like boris diaw, known for a bad defender on a bad defensive team, suddenly becomes a solid defender.But whos the overall better defender? Any stat you look at is gonna divide it by era, bell was, diaw is now…but then this year we may see the opposite, and then next year perhaps they are the same…why is shane battier a better defender than hinrich? They both play the same style of defense, its just one is 4 inches talle, and one spends more time guarding quick pgs. If shane spent more time guarding those pgs would the results be worse…would his numbers drop?
A guy like noah is an awesome defender, but not on a national level. Nationally noah is known as a decent big man, but needs bulk to really guard the dwight howards of the league (theres like only one by the way) but to me, noah has guarded sgs, sfs, pfs, and centers, he provides help defense, post defense, and can play on the perimeter, he has good recognition at all times on the defense end, and is constantly left on an island in the post against shaq, dwight, lopez… but his numbers dont register high enough for him to garner more attention, and so he is compared to a verajao.
Theres so much that cant be given value on the defensive end, and while i agree that there are ways to accurately compare using numbers, where in offense an individual players abilities can be more clearly quantified, on the defensive end it blurs with regard to the teams scheme and players on the court on both ends of the court.
At least thats what it seems like to me, i could be wrong mainly cuz of my complete lack of understanding of stats in basketball
I dont care what the D.N.A. Says, the Guy wearing number 12 Cannot be Kirk Hinrich, he is definetly Kurt. Kirk can actually play basketball!
You bring up good points.
But the whole Bell for Diaw argument (without looking at any numbers) I feel can fall into the “Defensive Specialist” designation set by the talking heads and the fact that Raja Bell was already in his 30s when he was on the Suns.
In regards to scheme, I don’t understand how that is relevant in so much that offensive schemes help certain players out as well and can inflate their stats. Also, it is difficult to compare Battier to Hinrich the same way it is hard to compare Stoudemire to Steve Nash. The way we gain our reputations on these players is by their comparable peers, PFs to PFs and PGs to PGs… Essentially, we don’t know that Steve Nash is one of the best offensive PGs in the league because of Amare Stoudemire and we don’t know that Shane Battier is one of the best defensive Forwards in the league because of kirk hinrich…
Like making Kobe inefficient.
We still might loose, but that’s the only chance we have of winning the game. I believe that’s what Hinrich did and Brewer will do, only much better.
yea, but not just that
i mean think about it, a guy like lebron, dwight, or carmello (and now kd) those guys really cant be guarded. And you look at what team they are on (especially now in some cases) and you cant simply go, okay all were gonna do is stop this guy from scoring…cuz its not gonna take one of your defenders, its gonna take several, and if you just focus on that one player, a guy like billups, jr smith, westbrook, nelson, carter…etc….all these secondaary and in some cases third scoring option guys are now gonna start scoring…A LOT.
Taking hinrich as an example, im sure fundamentallysound can tell you all the times hinrich got torched by a smaller quicker guard, or a stronger bigger guard. In the celtic series theres a bunch of great example of hinrich guarding both (rondo and allen and at times pierce). A casual observer would be like man kirk cant guard him, get him out of there. But theres things that he still helped on the defense end that get over looked. For example. If hinrich was taken off the dribble by rondo all the way to the painted area, after rondo released the ball (shot) hinrich would immediately begin to box out rondo, the same after he got posted up by pierce. He may not be the one who rebounds, and perhaps the shot ends up going in, but if say it was someone like a ben gordon, maybe pierce or rondo gets the ball back on a miss.
Another example is when rondo would kick it out, if for some reason it was to the open man hinrich would run out and contest, a guy like arenas might not have. In the nba especially there are few superstars who can actually be guarded straight up, not just for physical or skillset reasons, but also due to referee bias. So to judge a players defensive ability simply due to the performance of a single offensive player alone doesnt always accurately represent the defensive ability of said player.
A good defender doesnt just make one player on a team ineffective, he HELPS make an entire teams offense ineffective. They say a good offense can beat a good defense. A guy like kobe can beat a guy like hinrich guarding him almost anyday. Its easier for an individual to always play to his best ability, and in a one on one situation, the individual offensive and defensive talents are contrasted. However in a team setting, an individual, despite his individual talents on offense or defense, is only as good as the scheme that binds the team. If an offensive player, no matter how good he is, doesnt buy into the offensive scheme of the team hes playing for, then obviously the offense suffers. This is also inherently true on the defensive end, also more known.
So taking the idea again, that a good offense beats a good defense, the job of a team and the individual players on a team (on the defensive end) is to make sure that the offense of the opposition is not good. So if the defensive concept of the bulls is based on leaving hinrich on an island against a smaller quicker guard where hes bound to get torched, you leave him there and make sure you follow the scheme of not letting anyone else scores. And for hinrich to be a good defender, even if he cant stop the smaller quicker guard, to be effective on defense, he has to force the player to work a little, while doing things like boxing out and supplying good rotation and help defense on others players, because even if the smaller quicker guard has a career night, as long he isnt a guy like wade (who is the center of the offense) he is probably only putting up 30-40 pts…which is alot…but if the rest of team doesnt click and cant get any offense going…its all pointless in the end.
I dont care what the D.N.A. Says, the Guy wearing number 12 Cannot be Kirk Hinrich, he is definetly Kurt. Kirk can actually play basketball!
by piccolomair on Aug 20, 2010 1:22 AM CDT up reply actions 1 recs
I blame it all on the world-wide leader of crap
And I’m only being half as flip as that sounds.
by wjb1492 on Aug 20, 2010 9:02 AM CDT reply actions 1 recs
ESPN rarely creates trends
They just follow mass opinion.
I would argue its more of a reciprocally reinforcing cycle.
It’s that highlight shows, by definition, show highlights, and they have a lot of sports to cover and a lot of teams within each sport. Offensive highlights are easier to find. Plus, for a lot of defensive highlights, they show something exciting that happens to also be lousy defense. (To be fair, this does happen on offense, too – the highlight is a crazy circus contested shot, for example, that was taken with 3 guys wide open or early in the shot clock.) This changes the way many people view and “analyze” sports. So we hear people rhapsodizing about what a great defender Wade is for getting all those steals – when really, he gambles too much.
I can count on two fingers the number of times I can remember hearing someone on one of the highlight shows actually highlight good, fundamental defense just for the sake of the defense.
Media doesn’t just follow mass opinion, in any of its forms.
by wjb1492 on Aug 20, 2010 5:29 PM CDT up reply actions 1 recs
I agree
The defensive side of the ball is very overlooked. It is certainly a problem. What many fail to realize is that defense can lead to offense (transition and fast break buckets) but offense can not really help the defensive side of the ball (other than by forcing teams to set up their half court game, which I guess is a plus). If you took 5 players who were very athletic, excellent defensively, but could not shoot a lick, I think that team would still win plenty of basketball games. I think a balance is the most important thing. Brewer is a great guy to have because he is solid defensively. Although I do wish he could hit a wide open three.
"Mental toughness is to physical as four is to one." - Bob Knight
I dont know if you had 5 terrible offensive players
they would achieve that much… the goal is taking both sides of the ball into account, not to ignore offense either. I think a good example of a team in recent memory who tried to go all offense with no regard to anything else and flopped is the Toronto Raptors, I just use them as a point to make about trying to go big time on one side of the ball at the expense of something else.
i dont think he meant to imply that it would be a good team
just that they would still win games….
I dont care what the D.N.A. Says, the Guy wearing number 12 Cannot be Kirk Hinrich, he is definetly Kurt. Kirk can actually play basketball!
Well in that case...
A team with no Offense and no Defense can still win games… I mean… the Timberwolves didn’t go 0-82.
lol
I dont care what the D.N.A. Says, the Guy wearing number 12 Cannot be Kirk Hinrich, he is definetly Kurt. Kirk can actually play basketball!
Exactly and I think even be a decent team
If you take guys that are NBA weak offensively, but extremely good on the defensive end and very athletic, I think they would actually be an above average team. If your team is generating lots of turnovers and fastbreaking a ton, they will still put up plenty of points.
Maybe a better way of stating my point (after rambling unnecessarily) is that I would take an below average offensive but excellent defensive team over a below average defensive team but excellent offensive team any day!
"Mental toughness is to physical as four is to one." - Bob Knight
This line of thinking...
is precisely why the Bulls are likely to overachieve this season, and the Heat are likely to underachieve. Predictions and expectations are based much more on perceived offensive potential.
99.99% of both fans and ‘experts’ fully expect that the Heat will be the story of the year, as they “obviously” made the most important off-season changes. I’m in the .01% category, in that I truly expect the Bulls to go farther in the playoffs than the Heat, and believe that the hiring of Thibodeau, coupled with the acquisition of the right group of players, will prove to be the story of the year. And I say that not as some starry-eyed fan, bit as one who believes in both the power of an outstanding defensive team, and superb chemistry, areas in which I fully expect the Bulls to be superior to the Heat (and most other teams).
Other than bad luck in terms of injuries, I’ll be very disappointed, and extremely surprised to be proven wrong.
by badnewsintennisshoes on Aug 20, 2010 6:06 PM CDT reply actions
i actually dont agree with this statement
Lebron and wade are effective on both ends of the court, people think they are gonna be a great team because that team has arguably 2 of the top 5 players in the nba on it…and a top 5 power forward, and a chance that pat riley coaches….if kobe, pau, and phil = a championship level team, then wade, bron, bosh and riley must trump that!…or so the perception goes…and make no mistake about it…that team will be good…really good….just on talent alone….
the reason miami has a chance to lose is because things can happen that no one could really predict, injury being the biggest. Although even if just one of those 3 went down, the other two remain a force. The only reason the bulls have a chance of beating miami is because they are assembling as a fairly deep team, and one that made up of players that are ready and willing to buy into whatever system is set for them. A good deep team is what it will take to beat miami. But the heat are just as good on the defensive end as they are on the offensive end…make no mistake about that…
I dont care what the D.N.A. Says, the Guy wearing number 12 Cannot be Kirk Hinrich, he is definetly Kurt. Kirk can actually play basketball!
Well...
I’m not suggesting that the Heat’s big three don’t have above average defensive skills. What I’m suggesting is that the Bulls will have a superior – and deeper – TEAM defense. I also believe that the Bulls will prove to have the superior coach.
If building championship caliber basketball teams were as simple as adding up PERS, then I might with the van Gundys on the question of how good the Heat are likely to be. It’s not, and I’m not.
by badnewsintennisshoes on Aug 20, 2010 7:42 PM CDT up reply actions
good luck to you with that
“obviously” you’re crazy
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by your friendly BullsBlogger on Aug 26, 2010 9:40 AM CDT up reply actions
It's hard to quanitfy and is based largely on observation which is notoriously suspect due to biases in perception.
The Chicago Bulls hate shooting ability.
by fundamentallysound on Aug 26, 2010 9:23 AM CDT reply actions
I know that it is hard to quantify
I think what I am trying to say most in this article is that since it is hard to quantify, I feel the arguments for the Defensive side of the ball have become increasingly lazy and that even though the tools we have don’t tell the whole story we can help build our cases by at least showing what we can or explaining our logic better. There are ways to do that.
check this out if you havent already.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?p=7276
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