midnightpulp
01-16-2012, 06:48 PM
Great, great article.
First, let’s look at the regularized adjusted +/- (RAPM) for this year alone. There is a decent amount of error when looking at this sample size, but it’s a good starting place. Here are the top 20 players according to the amount of love they got in All-Defensive team votes this year, sorted from best to worst by defensive RAPM:
http://asubstituteforwar.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/defrapm1011.jpg
Below Grant Hill :lmao
But will still make a fuckin' all-defensive team.
Over his career:
http://asubstituteforwar.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/def20apm0311.jpg?w=700&h=357
Is the trend clear? There have been 3 players who’ve dominated the All-Defensive team for the past decade: Bryant, Garnett, and Tim Duncan. Over any extended period, Garnett dominates the list, Duncan is near the top of the list, and Bryant is pretty much at the bottom.
Being at the bottom is visually striking, but it’s actually not that damning in and of itself. If my knock on Kobe was that he was only the 20th best defender in the league on average, this would not be that horrendous of a knock. After all, big men dominate these kind of lists, maybe he’s still one of the top 5 or so perimeter defenders in the game, no?
No. The more damning thing is that every metric I’ve broken down here has Kobe’s defensive impact as utterly average. -0.8, -0.6, 0.1, 0.1, these are not numbers of someone who is consistently a game changer on defense. The other guys given even half the love Kobe’s gotten over the year, pretty consistently do turn up on these metric doing quite well.
http://asubstituteforwar.com/2011/05/09/kobe-bryant-the-most-overrated-defender-imaginable/
Kirk Hinrich level defender! :lmao
First, let’s look at the regularized adjusted +/- (RAPM) for this year alone. There is a decent amount of error when looking at this sample size, but it’s a good starting place. Here are the top 20 players according to the amount of love they got in All-Defensive team votes this year, sorted from best to worst by defensive RAPM:
http://asubstituteforwar.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/defrapm1011.jpg
Below Grant Hill :lmao
But will still make a fuckin' all-defensive team.
Over his career:
http://asubstituteforwar.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/def20apm0311.jpg?w=700&h=357
Is the trend clear? There have been 3 players who’ve dominated the All-Defensive team for the past decade: Bryant, Garnett, and Tim Duncan. Over any extended period, Garnett dominates the list, Duncan is near the top of the list, and Bryant is pretty much at the bottom.
Being at the bottom is visually striking, but it’s actually not that damning in and of itself. If my knock on Kobe was that he was only the 20th best defender in the league on average, this would not be that horrendous of a knock. After all, big men dominate these kind of lists, maybe he’s still one of the top 5 or so perimeter defenders in the game, no?
No. The more damning thing is that every metric I’ve broken down here has Kobe’s defensive impact as utterly average. -0.8, -0.6, 0.1, 0.1, these are not numbers of someone who is consistently a game changer on defense. The other guys given even half the love Kobe’s gotten over the year, pretty consistently do turn up on these metric doing quite well.
http://asubstituteforwar.com/2011/05/09/kobe-bryant-the-most-overrated-defender-imaginable/
Kirk Hinrich level defender! :lmao