4 of our top 5 defensive lineups include Matt Bonner. Why don't Spurs fans think Matt Bonner is a good defender? Let us take a good look at the lineups. For stat geeks or worshippers of the plus and minus, this might be a good read for you.
The top defensive unit has Parker, Hill, Ginobili, McDyess and Duncan for a defensive rating of 0.87 points per possession according to 82games. This unit does not include Matt Bonner. This lineup is also just the 14th most used lineup in this season.
The 2nd top defensive unit includes players such as Hill, Neal, Ginobili, Bonner and Blair. This unit of practically small ball and its defensive qualities is to swarm ball handlers and create steals with their quickness. And frankly speaking, the only reason why Matt Bonner is in this lineup is just because he can space the floor on offense and rotate quickly on defense because of "corporate knowledge". I am only saying that Matt Bonner is a good positional defender. What happens after he and his defender gets into position is not a good thing. This is the 10th most used lineup. 0.90 points per possession.
The 3rd best defensive unit includes Parker, Hill, Ginobili, Bonner, Duncan. This is the 11th most used lineup. 0.90 points per possession as well.
The 4th best defensive unit includes Parker, Ginobili, Jefferson, Bonner, Duncan. This lineup is the 6th most used lineup. 0.93 points per possession allowed.
The 5th best defensive unit is Hill, Neal, Ginobili, Bonner and Splitter. This lineup is the 18th most used, also allowing 0.93 points per possession.
After looking through all these lineups, the only constant in these 5 units is Manu Ginobili. Tim Duncan appears in 3 of the top 5 defensive units. Does this mean he is a worse defender than Matt Bonner? We can also see here that Tiago Splitter appears in the 5th best defensive unit. He also appears in our worst defensive unit along with Ginobili, Hill and McDyess, 3 of our top 4 individual defenders on the team playing rotation minutes. This shows no consistency at all and there is only one explanation for this consistency. For all the talk about these defensive units, this is what truly comes into play.
The top defensive unit of Parker, Hill, Ginobili, McDyess and Duncan have 2 bench players.
The 2nd top defensive unit of Hill, Neal, Ginobili, Bonner, Blair have 3 bench players. I am going to consider Blair the starter in this situation because he started more games than McDyess.
The 3rd top defensive unit includes Parker, Hill, Ginobili, Bonner, Duncan. This lineup also has 2 bench players.
The 4th top defensive unit includes Parker, Ginobili, Jefferson, Bonner, Duncan. This lineup has 1 bench player. This is the lineup Popovich goes with in the 1st quarter when Blair gets into foul trouble.
The 5th top defensive unit includes, Hill, Neal, Ginobili, Bonner, Splitter. 4 of these guys are bench players.
4 of these 5 defensive players have at least 2 bench players in the game. When this happens, the opposing team would usually have similar types of lineups on the floor. Usually, teams start their best players. When bench players come in, offensive production would naturally decrease. This just coincides with Bonner coming into the game, as a bench player. When people try to use stats, the suggestion is to not follow blindly, and use some perspective along with some common sense. Watch the games and also keep a lookout for these stats.
So after I looked through all of these, I felt dissatisfied by the results so I went to basketball-reference to reference some individual defensive stats. I realized Matt Bonner as a 108 defensive rating (lower the better), which is horrendous for a big man. I also referenced other bigs on the spurs roster. Blair has a 100 defensive rating. McDyess has a 103. Duncan has a 100. Splitter has a 103.
Now, this looks a little more realistic. Put the 2 different stats I just posted, you would come to a conclusion, that although Matt Bonner is in the lineups which posted the best points for possessions allowed, he is the one dragging those numbers down and they could have been better . There is more to a player than just a single type of stat. Using just one type of stat to support your argument is clearly flawed and your argument would be incomplete. By cross-referencing, you would get a much clearer picture while using stats to prove your point, but please watch a game. It will definitely help to make you establish your point even further.
For the narrow-minded people, it is okay. Carry on destroying our discussions by repeating the same things again and again and ignore other people's advice. And please, don't be too shameless and honor your bet and don't welch. It makes you look like a total bag. Peace out.
No. He's soft and he almost never takes a charge. He plays willowy D and he is carrion for the slaughter. As I said yesterday, as long as Matt is wearing that red meat vest, opposing teams will smell that it is meal-time.
As far as I'm concerned, it's no longer the "Red Rocket". It's the "Red Meat Parka".
It reminds me that anecdote given by Ludden a couple of years ago:
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slu...ersspurs031309
when the Detroit Pistons walked onto the floor after a timeout last month against the Spurs, Rasheed Wallace offered this reminder for his teammates: “Just give the ball to whoever Bonner is on.”
Rasheed is hilarious! I Like that guy... Don't had fear to talk the true!
to answer your question.. no. matt bonner is not a good defender. i don't need stats to tell me this. anyone who has watched a spurs game can see that he's slow, he's weak, and he doesn't have an ounce of athleticism in his body. when he's on the court, players both big and small attack him because they know he can't stop them in any way. he can't block their shot, he doesn't know how to draw a charge, and he's not big enough to alter their shot or scare them away.
I've used that Rasheed quote once or twice in the last month to try to prove my point. Not sure if anyone believed me though. I couldn't recall what season it from from. Thanks for finding it.
Matt Bonner is the confidence maker. He always gets opposing team players out of slumps the instant he guards them.
Bonner is the reason the +/- stat shouldn't exist
1. You're a moron.
2. Bonner is a horrible defender. Way to cite irrelevant stats. Here are some that prove you're an idiot. NPA.
Bonner
Drtg - 108
Dwin share - 1.3
Duncan
Drtg - 100
Dwin share - 3.8
Blair
Drtg - 100
Dwin share - 3.0
McDyess
Drtg - 103
Dwin share - 1.9
Bonner always seems to be running toward his man at the last second (from some distance) and not coming close to his man as his man fires away.
I don't know what the stats say, but that's what I see.
I DVR every game and then transfer it to DVD for selfish reasons. I can tell you there will ALWAYS be a time and a point where angst rears it's ugly head because you'll see a play where you felt that, even though Bonner was giving effort, you knew the odds were stacked against you on the defensive side of the ball. Odds that Bonner does anything well on any particular defensive setting are 1 out of 5, which placed the onus of him doing well on the offensive side to be 3 out of 5, and well...he hasn't done that since Miami's loss in San Antonio.
If the Spurs win, the reality is...they win in spite of Bonner, not due to Bonner.
sometimes....hes mostly sucks when facing big men
I second this, based on all the plays I've seen and I've seen most of them this year, bonner seems a second late especially with his lack of length. ( a guy like bynum can afford to be a second late and still cause a miss shot) but with bonner not only is he late he really dosent cause the offensive player to make a more difficult shot)
but speaking of stats , here is a glaring one bonner is avg 21.8 minutes a game yet averages just 3.5 rebounds a game. that translates to 6 minutes of PT (half a quarter, Bonners normal time being in) with just one freakin rebound , as in just 1 (uno) , this is for a big man. I don't have the stats but this has to be the lowest avg on a per min for any bigman in the NBA. especially for anyone who avg more than 20 min a game.
Any one who knows basketball has to say that must really hurt your team , especially defensively when one of your bigs just gets one rebound for half a quarter of play.
By this stat alone , you have to say that bonner is an awful defender and is a huge liability defensively. Playing him extended minutes more than 10 min a half hurts the Spurs significantly
This post alone shows that people nowadays don't even bother to finish reading everything and respond before reading. It is incredible how I have posted the Drtg of all the bigs on the Spurs including Tiago Splitter. All people could do is at least read through everything before responding to posts. More than half of the posters come on here and rant about how Bonner is a bad defender (Yes we all know he is bad).
Ya, call me an idiot after the Drtg stats are plastered in the bottom half of my posts. I made an analytical observation of the stats and you just copied and pasted the stats from basketball-reference.com without any cross referencing and basic reading comprehension. No wonder the quality of posts on Spurstalk is dwindling.
Posters like you see the le, read the first paragraph or 2, and think you know what the OP is talking about. I swear there is at least half of Spurstalk who do this. What's the point of failing so much?
Last edited by Chieflion; 04-02-2011 at 11:21 PM.
'snot even a joke. Im sure teams ACTUALLY gameplan to attack Bonner. In fact we see it each and every game.
Funny how dumb some people are, he's saying Bonner sucks and people cannot even read what he wrote lol. People looked at your post and basically saw it as pro-Bonner.
The fact is... it kind of is. All you did was take facts that are for Bonner being at least an average defender, and tried to twist them into somehow meaning they were deceiving. Your original post is very obviously directed at me and my two previous threads, so I don't know why you bother making a anti-Bonner thread unless you want some kind of circle jerk where everyone talks about how much they hate Matt Bonner.
You try to somehow discount the validity of the stats by saying all our best defensive lineups have at least one bench player, therefore the quality of player they play against more than likely is that of a bench player. This is an argument that even anti-Bonner advocates will likely laugh at, because almost all the bench players in the NBA are there because they are good offensive players, and good defensive players usually start. I can think of very few exceptions to this rule, even though there are definitely some (Chicago). The Spurs definitely don't have any defensive stoppers on their bench (Hill isn't one), therefore I cannot take your opinion as valid for the discussion.
The fact is, Pop knows that Bonner could be better defensively, but what he brings offensively compared to the other bigs on our roster cannot be anywhere near duplicated. This makes up for whatever small difference there is defensively between Tiago/Blair/Antonio and Bonner.
I appreciate that you tried to come up with something though that had factual backing, and there's definitely stuff out there you can use, but this was definitely not something that was anti-Bonner. I was actually convinced for awhile that you were coming around as pro-Bonner while reading your post.
You created a strawman so that you could mentally masturbate ad nauseum about something that's pretty obvious if you've watched even a handful of Spurs games this year. Thanks for the "analysis" and the "cross-referencing."
Best defensive lineups are helpful ...but one must consider that he and most of the best Spur defensive lineups are playing against the bench players of other teams. Bonner may have a better rating or be in "better defensive lineups" ...but start his ass in Dice's place vs. Aldridge, Pau or Dirk ...I will enjoy the laughs!
Just admit you are wrong already. Trying to deflect your mistake with more insults isn't going to do you any good. It's your fault for not reading and this level of deflection isn't going to work.
Why would I be happy that Matt Bonner sucks at defense when he would be playing a lot of minutes? The point of this thread is to ask people to stop basing their opinions off one single type of stat and use perspective. Matt Bonner is just an example since a lot of people like to pick on his defense, which indeed sucks.
Last edited by Chieflion; 04-03-2011 at 12:45 AM.
Bonner plays in the fourth quarter for this team, when teams go to their best players more than ever. Not sure what your point is?
Yes i have seen that some the past 6 games ... quite comical. My point is defensive rating and many of these stats give you lineups and how effective they are can help but means out of context. If Bonner plays half his defensive possesions against Cardinal or Marion INSTEAD of Dirk that inflates his defensive numbers ...
So this confirms it, Bonner is the worst rebounding big man in the NBA, and it's not even close. , unless his offense makes up and negates his defencies in the defensive and rebounding end there is really no way this guy should get significant minutes (20 min plus). But when you compare his offensive production per minute compared to similar (shooting power forwards) Torkologue, Gillinari, Lewis etc. He is the least productive. (7.2 pts for 21 min) .
This is insane, I'm totally lost at how this guy gets minutes with playing like that. No defense, No rebounding ,little offense but lots of minutes , huh ??
Thank you. Someone gets it.
BTW Im not saying Bonner is a ty defender even though I think he is I just think this is one of many examples where stats mislead as the OP freely admitted.
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