Welcome to Building The Perfect NBA Player Part VIII: Defense. This is the eighth installment of a 10-part series in which we’ll be building an NBA player from scratch, using 10 different categories to build our player. If you want to keep an eye out for the other parts, check out the “Building” homepage.
What Makes The Best Defenders?
The ideal defender is big, strong, fast and able to guard every position on the court. While having all of those traits is impossible, we can get pretty close. Our defender needs to be a strong perimeter defender. He needs to be able to hold his own in the post.
Does that mean point guards and centers are out? Not necessarily. There’s a reason why the last five Defensive Player of the Year awards have gone to centers. They are the backbone of the defense and while they can take their own man out of the offense, they can also erase a lot of mistakes made by others by helping out.
There’s no specific statistic that shows defense. Sure, we can look at on court/off court statistics, we can look at blocks and steals or we can look at defensive rating. The truth is, a combination of all of those plus consideration to the defensive scheme is needed to give us our player.
Lets take a look at the candidates:
Note: Stats are for 2012-13 regular season. On court/off court stats taken from 82games.com. Synergy stats from MySynergySports.com.
Marc Gasol
The reigning Defensive Player of the Year has to garner some consideration. He holds opposing centers to a respectable 14.6 efficiency rating, while racking up 1.7 blocks and 1.0 steals per game. Perhaps more importantly, when he’s taken off the court, the Grizzlies are a whopping 6.5 points worse defensively per-100 possessions. Gasol’s ratings are solid, as Synergy rates him No. 29 overall, No. 21 in isolation, No. 22 in the post and No. 34 against the roll man.
LeBron James
James plays four different positions, so we must take that into consideration when we look at his numbers. He holds opposing small forwards to a minuscule 12.7 efficiency rating and opposing power forwards to a 17.2 rating. James has a much bigger impact on his team offensively than defensively, as they only allow 3.6 more points per-100 possessions when he’s on the bench. 1.7 steals and .9 blocks per game are respectable, especially considering the Heat play a lot of zone defenses. Synergy is not kind to James, as he’s rated No. 119 overall and No. 168 in isolation.
Serge Ibaka
In yet another example of defensive ratings not telling the whole story, Synergy ranks Ibaka as No. 256 in the NBA. We know he’s a much better defender than that. He holds opposing power forwards to a 14.7 efficiency and opposing centers to just 13.7. Ibaka has led the league in blocks two years in a row, including 3.0 per game in 2012-13. Ibaka is long and can recover against smaller, quicker players. He’s definitely in the top 10 for fastest laterally moving big men in the league.
Tony Allen
Ask just about anyone in and around the NBA who the best perimeter defender in the league is and I guarantee that Allen’s name comes up more often than anyone else. Allen has the metrics to back it up, too. He holds opposing shooting guards to a ridiculous 11.8 efficiency rating. He just put up his best defensive rating of his career (98). When he leaves the floor, the Grizzlies allow 6.7 more points per-100 possessions. Allen ranks No. 47 overall by Synergy and is No. 11 against the pick-and-roll ball handler.
Paul George
One of the rising stars in the NBA on both the offensive and the defensive ends, George has to battle some pretty stiff competition on a nightly basis. He holds opposing small forwards to a 12.0 rating (better than LeBron) and averaged more steals as well (1.8). His Synergy ratings place him at No. 87 overall, which isn’t tremendous, but it is respectable. George has the frame to be a terror defensively, at between 6’8″ to 6’10” with a very long wingspan.
Building The Perfect NBA Player Part VIII: Defense Winner Is…
LeBron James
James is the total package. (NBA.com photo)