Identifying the Best Defenders in the NBA Using Matchup-Based Defense

Defense is half of the game of basketball, but it has been difficult to gather information about the defensive capabilities of all the players in the league until very recent seasons. Due to the paucity of data about defensive performance and the limitations imposed by television broadcasting contracts, it was practically impossible to truly know who the best defenders were, night in and night out.

Offense, by contrast, is well-documented. The box score provides a good deal of useful information on individual offensive output, and even more granular data has been available throughout the 21^st century by virtue of play-by-play data.

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The Best Defensive Power Forwards in the NBA

Small ball is no longer the wave of the future – it’s the wave of the present. The 80’s and 90’s featured brawny, bruising power forwards who could soak up punishment in the post, clean the glass, and protect the paint as weak side shot blockers. In a game dominated by giants, power forwards were the centers’ sidekicks. Even the beginning of the 21^st century saw the San Antonio Spurs’ “Twin Towers” follow the same frontcourt structure that had held sway throughout the league’s existence.

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The Best Defensive Small Forwards in the NBA

In the last installment of this series, we evaluated the best defensive shooting guards. We noted that the shooting guard group is crucial in the modern NBA due to the advantages gained by employing versatile defenders capable of stopping opponents of different sizes and skill sets. The same rationale applies for the players in the “small forward” bin using basketball-reference.com’s play-by-play position designations. When compared with the previous group, the main difference is that the small forwards are larger. (perhaps we should start calling them “big wings”?)

Wings, whether they are categorized as “shooting guards” or “small forwards,” exhibit greater spread in the defensive load they carry than other position groups do.

While the median values are relatively consistent across positions, wings have a wider distribution than other positions. Raw defensive load for wings can range from very high (>15 ppg) to very low (<6 ppg). Other positions, especially interior defenders, have much more compressed distributions.

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Matchup-Based Defense

Defense is the unsolvable puzzle in NBA analytics. No matter how advanced the advanced stats get, defensive metrics continue to crash against the same conundrums. Better data often leads to better models, and recent years have seen a dramatic improvement in the quality of defensive data available for analysis. Tracking data, opponent shooting data, play-by-play data, and more have all played a hand in modern defensive analysis. In spite of the improvements, or perhaps in part because of the improvements, it is clear that defensive analysis is still not highly accurate.

Most defensive metrics which are currently extant are based on one of two schools of thought. In order to take stock of why defensive analysis is still frequently inaccurate, it will help to investigate the underlying assumptions behind most current models.

The Plus/Minus School of Thought

The most popular method by far is The Plus/Minus School, which counts BPM, RPM, RAPM, PIPM, and more among its adherents. The distinguishing precept of the Plus/Minus School is the belief that we can ascertain a player’s defensive value by evaluating the team’s performance with him on the court, if only we properly adjust for strength of opponent, the team’s talent level, the team’s performance with the player off the court, and the player’s performance level in seasons past. The adjustments made to raw plus/minus are attempts to extract reliable data by excising confounding variables.

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