Evan Turner is a standout defender according to NBA.com’s Play Type defensive statistics. This summarizes defensive percentiles. A percentile is what percent of NBA players you rank better than in a given stat. So a 90% percentile means that you are better than 90% of NBA players. I also compare him to All-NBA Defensive Team wings. Spot Up: 20% of NBA possessions Turner 85.0% Avery Bradley 60.3% Jimmy Butler 32.3% Paul George 78.7% Kawhi Leonard 75.1% Comment: Turner is best of the group in the most common NBA possession. Ball Handler: 17% of NBA possessions Turner 92.3% Bradley 58.7% Butler 37.8% George 35.7% Leonard 89.7% Comment: Turner is best of the group on the 2nd most common NBA possession. Transition: 13% of NBA possessions No individual defensive data provided. Cut: 8% of NBA possessions No individual defensive data provided. Isolation: 7% of NBA possessions Turner 73.7% Bradley 81.5% Butler 76.9% George 59.6% Leonard 83.0% Comment: Turner is 4th, but still better than ¾ of NBA players. Post Up: 7% of NBA possessions Turner 44.9% Bradley 25.0% Butler 25.8% George 34.0% Leonard 70.9% Comment: Turner is 2nd, well above all but Leonard. Roll Man: 7% of NBA possessions Turner 34.2% Bradley 91.7% Butler 27.7% George 27.0% Leonard 97.8% Comment: Leonard and Bradley are elite, while Turner is best of the rest. Off Screen: 5% of NBA possessions Turner 34.2% Bradley 91.7% Butler 27.7% George 27.0% Leonard 97.8% Comment: Leonard and Bradley are elite, while Turner is best of the rest. Hand Off: 4% of NBA possessions Turner 60.4% Bradley 19.6% Butler 17.0% George 33.7% Leonard 77.5% Comment: Turner is 2nd to Leonard, and well above the others. Putback: 6% of NBA possessions. Data available. Didn’t investigate. Misc: 6% of NBA possessions. Data available. Didn’t investigate. Weighted Average: If you take a weighted average of these players’ percentiles (weighted by number of NBA possessions), you get the following rating (in order): Leonard 82.4% Turner 72.8% Bradley 56.7% George 51.1% Butler 37.2% Comment: While not in the same class as Defensive Player of the Year Kawhi Leonard, Evan Turner is elite at defending the two most common NBA possessions, and better than the other All-NBA Defensive Team wings in most other categories. As a result, he ranks 2nd on this list made up on Turner and the All-NBA Defensive Team wings.
Pretty cool! I find it quite interesting that - according to this metric - Jimmy Butler doesn't really seem to be all that great of a defender.
You originally posted this in the off topic section. I moved it to the main/Blazer forum. You didn't do anything wrong.
I have to say, while I appreciate the OP's work, I am always suspicious of defensive stats. Here's one problem: suppose your team employs a ton of double/triple teams. Won't that make your stats look better? Ironically, if you're thought of as a weak defender, your coach will send help all the time, so your guy will actually look pretty bad (and maybe the guy being doubled-off will look good, thereby making the doubler look defensively bad because he had to help you out). Or, suppose you're Bruce Bowen and your coach won't double, but puts you on the best scorer on the other team. This stacks the stats against you because you're always defending someone awesome who is bound to score more than the crappy guy on the other team (who your coach is hiding his worst defender on). How can any stat take things like that into account, i.e., coaching decisions and style of play?
I think, for example, that Khris Middleton may benefit from the Bucks' weird style of defense (or at least, he did the first year they implemented it, before other teams knew what to do with it).
Advanced defensive stats are still in their infancy. As I commented in the other Turner thread yesterday, DRPM is a severely flawed stat that doesn't come close to passing the eye test. In this case, I noticed that the Defensive Play Type stats are heavily dependent on sample size and position/role. I do think they have some value, as long as you are comparing players with comparable sample sizes and roles - which is what the OP has done here. Just for grins, I looked at the first two categories (most significant sample sizes) to see how Turner compared to the former player many want to compare him to, Nicolas Batum. I also tossed in Dame and C.J., since the common accepted wisdom (aka: eye test) says they are poor defenders. Here's what I found: Spot Up: 20% of NBA possessions Turner 85.0% Batum 64.4% Dame 11.3% C.J. 24.6% Comment: Edge to Turner. Dame and C.J. suck at defense. Ball Handler: 17% of NBA possessions Turner 92.3% Batum 83.5% Dame 26.0% C.J. 34.2% Comment: Sight edge to Turner. Dame and C.J. suck at defense. Not sure if the data is sufficient to declare Turner a better defender than Batum, but since he will be making $55 million less, I'm happy we have Turner. The eye test is met with Dame and C.J. The data passes the eye test filter in this case. BNM
Dame and CJ must be world-beaters on offense, then, to be "the second-best backcourt in the NBA" ---BNM.
I will concede that Batum may be overrated on D and Turner underrated. I will certainly look forward to watching Turner (a signing I was very happy about - it struck me that I was in the minority). One complicating factor is that Turner probably wasn't guarding their better players (they have All-NBA defender Avery Bradley for the guards, also Marcus Smart, and Jae Crowder for the SFs) whereas Batum probably was (after MKG went down). And also Batum is much more versatile. He's guarded 1-4 and has a much better wingspan and can do those nice chasedown blocks. Certainly happy to see stats saying Turner is good. Let's see if he helps the Blazers get better.
AGREED that defensive stats can be misleading, and are in part system dependent. However, they are all we have right now. And all players are evaluated the same way. You could also say that Crabbe's and Meyer's good 3 point shooting is inflated by having Dame and CJ as high level threats taking the majority of the defensive focus. And that they benefit from Stotts' offensive system wizardry. So some of the same type of comments can be made about offensive stats. It's just that the ball going in the hoop is pretty definitive, while defensive acts (other than blocks and steals), are not.
Yes, I agree. All stats are useless out of context. And they pretty much always will be. Eventually they'll probably program an AI to do a better job than any human scout, but it'll be from watching reams and reams of video, not from looking at stats.
They are. And, I'm not the only one who thinks so. A lot of people smarter than me kept calling them that all through the playoffs. BNM
I love stats and I appreciate these as well but I couldn't help but laugh at your comment because my first thought was, "Is this Neil Olshey showing us why and how he chose Turner?"
I'm not going to do them all, just the two most statistically relevant play types (like my previous post): Spot Up: 20% of NBA possessions Turner 85.0% Aminu 58.8% Roberson 32.5% Comment: This exercise is left to the reader. Ball Handler: 17% of NBA possessions Turner 92.3% Aminu 41.9% Roberson 77.3% Comment: This space intentionally left blank. BNM
