A NEW AND POWERFUL SYSTEM TO FIND OUT ABOUT DEFENDING In the last year and especially in the last month, big strides have been made in my being able to accurately and fairly compare and contrast players with respect to defending. A few weeks ago, I introduced the Defending Adjustment for Real Player Ratings (RPR). Due to additional evolution and expansion of intentions, I am now adding the word "hidden" on the front end of the term, and am changing the last word from "adjustment" to "rating," so it is now "Hidden Defending Rating" (HDR). RPR is the per unit of time combined total of all positive things tracked, minus all negative things tracked, plus the Hidden Defending Rating. The HDR is of course like RPR a per unit of time rating. For a very detailed explanation of RPR and the adjutment for hidden defending to it, you can check out the User Guide at the bottom of this post.. Aside from the hidden there would be unhidden defending, which would be rebounding plus steals plus blocks minus personal fouls. If we extract the combination of those four out of the same counts that underlie the RPR as a whole, we get what we are going to call the Scored Defending Contribution. This could also be thought of as Tracked Defending Contribution if you prefer. Then if we divide this by minutes, we can have a Scored (or Tracked) Defending Rating. Finally, if we combine Hidden Defending Rating (HDR) with Scored Defending Rating (SDR) we can have an Overall Defending Rating (ODR). I am for now going to simply multiply the HDR by two and add that to the SDR to yield the ODR. To combine them this way is more arbitrary than my usual standards allow; I am doing this because there is as of yet no non-arbitrary way of doing it. The formula of two times HDR plus SDR brings HDR almost up to par with SDR in terms of the actual numbers and the averages of those numbers involved. In other words, I am saying for now that hidden defending is almost as important as scored defending. There appear to be many coaches and not a few hardcore basketball fans who believe that hidden defending is actually more important than scored defending, but I am very likely never going to agree with that. I think that although hidden defending is important, and plausibly almost as important as tracked defending, that it is like a quicksand in that there seems to be a tendency for a substantial minority of basketball people to get carried away with estimating the importance of it and then become more and more trapped by their error in terms of how they look at basketball or in terms of how they coach their team if they are coaching. Exactly what is hidden defending? It's every action that helps to prevent the other team from scoring other than rebounding, stealing, and blocking. So it would include man to man defending, zone defending, rotating in general, defensive recognition, and quick defensive response to various offensive tactics, such as pick and rolls. Obviously, if a defender is good at these things, the other team doesn't score as many points than if the defender is lousy. ================================================ DENVER NUGGETS 2008-09 DEFENDERS COMPARED AND CONTRASTED DENVER NUGGETS HIDDEN DEFENDING RATINGS Includes Man to Man Defending, Zone Defending, Defensive Recognition and Response, Rotation, Pick and Roll Defending, all other untracked defensive actions NUGGETS 2008-09 REGULAR SEASON THROUGH JAN. 20 2009 Renaldo Balkman 0.173 J.R. Smith 0.128 Dahntay Jones 0.106 Chauncey Billups 0.103 Nene Hilario 0.092 Carmelo Anthony 0.070 Kenyon Martin 0.066 Anthony Carter 0.054 Chris Andersen 0.048 Linas Kleiza 0.041 DENVER NUGGETS SCORED (TRACKED) DEFENDING RATINGS Rebounding, Blocking, and Stealing Less Fouling per unit of Time NUGGETS 2008-09 REGULAR SEASON THROUGH JAN. 20 2009 Chris Andersen 0.374 Kenyon Martin 0.282 Nene Hilario 0.267 Renaldo Balkman 0.205 Carmelo Anthony 0.205 J.R. Smith 0.190 Anthony Carter 0.185 Linas Kleiza 0.142 Chauncey Billups 0.131 Dahntay Jones 0.080 DENVER NUGGETS OVERALL DEFENDING RATINGS Two Times the Hidden Defending Rating Plus the Scored Defending Rating, a relatively arbitrary but still roughly accurate and revealing performance measure. Note, the two components of the ODR are part of RPR, but not the measure itself. NUGGETS 2008-09 REGULAR SEASON THROUGH JAN. 20 2009 Renaldo Balkman 0.551 Chris Andersen 0.469 Nene Hilario 0.451 J.R. Smith 0.445 Kenyon Martin 0.413 Carmelo Anthony 0.345 Chauncey Billups 0.338 Anthony Carter 0.294 Dahntay Jones 0.292 Linas Kleiza 0.225 The first thing that jumps out here is how Renaldo Balkman has been one of the best defenders in the NBA. Were he to start, his rating would go down due to playing against better offensive players, but it is clear that it is virtually impossible that his rating would drop below outstanding were he to start. The next thing that jumps out is that J.R. Smith, who thanks partly to George Karl and partly to his own playing in the past, has a terrible defending reputation, is listed as the fourth best defensive stopper on the Nuggets! How could this be? Thats's fairly easy; there are two main reasons. First, because since Smith does not start, he is often in the game against inferior offensive players. Second, Smith was never as bad a defender as many think, and since he has matured basketball wise and overall over the last few years, he has improved substantially at defending. If you are disturbed by the J.R. Smith rating, don't blame me, the messenger. Blame the Nuggets coaches for not starting him and blame the Nuggets organization and George Karl in particular for planting wild exaggerations in your head about how bad a defender J.R. Smith is. And don't even think about claiming that an adjustment should be made between starters and non-starters. There are all kinds of reasons why this is a, excuse the cheap pun, non-starter. First of all, it would be way more work than I have time for, and the cost-benefit equation would be miserable. Second, it would involve relatively complicated and arbitrary assumptions, which means it would not necessarily be a valid adjustment. Third, it would distort reality, because like it or not, Smith is a very good defender, particularly in the context of him often playing against reserves. And fourth, actually, Smith is defending against starters roughly as often as much as he is defending against non-starters since, although he does not start, he is getting a lot of 2nd half minutes where many of the starters of the other team are in. Furthermore, you can't automatically assume that Smith would be far worse when defending against better offensive players; you don't know how much his defending rating would go down unless you actually find out by having Smith as a starter and try it. Notice that another non-starter, Linas Kleiza, has a very low defending rating despite the fact that, like Smith, he is often defending against not so great offensive players. This indirectly but strongly argues in favor of Smith being given an opportunity to start and to be evaluated fairly as to defending and as to overall net worth as a starter. Whereas with Kleiza, who by the way was recently given the nod over Smith with Carmelo Anthony out, is a high risk starter, since he can't even defend all that well against lower quality offensive players. Sure enough, starting Kleiza was a move that bit Mr. Karl in the rear end, and Kleiza was quickly sent back to the bench. What this is telling the Nuggets' coaches, who unfortunately are not listening and will never listen, is that they should not be using J.R. Smith's defense anymore as an excuse for not starting him. They simply do not have that as an excuse anymore. They should have used the first few months of this season to try starting Smith out and to see what would happen. They didn't do that because unlike the Pistons for example, the Nuggets feel no need to experiment until they get things just right. So no, the Nuggets had to go with Dahntay Jones, who previously no one ever thought of as a starter. As you can see from the defending rating, Jones can more than hold his own as a defender in the hidden or untracked aspects of defending, particularly considering he is a guard, but he simply doesn't make enough defensive rebounds, steals, and blocks to rank well in the scored or tracked rating. In any event, he is simply not qualified offensively to start at 2-guard for a playoff team. Until the Nuggets strategically understand the guard positions, Denver is never going to win a playoff series, it's that simple. It doesn't even matter who they have on the roster, if they don't understand that guards are generally more critical offensively than defensively, they will never win one damn playoff series.
