NBA - Main

No but it’s a minimum requirement. If you put the best defender in the league onto the team with the worst defense, they wouldn’t be bottom 5. Probably not top 5, but they’d at least be decent. In the same sense that you can’t make an argument for being the best player in the league if your team misses the playoffs. Individual stats are all flaws in some way, ultimately it has to translate to team success because that’s the actual goal.

Because the opposite is also true. You can have great statistics without really contributing to winning basketball games, which is the goal. Advanced stats try to mitigate this, but they will never be perfect.

So if you have to relatively even players, and one wins a lot, and one loses a lot, it's hard not to spread at least some of the credit to the individual.

It kind of makes sense... As pointed out, taking a D from last in points allowed and last in effective FG% allowed to now 3rd to last in points allowed and last in effective FG% allowed, what's the value of the player who can do that for a defense?

It shouldn't be THE metric, sure, but it should definitely play a part, and I am fine if leading arguably the worst D in the league prohibits a guy from winning defensive MVP votes vs. other guys doing similar things but leading better defenses.

Iif you can have a team where avoiding that great defensive player mitigates his impact, it makes it hard to gauge that value to his team, which is why I think the bigger guys who can rotate and contest shots from other players more tend to win DMVP more often.

So I get that being a part of the impact or value of that player for his team is 2nd or 3rd worst D and near the top in the lottery vs. a great defender pushing his team from a solid to a great defense and competitive to at the top of their conference.

Take Dwight for example. Rashard Lewis, older Vince Carter, Jameer Nelson, Redick, Williams, Ryan Anderson, Turkoglu... These guys weren't great defenders, but with Dwight they were arguably the best team defense and capable of winning 50+ consistently. I think Wemby will get to that. Not the highlights, but the communication, the knowing where to move and be a step quicker, etc will come and you'll see that team defense improve with that whether or not he has the block numbers as high or not.

But lets face it, he is in the running (not the front runner but I believe was 2nd best odds by vegas to win DMVP behind Gobert by Vegas), so it's not like most people are saying "horrible D, he's out". And Gobert is playing more, Davis is out on the court something like 17% more often where Wemby is on the bench not impacting the defense... Those things will come into play too. Tatum I like a lot in how he affects the entire team defensively... and again, 23% more time on the court where Wemby's impact is zero.

Spurs fans still cry that Marcus Camby won DPOY over Duncan because he led the league in blocks by a wide margin. Despite Duncan being on a better ranked team.

Now, forget team performance and DRTG and empty stats are all that matters. Because my fav player is Wemby. Lmao

When are you guys gonna move on from pop? Pretty inexcusable that your defense could be this bad when you have Wemby, Collins, Sochan as a front court. That should be a top 5 defensive front court, honestly.

Vassell is a good defender.