I legit lol’d at the James Harden punchline. Mind you, James is 36 and has more mileage than a Manhattan cab.

Threw deep learning at it to call him a bum lmao

It’s not like this is crunching numbers to make up a stat, this is simply “he don’t be movin” lol

Advanced Analytical Haters are Ho’s and I want that known.

• Luka

I wanna see where Jokic is on that list

This is a fantastic phrase thank you.

I love it

When they invent new stuff just to hate on you it means you made it

Harden and luka would definitely be top 5 in that category

Sad that Luka doesn’t have any decent facial hair to grow his beard.

I have been calling him Slavic Harden for years and I do not intend to stop.

The fact that Luka gets so much love on this sub while the same people vilified Harden for playing the exact same way but being more healthy and taking his team to the playoffs more consistently just shows how most Reddit nba fans actually are.

They are very similar indeed with such subtle finesse on offense with footwork and positioning to get wherever they want to go but i think their teams treat them the same on defense because why would you want your offensive creator in constant action on defense as well and tire them out? This info is cool and all and we know luka is a below average defender but there’s more to it than that. Teams scheme things for a reason and there’s also a reason dallas surrounded him with bigs.

That said, I think harden was a better defender but he also gambled and zoned out a lot on defense leading to a lot of easy baskets.

hardens biggest problem was the choking and luka‘s clutch af

I saw a comment before about how Luka’s foul baiting makes him think that he cant play D because he will foul the guy he’s guarding. This probably applies to Harden as well.

Its ironic to think about, but then they could also be just lazy

Harden was used as a wing stopper on OKC (put him on Bron in the finals and Kobe earlier too) when he was younger with less load on offense tbf Luka has straight up almost never been good defensively

excellent idea

God this joke really isn’t going to get old is it? Lmao, Nico deserves it.

Yea, I’m also curious as to Ingles Puppies Moved Per 36 Minutes compared to Luka

Illegal screen

Every fanbase misses Jingles when he’s gone

3.91 mph is his average defensive speed

https://www.nba.com/stats/players/speed-distance?CF=TEAM_ABBREVIATION*E*Min&Season=2025-26&dir=A&sort=AVG_SPEED_DEF

Get the hell outta here with these reasonable responses! 

For real tho, thanks for doing the research, great argument.

If you watch the games, you’ll see why.  Brown is a great two way player, but most games this season Walsh/Hugo gets the primary assignment on the better forward.  It just makes sense because they can soak up fouls, and quite frankly they’re better defenders than Brown anyway.  However, Brown has the capability to take on the primary assignment, as he did the last 8 years when playing with Tatum.  This year I think he’s only done it a handful of times, like against Kawhi, Ant, and maybe one or two others.  

The majority of games he sits on the weaker forward, and many teams plant that guy in the corner.  And teams don’t try to pull Brown out of the corner and get a switch onto him.

In comparison to Luka, teams actively try to get switches onto him and he still logs no speed.  Which means he’s not moving when guarding the ball handler.  The nuance is not forgiving to Luka because he looks even worse when using the eye test.  Rewatch the 2024 Finals and you’ll see why Brown is touted as a good defender and Luka is not.

Among heavy minute players, the most ball dominant players move less on defense. More news at 11.

It’s basically not understanding how team defense works. A lot of times these players (at least the guards) will be the on-ball defender that funnels the ball-handler into the big. When they aren’t guarding the ball-handler, they are mostly standing still reading passing lanes. Most opposing point guards are not running around the court without the ball. And if they are (Curry for example), the slower defender would often switch with a quicker defender. So, on the Clippers, for example, Kris Dunn would be the one chasing faster players.

Good post - context is always helpful.

And here’s reason why they’ll never give the full data for a stat like this. Funny to see people fall for the most basic of data manipulation possible; them just not giving all the numbers.

I know this sounds like Jaylen Brown hate comment, but it’s not: I specifically brought him up to show that this stat is inconsistent even for great defenders without adjusting for the role of each player

This stat is meaningless garbage meant to generate headlines and engagement farm lol

Me, a Celtics fan, wiping away sweat as I contemplate pressing the Defend Jaylen Brown or Shit on Luka button

You should make this a separate post

I don’t know why they even say things like that. It doesn’t mean anything without context. Most people will just use this as another thing against Luka.

They also don’t mention how much does he move on average and how much do other players move. They also don’t say why. Is it the role? Is it the players he’s guarding? Is he just lazy?

It’s like that blow by % in the finals. They just mentioned some number and not even put it into context.

This comment needs to be higher up or pinned

Well Boston are probably the most extreme switching team in the league as they will switch basically any matchup 1-4 and even send bail outs when their big is in action, but it largely results in most players staying in the same ‘zone’ of the floor defensively. Yet when he is put in action, he is noticeably good on defence and numbers back that up.

I find it a little worrying that people seem to need every single stat spelt out to them otherwise it’s apparently just ‘out of context bias’. Like this is blatantly a stat meant to be considered alongside the fact that Luka is a terrible on-ball defender. The lack of movement tells us how little he does (and potentially his team too) to help prevent himself being put in action and how he doesn’t apply himself off the ball to at least create deflections or shut off passing lanes. Like we shouldn’t need pundits to list off 20 different stats telling us how Luka is shit at defence to help contextualise a segment criticising his defence and using one extra stat to bring it to light

I heard he runs between cameras so that they all focus on luka

Frr lol, win or loss, the only guy getting constant hate on that sorry ass Lakers team is Luka!

How is this ‘hating’ when you spit factaroonies lol

I mean they track every players movement it’s not that hard

They’ve been using these cameras for like 10+ years. It’s the basis for all the player tracking data, most of which we never see while they continue to refine its use.

To be fair, I remember reading an article about LeBron’s defensive movement/activity being near the bottom of the league back in 2018-2019 and I’m pretty certain that it was the same technology.

next level hating right there

Imagine if he actually was. That would make all of this so much funnier.

I make a lot of pre-season predictions with friends for fun and one of my wild card predictions was “fans will be forced to accept that losing 10 pounds is not a cure for chronic injury”. 😂(This was because of both Luka and Zion off season hype)

…. A bit of an exaggeration. Length, athleticism, and skill go a long way. There’s dudes out there that make millions just being 3 & D guys. I don’t think there’s a bunch of guys in the G league because they don’t want to hustle.

700 upvotes too.

r/nba is full of hypocrites. Months ago, people were crying nonstop because the Lakers kept hitting the front page while winning before AR got hurt.

“Why is everything about the Lakers?” “OKC is on a rampage, they should be the front page,” Lakers this, Lakers that.

Now the Lakers are winning again, and even on wins, the discussion isn’t about how they’re winning or what they’re doing well. It’s still framed around what they lack, what’s wrong, or why it “its still this, luka still that” Meanwhile, other teams get praised normally for the same results.

r/nba doesn’t want balance. They just want the attention to flow one way.

When the Lakers lose, its frontpage entertainment. When they win, it’s deflection, nitpicking, or silence.

Never stopped talking about his defense

I get this is mostly in jest but tracking “distance covered” with a camera is a lot easier than travels and flopping lol

Or moving screen by Curry’s teammates.

Harden but he has a midrange game and doesn’t put up all-time disasterclasses in the postseason

Dont compare Luka to an MVP

People here killed Nico, and now all of a sudden have become him lol.

Luka fat, bad defense, chungus. Averaging only 33/9/8 on the season.

Going off by whats being said here, the Lakers would be lucky to get a package like what the Hawks got for Trae smh

lol that is hardly made up. Just watch the games, he was getting dribbled by with little to effort on every other possession. It was honestly tragic how bad his defense was.

The entire Celtics offense was just whoever has the ball, go at Luka.

Lakers are a play-in team right now, they just have an amazing record in close games

Messing around with the filters and stuff I think he’s likely talking about average speed on defense filtering out guys who only play a couple mpg. I don’t think it’s neccesarilly that great of a stat though, the correlation with defensive effort doesn’t seem that strong although the very top is a lot of old stars for sure.

https://www.nba.com/stats/players/speed-distance?CF=MIN*G*10&PerMode=PerGame&dir=A&sort=AVG_SPEED_DEF