Elite tier defender turned into elite tier scorer.

His offensive load has been the highest of his career at 34. He still gets his steals but one would imagine his point of attack defense falling off

Bro is getting old

Nobody can outrun father time

Kawhi has also been leading the league in steals pretty much all year too.

This doesn’t take into account steals, deflection or offensive fouls drawn. You can watch games.

Yet Kawhi’s impact numbers on defense are fine to great. 

xRAPM has him at the 78th percentile, and EPM (dunkandthrees) at 92nd. 

DARKO, LEBRON, LAKER, timedecayRAPM all have him as an above average defender.

Looking at just fg% tracking data won’t give you the whole picture, because it leaves out deflections, steals, prevented attempts, and blown up actions. Kawhi in particular has always been known as a guy you don’t want to put the ball in front of.

Links: https://www.nbarapm.com/player/kawhi-leonard https://xrapm.com/table_pages/xRAPM.html https://dunksandthrees.com/epm/actual

I swear the are stats to prove/disprove any narrative. It’s quite boring

defensive stats are always inherently flawed

Its absolutely wild to suggest Kawhi is a worse defender than Luka, Steph, Harden or even Jokic. Are you even watching the games?

This post needs to be pinned as a top comment any time someone else posts a “My fave player should be MVP because the RAPMELO EPM% advanced metric shows that he’s superior to his rival, who according to the same advanced metric, is a garbage player.”

This is one of those times idgaf what the stats say lmao.

He’s not DPOY level anymore night in night out, but when that man is on you can see why he was at one point. This years 55 piece vs Detroit was one of the best two-way games I’ve seen in ever in my life.

Luka being an average defender like we have been saying this whole time 🤷🏻‍♂️. Everyone sees people saying he’s an average defender and act like we are calling him the DPOY. The numbers don’t lie, and they spell disaster for you at Sacrifice.

Where’s Dyson Daniels on this?

i knew trae young was alot worse than luka at defense (every advanced stat says so) but the diffrence is insane lmao

Where’s Rudy at?

This defensive metric is perfect for pushing my SGA MVP over Jokic narrative, thanks OP. Now I can be even more of an insufferable homer with stats behind me.

stats are for nerds.

For one, you can never convince me Kawhi is a worse defender than Harden. Maybe others for sure, but not Harden, who we have good comparison to Kawhi in terms of stat/eye test since both played for same team.

For comparison here are the numbers for Harden’s and Kawhi’s stats for 2026: DRtg Per 100 Poss ¹¹⁷⁄₁₁₃, Teams’ DRtg On/Off Court ¹²⁰⁄₁₁₂ vs ¹¹⁵⁄₁₂₀. This means that Clippers when they had Harden and Kawhi were BETTER team defensively w/ Harden off court AND w/ Kawhi on court for this szn. This also matches the eye test, so idk what stats you’re pulling from but they clearly don’t match reality of the team.

Amazing that LeBron is only +0.6 at his age

Has there ever been a player with the opposite of Kawhi’s trajectory who went from a DPOY level defender with broken shot mechanics to an elite scorer with below average defense

If a stat doesn’t match the eye test, it’s sus. If a stat is telling you Kawhi Leonard has been a “Terrible” defender this season (watch out, don’t put Kawhi on any shot creators; they shoot 6.5 percentage points better when he’s guarding them!), then I feel like stats could make you believe anything. Like what are we even doing here?

Lukas an average defender and probably above average once the Lakers put better defenders around him, all they have now is Marcus Smart

Funny Jokic and Steph are “solid defenders” according to Reddit but Lukas who’d statistically better is labled worse than Trae young

Also funny enough Luka is 0.0% this season so straight up exactly average.

Again proving that JxmyHighroller was right in his video.

God lord. One week he’s praised - the next vilified.

Watch the games he not a worst defender than jokic lmao

What’s ANT’s metric?

Always love seeing Ausar in these types of posts. His defense is so much fun to watch.

Rough title, the stat you’re citing is an aspect of defense but it doesn’t mean the whole is poor.

The team is net 4 points better on D with Kawhi on. This is because opponents:

• Shoot a little worse (0.5%, yes even though players shoot better with Kawhi next to them they shoot worse when he’s on the court)
• Get fewer offensive rebounds
• Turnover the ball more
• Get fewer steals (leading to less transition)
• Give up more offensive rebounds (leading to less transition)

From the stats you mentioned, fg% near rim is important. FG% from 3 is probably bad luck. You could check by seeing how consistent they are over many seasons.

The trend from 2026 to 2024 for net defense on/off is -4, -2, -8 (negative is good). It’s possible Kawhi’s D has declined since 2024, but it’s still good.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/l/leonaka01/on-off/2026

Kawhi was at his defensive peak from like 2014-17.

Also funny enough Luka is 0.0% this season so straight up exactly average.

Lol yep sounds about right

But he is better than ever offensively.

Like ive been saying. Anyone whos actually watched Kawhi for years knows his peak was in 2017. Elite defense, offense and still had his full athleticism.

there’s obviously more to defense than just this. if you watch the games he is still a very serviceable to good defender. especially when he is engaged and guarding the best perimeter players in the league

that being said, people shooting 11% better on trae young is wild

All that illegal money is weighing on his mind. Not his fault he’s way richer than anyone previously thought.

We don’t need his defense when we have Kris Dunn and Derrick Jones Jr

Where Tyrese Maxey and Cade Cunningham at?

Hi OP, this is really cool. So—I’m looking at Victor Wembanyama and Chet Holmgren, and Vic is a -8.0 defender whereas Chet is a -6.8 defender, which (if my understanding of these %’s is at all correct) means Wemby generally is a much better defender. Which is to be expected he’s probably going to be a many time DPOY

My questions: 

1. How big a jump is -6.8 -> -8.0? Seems big. At a glance, it looks like it takes an average
2. Wemby appears to guard the rim area at -6.0 whereas Chet guards the rim area at -11.7. That seems weird, because I’ve always taken Chet to be the #2 rim protector not #1. Am I misunderstanding how that works/what this means?
3. Who’re the best defensive PG’s according to this thingie? I assumed Stephon Castle’s -% would be better than SGA’s but Shai has like -5.2 to castle’s -3.2 last i checked, which is weird as I thought Shai was an overrated defender 

sorry if it’s a hassle to explain 

SGA at -5.8% is pretty incredible and matches the eye test too. He really is an attentive defender and that huge wingspan really lets him do massive damage.

Imagine Jokić and Kawhi playing together. Hope it happens this offseason.

u/logster2001 when I select Wemby I’m seeing an eFG% of 56.8% or +2.5% can you explain the selects you used to get the -8%?

I said it on twitter one time that Harden had been a better offensively than anyone on that team and that they shouldn’t traded him unless completely guaranteed a great ball handler and people said I was underrating Kawhi’s defense and I said dude he’s literally has been slow on defense all year

damn does trae guarding someone count as an assist for him?

i’d score 84 on trae young

So does this ignore plays where the player just gets beat and doesn’t contest? Does it include plays where you’re rotating and contest someone else’s man? 

Defense is more than just opponent fg%. Just like how it’s more than just blocks and steaks.

come back Derrick 😭

Analytic nerds ruined sports discourse. There’s no way you watched Kawhi and Steph play this year and said, yeah Steph is definitely the better defender.

It’s his help defense that has been excellent. One on one not as good. But watch the game, he still controls it on both ends.

You either retire a defensive stud, or develop your offense to the point where you defense has to take a hit

This might be one of the dumbest ways to just defense 

Luka bad defender narrative is exaggerated. All advanced stats show that this year. He is average or slightly below average, but that’s okay given how much gas he burns in offensive end.

All narrative is driven by eye test and compilation clips. But you know what, I bet you can make a compilation of defensive blunders almost on any player.

Watching clips, he’s looked terribly flat-footed all season. Old man legs.

I swear every week I see a post about Kawhi’s terrible defense of the aspiration BS and people asking “does anyone care?”

What about shot deterrence? If you being good at defence make so people only shoot when there is a really good opportunity, they might shoot better on you than someone they perceive as bad and are throwing everything up on.

Aka do you force people to pass instead of shooting, if so it is damaging for doing well in this stat, no?

Stat nerds are wild

[deleted]

If you’re not a top performing 2-way player, how can you demand and get a max contract?

Don’t play defense? Fine, here’s half the max.

Solved

He’s basically just a tree out there

Thank you! I was going insane having to listen about his “career year”

I don’t care what the offensive numbers are, eye test alone his impact this year was not near peak Kawhi

Jokic not as bad as one would think. Just by virtue of size and smarts he’s able to contest reasonably well when he tries. Last few games he’s been quite solid defensively.  

His reputation is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Whenever there’s a discussion about the best perimeter defender in the league, someone always shows up and says, “Yeah, but there’s Kawhi Leonard”