Kawhi Leonard has been one of the worst defenders in the league this season according to shot tracking data.
I feel like a few people have been talking about this, but I wanted to break it down fully.
The NBA tracks defensive data and can tell you players shooting numbers when guarded by certain players. This site actually breaks it down so you can see it as a shot chart, so the eFG% opponents shoot when guarded by a specific person. Turn on “Defensive View” if you want to look at it.
Opponents when contested by Kawhi Leonard currently have a +6.5 eFG% compared to league average. They are shooting almost 40% from 3 and 70% at the rim.
Broken down by zone:
And positive numbers are bad in this case. For context here is Wemby who is holding opponets to an absolutley insane 46.3 eFG% or -8.0 compared to league average.
Oher notable players for context
Elite -
Wemby: -8.0%
Chet: -6.8%
Derrick White: -5.4%
Good -
Ausar: -3.3%
Jalyen Brown: -3.7%
Giannis: -2.8%
Mediocre:
Harden: -1.0%
Lebron +0.6
Paolo: +1.1
Bad:
Jokic: +1.8%
Steph Curry: +2.9%
Terrible:
Zach Lavine: +5.5%
Kawhi: +6.5%
Trae Young: +11.5%
For a lot of these guys it is a bit of situational based on the current season. Giannis is usually better than -2.8% and Steph is has actually been closer to average in recent years. Good example is that Jordan Poole is tracking at slightly above average this season but if you look at the past 5 seasons he is one of the worst. For Kawhi you can say its a bit of an outlier, but even if you look at the past 4 seasons he is still +1.5% which is not good. And this is not a perfect stat because it does not take into account forcing turnovers and ball denier. But it is still notable.
Also funny enough Luka is 0.0% this season so straight up exactly average.