A single steal is better than a single block, but the latent impact of being an elite rim protector is much much more valuable than being a high steal guard.

I’d be curious to learn points per possession post-block. So conditional on the team retaining possession after they get blocked, how likely are they to score. I feel like often the D is out of position post-block so they score.

Yeah i’m wondering how his training effected this, he could probably block 6-7 a night out into the stands but this stat might be showing that he aims where he’s gonna block the ball lol, unfair player

I always thought steals were overrated as a defensive metric after seeing Curry and Iverson lead the league multiple times

Blocks though are also a decent proxy for rim protection. Even if they’re not resulting directly in possession they’re deterring future rim attempts.

Bill Russell did it first. It wasn’t about the flashy block, it was about directing it at the same time to a teammate

Nothing more frustrating than getting a block at the rim only to have the team rebound the miss and kick it out for 3

My small sample do show that a block ends up in a possession roughly 60% of the time. It’s not that bad in fine.

They’re certainly not as good as steals and the math on this is admittedly “old” by now but I still remember THIS great article on the subject from 538 which tries to quantify both how easily a certain type of stat gets replaced by a backup as well as how much value each stat actually offers.

His block numbers will NEVER be as high as they could if he were challenged at the rim as regularly as normal centers. The word is out. Players dont want to be on Sportcenter getting swatted into the stands. I’d like to calculate his blocks per rim challenge. That would tell the bigger picture.

Counterpoint: A “GET THAT SHIT OUTTA HERE” block is cooler.

Tim Duncan literally taught him this.

And people are ridiculing why he’s in the vicinity of Luka Doncic who is like the Mario Herzonja of defense to his Michael Jordan of defense.

When was this not cool lol most superstars are great defenders

I know the eye test can be deceiving for things like this but I genuinely don’t believe that the 62% stat is right. Watching the games it feels like 80%. 

Where do you find this stat?

You have the link for that ? It was fun to do it, but I would quite prefer be able to check easily whenever I want though.

Was just discussed on prime broadcast too

I’ve always wondered that if you block and recover the ball, why is that not a steal as well. You can get a block by just getting a finger tip on the ball as it’s shot, or block it out of bounds, that doesn’t mean a change in possession. A steal is the change of possession. If you block and recover, shouldn’t it be both?

Thanks.

u/nowhathappenedwas put that which is quite interesting too.

And as I said in my post, screwball.com is a very interesting website I recommend.

Wemby definitely aims to block shots in bounds and to positions where either he or teammates can get it. He’s particularly fond of pinning shots on the backboard where he can just block it and grab it all in one lol

You mention technique, anecdotally when reading about Russell and chamberlain, what I’ve seen about blocks was that wilt would swat the ball into the stands like a volleyball spike, and Russell would tip it to his teammates, leading to a fast break. Same kind of thing here

I’ve seen him look for teammates on his jump so he has an idea of where to block it.

If no teammates are in the area he sometimes swats it off the backboard to himself lol when you’re that tall and coordinated you can work on small stuff like this. Kinda like Rodman looking at which way his teammates lay a ball in to predict where a rebound will go

Id say it’s 60% technique, 10% just being 7’5, and the other 30% is the player’s being ready.

The main thing is he has the amazing presence of mind to not swat or block balls out of bounds. The Spurs players are never having to fly around and try to save wembys blocks from going out of bounds because they’re almost like little passes. Its been insanity to watch all year.

Over February and March, he is at ²⁰⁄₂₈ which means 71% of his blocks end up with a Boston possession, quite close to Wembanyama percentage.

Obviously, his blocks look quite different from Wemby and the others though. Lots are done right at the start of the shooting motion and looking like steals. Also, we can see that he does several blocks from behind on the 3pt line.

In conclusion, good numbers for Derrick White.

Well, I did it the old school way by watching all the clips of blocks by those 6 players in the last 2 months. And when it wasn’t fully clear or the clip wasn’t righltly cut, I went to look at the PBP directly on nba.com.

Imagine saying so much and actually saying nothing at all. Its almost like you didn’t even read OP’s post lmao.

Counterpoint: Wemby’s all-time great defense leads to an insane amount of blocks, not the other way around.