“From my point of view, defense is evil.”

“my rim” cmon now

DBPM heavily favours Jokic because of how many rebounds he gets

but rebounds don’t matter when they’re they score ³⁄₄ times on you t

Advanced metrics are the only defense Jokic has left. DBPM working harder at the rim than he is.

So is Duren bad defender because he is 2nd on this list?

They had the best defensive rating all year but I guess Duren is also not too good because the rim got attacked consistently in 2 game sample

Imagine if Ant is healthy… he’d dunk on Jokic fr.

Fuck the Bulls’ shitty front office 

their opponent even told them and they still don’t have the solution

Duren has managed to gain the reputation of a good defender simply by looking the part. Stewart on the other hand is actually playing great defense

Its just an extremely small sample size and an extremely specific stat. Not something you should draw overall conclusions on.

That being said Mobley has been average-bad defensively through 3 games, just very little paint presence against Toronto’s size and physicality.

Jalen Duren is not a good defender. I like him and he’s important for our offense, but our defense gets like twice as good when Stewart plays instead. Ausar Thompson covers for Duren A LOT.

At this point I would rank his defense below average for a starting center.

Duren is a bad defender though

I think the idea is that paint pressure is inevitable. Just like big men giving up dunks, it’s gonna happen. Jokic is just at levels that are leagues worse than the next guys

13 points difference is still absolutely massive lol. But i do agree its a small sample tho. Mobley and Duren should come down lower, while I can see Wolves even upping their volume inside lol.

They might be closely ranked but its a 13 point per game difference, theres no comparison.

Duren is not a great defender

Duren’s not an amazing defender but also a little bit of context: the Magic as a team can’t shoot. They were fifth in the league and second among playoff teams in the regular season in percentage of shots taken inside 10 feet. Hammering the paint is their gameplan.

Siren and mobley haven’t been good this year

We’ll mobley just fell off from last year still good though

Jalen Duren is not the defender you think he is lol

Duren isn’t a good defender

Duren is NOT a good defender. He’s a good rebounder and he’s athletic though 

Big thing is that rim defense shouldn’t be equated to one person… it’s first and foremost on the perimeter defender who let his man get away from him or past him, and then the 5 has to play cleanup and may or may not be out of position

Jokic is not a great rim defender, and against playoff offenses may not even be a good one because he’s slow at sliding, but stats like this are always going to be a poor representation

The nuggets are just bad. Specially without Gordon

They have no good defenders

Duren was really bad in game 1. He was better on that end in game 2 but still not up to his regular season form

“Good” defending isn’t just a vibe.

The different between jokic and them is huge no one said they were bad because of it

Duren has always been a bad defender. He’s slightly better this year, but he’s still pretty bad.

But his VORP, LEBRON, YMCA, MADONNA are elite and say he’s the best player of all time!

“By pad his assists I mean Jokic dribble handoff after which they will take 12 seconds to do a triple crossover hesi pull up jimbo at the top of the key”

Which is a stupid argument as you have to be hitting 49.2% from 3 to match that

Wait until their new metric comes out: GARGLE that proves definitively he’s the greatest defender of all time.

The funny part is even if that was the case it’s all among Playoff teams anyways so most of them should be good, meaning it’s not THAT strange for the rest to be above Duren and Mobley at the moment, and the gap between him and them is so absurdly massive as well…

This is mostly the responsibility of the center. Jokic is healthy. He simply isn’t effective and it’s causing his team to lose.

Triple doubles don’t negate that you get hunted on the other side of the ball and are a detriment to your team. No amount of uncontested rebound stat padding can change this.

It’s an Aaron Gordon stat because Jokic is incapable of doing the baseline responsibility of a Center

I mean that IS a huge component of it. He’s got great court awareness, super speedy decision making, and very dextrous touch with the ball… but his actual bodily movement speed is pretty abysmal across the board, including his arms and hands. Against anyone who knows how to seek contact in the slightest, he’s gonna get fouls called on him every 30 seconds till he’s out if he tries to contest.

I’m not saying this is a good thing or some big brain iq thing. It’s an enormous limitation in his game. If you need someone to play passing lanes, box out, grab tough rebounds to end a possession, etc. he’s great. But if you need someone at the rim who can keep up with any player with a modicum of speed or twitch reflexes, he’s…not your guy.

So, when your team has spent the last decade completely collapsing offensively every single second you’re not on the floor and looking unstoppable on that end when you’re on, you…wanna be on, and not sitting with 3 fouls 4 minutes into 1Q.

So he gets nowhere close to the lane unless he’s utterly confident he’s not in danger of picking up a foul, and mostly avoids them there as a result. And hey, when he is confident? He’s gotten some pretty cool blocks and steals. Nothing that’s gonna change the eye test math for him, but like, he DOES understand what the ideal thing for him to do is.

Is that good for the team? An acceptable limitation given how utterly otherworldly he is in every other respect? I dunno! I’d say yeah, I love the dude. And when he’s had solid point of attack defenders and backup rim protection, they’ve mostly been able to cover for it, at least enough for the offense to win out.

But Gordon is hobbled (and older), PWatt is out, and the rest of the guys tend to be…fine at best? Braun’s fast and strong but maybe not the best awareness, Timmy is…mostly a shooter, poor Strawther’s not even that, and Cam has been…inconsistent at best this year. Murray is generally more or less fine defensively, but he’s a big guard and lost some burst ever since the ACL. Jones tries but he definitely gets thrown off by starter caliber offensive players.

So yeah, again, it would be better if Jokic had a different body than he does, or if he’d practiced a different skillset to a dominant level, but that ain’t where he’s at. But at least he’s figured out how to stay out there and try to outrace the other team to 150. And did so at a pretty historic pace this year, lol.

Isn’t it mostly because DBPM puts a ton of weight towards assists for centers?

And his assists

Think he’s way more hurt than he’s letting on, or just choking? 

This is the exact kind of thing that does “magically” improve/change in the playoffs

2019 raptors after game 2 in the ECF looked like they did not stand a chance vs the Bucks. They adjusted then won four straight.

Insane how reactionary people are, the guy has 3 MVPs and a ring where his second best player was Jamal Murray (he’s good, but a 0 time all star at the time)

Why can’t we just appreciate greatness?

I don’t know, he might take his hands out of his shorts next game.

Idk man taking it to the paint against the Nuggets is an infinite points glitch.  I expect Rudy to be able to stop him more times then Joker can stop any wolves player driving at him in the paint. Last night I watched him make a 3 at the top of the key, and somehow Ayo beat him back and scored an uncontested layup 

30 minutes? You could make that from last night alone and still have enough footage left over for a director’s cut with deleted scenes and behind the scenes commentary from Rudy Gobert.

The Best Stat

He is more efficient and lead his team to the title. That’s (especially first part) is why it’s not considered stathunting. 

Do you actually think Jokic has been stat hunting this whole time?

Jokic has been a cone his whole career yet he doesnt get 10% of the shit Luka does. I guess a ring against an 8th seed really means that much.

He’s actually been the definition of an average defender if you look at his defensive ratings. He can be a cone on some possessions, but he is far from the worst defensive liability among offensive engines. That honor goes to Jalen Brunson.

The issue is that Jokic and Jamal are both defensive liabilities so there’s nobody to pick up the slack, this is amplified if both Gordon and Watson are out.

Exactly

10 more points on almost 10% better shooting is an insane difference. It’s basically the difference between Wemby and Mo Bamba lol

They really do.