‘Defense wins championships’ - Nico Harrison, 2025

2023 NBA Champion Enver Nuggets

Hakkeem wasn’t All-Defense?? Hard to believe

I think this will likely change with the new restrictions on award eligibility.

For example, the 2022 Warriors wouldn’t have any under the new system. Draymond was the last vote getter on the second team, and he only played 46 games.

Same with Kawhi in 2019 only playing 60 games.

it mostly makes sense (good defenders make good defenses make good teams)

but I will say, this is probably a bit of a self full-filling prophecy, similar to if you did the exercise w/ first/second team all nba and titles

we choose guys on winning teams for these awards, so it kind of self selects for teams that have a good chance to win a title

Not looking good for the Lakers

Nuggets.

Cool.

Do you mean “Only 3 of those 58 finals did not feature any ADT player? Or am I reading it wrong.

How many of those Finals had players who made an ADT at any point in their career? Just off the dome, Shaq, Dwyane Wade (2006) and Olajuwon (1995) all made ADTs throughout their career. So even if these teams didn’t have an ADT player from that season, I’m willing to bet all of them still had ADT caliber players.

And several of those teams absolutely should have had an ADT member. Olajuwon and freaking LeBron are all time great defenders. Dwyane Wade was a three time all D teamer. Bird would make all D teams the next three years after ‘81.

Thank god we have positionless awards now bc 1995 Hakeem not making an All Defense team that year is criminal

I think Bron deserved an All-Defense selection in 2016, personally. Basically anchored the Cavs defense for an entire season, and they had the 10th best DRTG in the league. Not outstanding or DPOY level, but I still think very good.

Surprised that the 1981 Celtics didn’t have any, though. They had the 4th best DRTG that season, and 2nd best points allowed per game (which was the dominant metric at the time). Robert Parish was a great rim protector, so he probably would’ve gotten it, maybe there were just other centers who finished ahead of him?

This is interesting, but also, there are 150 starting players in the league, a bunch of those players are not very good players on bad teams (how many times has adt been on a bottom ten team), and ten all defence players? Let alone pre-expansion, there were less teams and the same number of adt players.

I’m not sure what the implication is supposed to be, but I think there’s probably some reverse causation here. Teams that are good have players that win EOY awards.

It’s almost as if defense is half the game.

Zo in ‘06 got 4 first place votes for DPOY in 2006 as a 20 minute a night backup to Shaq but missed the first/second ADT to Ben Wallace and Marcus Camby.

That Heat team also had James Posey who was known as a pretty good defender and probably should have made an all-defensive team at some point.

2006 Miami is interesting. No ADT but absolutely a cast of top notch defensive players on their last run with Gary Payton and Alonzo Mourning,

I wonder how much this changes if you go by 1st and 2nd team.