2020-2021 ROSTER TALK: Archived

[mvossman]

I agree with your point regarding D.  It is certainly better than essentially saying "the seven defensive stats you gave us are flawed, but this one that I picked (the only one that shows Maxi as the better defender), it actually paints an accurate picture".   

I think it was more like one stat was provided with less than 500 minutes of sample (~20 games) and a counter stat was provided that includes more context and three years of sample.

Lineup data is very enticing stat as its fun to slice up the data and make assessments based on it.  But the reality is it has a ton of noise and limited sample size and there is a limit to what you can get from it.  DRPM has more context but a similar amount of noise and needs a very large sample (multiple years) to get much out of it.  The box score stats are almost completely useless.  It is just very hard to capture NBA defensive ability in a stat.

A case in point is the wild difference in perception on a given players defensive value.  On another forum Maxi is considered the best defender on the team and Powell is considered a liability in that area.  The thought there is that even before the injury Powell was best suited for 15-20 minutes destroying bench units offensively, but that his defense should keep him away from the starting lineup.  To suggest Powell might be more effective than Maxi on the starting unit in a defensive capacity would be considered blasphemy there, as opposed to here where it seems to be generally accepted.  I think the reality is somewhere in the middle, but it is fascinating how different these viewpoints are and I think it comes down to the fact that there is no quality metric to measure defense and such an assessment has to rely more on "scouting" than "analytics".