Carlos Boozer isn't a great defensive player. As for the others, I have no idea how Donyell Marshall is a 90, that does seem high, I'll give you that. No system is perfect. I saw a system in baseball that had Derek Jeter ranked as the worst fielding SS of all time. Sometimes you do have to use your own discretion. That being said, for the majority of players, they rank where I would expect them to.

Posted by Pharzeone:

LOL. So now David Lee is a better defender than Carlos Boozer.
boozer,carlos uta PF 231 +2.7 257 104 79 37

Etan Thomas?
thomas,etan was PF 88 +1.6 218 107 140 58

At least Rasheed ranks slightly better than Lee
wallace,rasheed det PF 21 +3.2 274 100 21 77

Donyell got them all beat.
marshall,donyell cle PF 78 -1.2 109 99 15 90

Donyell Marshall is now a better defender than Marcus Camby, lol. Who knew? :)

Posted by Solace:

This is typical, though. People knocking a few instances out of a vast many, in a lame attempt to prove facts that they don't want to admit. Marbury and Curry are both ranked in the top 10 worst defenders as per this. Crawford isn't all that far behind either. Many will deny this. I say its right on.

Its not just a few instances and it shows its a very flawed system. If its wrong about so many players how can we not take the Knicks stats with a grain of salt. It seems to have a lot to do with overall plus minus of teams and also is linked to starters vs reserves as well as teams records in many instances.

As far as this system goes it rated the player’s defensive performance in team concept.
It is not designed to rate the personal performance of each player.
Bbal it team game. Right?
There are a lot of players in NBA which cannot be content one-on-one.
And there are a lot of offensive systems and plays which can be defended only with team effort and understanding by players and coaches how to adjust.
The best players on this list will be the fundamentally sound and smart and well coached. You can call it bbal IQ or whatever.
We have some players with limited bbal thinking ability (see the end of the list) and we have coaching stuff which cannot make a simple defensive plays for them. You can put marbs or eddy on Spurs or Detroit roster and they will suddenly be OK defenders.

what if, instead of saying that steve francis is a better defender than jared jeffries by one "point" or such precise comparisons, you look at the broad strokes.

if you're above 85, you're an excellent defender.

if you're 70-84, you're pretty good.

if you're 40-69, you're average but may have your good moments.

below 39, you're a real disappointment.

and of course there will be outliers, for some of the reasons mentioned - being on a good team/good lineup is a big one.

you can make the cutoff wherever you want, i just eyeballed it based on what i know about certain players.

Posted by Pharzeone:

Who is saying that Curry isn't one of the worst defenders.

Directly, in the past 5 minutes, no one. Indirectly or directly over the past 5 months, all of the lovers.

Posted by Pharzeone:

I disagree about Marbury but when is Crawford a better defender than Marbury?

I think they both were rated so poorly that that's not much of a comparison. They both stink of defense. No surprise, is it?

Posted by Pharzeone:

Also, what about you, I and others made points that should blow your mind if you watch NBA games. Camby is a so so defender?

I don't know where you get so-so. Camby is great on defense and he got a very good rating at 86. It's not tops, but frankly Camby plays weak-side defense, and men slip by for easy baskets from time to time, so I think the rating is probably accurating. Calling an 86 so-so is like getting an A- on the test and having your parents say you failed. Come on now, be fair.

Posted by Pharzeone:

You tried to justify the system by saying Boozer isn't a great defender. Ok, so he is twice as bad as David Lee?

Boozer isn't a great defender and you're incorrectly interpreting how the ratios relate to each other. The way to interpret the ratings is against peers. David Lee may be significantly better on defense than Boozer. Depending on what's being taken into account, I can certainly see a few areas that Boozer got killed in. Honestly, I think Lee's rating is a little high. I would've seen him more around 50, maybe low 50s, which is why I called his defense 'decent' -- meaning, passable, respectable, puts in the effort.

Posted by Pharzeone:

If you can explain how Raja Bell ratings is only 24 compared to Ginobill's 99 then I can agree with you. I mean my God man, the stats just don't add up to what I watched. The only thing about the system I agree with is that Curry is a bad defender.

I certainly did not catch Raja Bell with a 24. I'd need to see a breakdown as to how that stat was arrived at.

Posted by Pharzeone:

Now I am suppose to believe that Marbury is worst than Curry on defense?

No, they both got awful ratings. You should interpret that as meaning that both players are awful on defense.

Posted by Solace:

This is typical, though. People knocking a few instances out of a vast many, in a lame attempt to prove facts that they don't want to admit. Marbury and Curry are both ranked in the top 10 worst defenders as per this. Crawford isn't all that far behind either. Many will deny this. I say its right on.

Bingo. A measure doesn't have to be a even close to 100% accurate to be considered useful. For example, if a self-report measure predicting during pregnancy who will develop postpartum depression has 80% sensitivity and 80% specificity, it would be considered *outstanding* even though it would be wrong often. And it would be a poor (maybe even unethical) choice for any physician to ignore the measure.

Posted by Ira:

One possible flaw with this system. Starters tend to play against other starters more often. Backups tend to play against other backups. If you're playing against other starters who generally score better than backups you're at a disadvantage under this system. So the scoring system makes backups look better than they are and it makes starters look worse.

This is true if startes are bad defenders and cannot contain other starters. Right?

Posted by Allanfan20:

Tom, if you're right, then we still have one GOOD defender and that's Balkman. Lee is average and MAYBE Mardy is average.

But even if it's true that you're not as bad as you look and not as good as you look, then everyone from Steve Francis and down are STILL really bad, b/c those numbers are THAT LOW, and Mardy is a big question mark too.

It's probably why Isiah chose Nichols over Morris Almond and got Chandler in the draft. I'm sure he's quite aware that our defense is putrid.

I don't think this study tells us anything we didn't know. We don't have a lot of good defenders, although Balkman is a very good. Knew that already. Marbury and Curry are subpar. Knew that.

I don't place much weight in the actual quantification offered by this guy. Defensive +/- is notoriously problematic even though the idea is nice. I really don't put a lot of trust into it. Not sure of all the details behind this guy's box score composite measure or of defensive rating. Don't know the weights he used for the 3 components. We are still in the stone age in terms of judging defense statistically and this effort doesn't add all that much IMO. I would trust it on a very broad level of categorizing guys as below average, above average, and somewhere inbetween. Wouldn't trust it for too much beyond that.