The end of the regular season draws near, but, as the hype builds, don’t let the numbers fall to the side. One of my favorite parts of the NBA is end of season awards – a culminating triumph to highlight the sustained strengths of a single, heroic player. Most Valuable Player – give it to my dude, James Harden, Most Improved Player – Victor Oladipo’s got it locked up, and we ought to just rename the 6^th Man Award to the Gordon-Williams Trophy for the tug-of-war between Lou Williams and Eric Gordon. Shout out to Kelly Olynyk for being a force off the bench on his new team in Miami though!

But the toughest piece of hardware to shell out this year has to be the Defensive Player of the Year award. Injury has stripped some of the toughest defenders away from the league this season. Some names include Kawhi Leonard, Andre Roberson, and countless more injured players. As the picture has become clearer now, I began to compile defensive statistics to build cases for players to determine who should walk away with DPOY.

Anybody that has been reading my stuff might notice that I’ve slowly started to add more detailed, comprehensive stats that will paint a better picture of a player’s impact. This piece will be looking less at box score stats like blocks (which look good on highlight reels but don’t impact the defense as much as they impact fans’ emotions). Instead, this piece will consider defensive rating, on/off court numbers, defensive field goal percentage, etc. Our candidates include Rudy Gobert, Paul George, Anthony Davis, Joel Embiid, Steven Adams, Giannis Antetokoumpo, Andre Drummond, Draymond Green, Al Horford, Marcus Smart, Kevin Durant, and Clint Capela. Welcome to the comprehensive guide to 2017-2018’s Defensive Player of the Year.

Defensive Player of the Year

To preface the data, final numbers were recorded as of Wednesday 3/28/2018. Data may have shifted slightly since the release of this article but given the point in the season we currently stand, statistics over two or three games shouldn’t be sufficient to sway a decision. Take a few minutes and soak in the data from the charts below before I highlight some of the notables.

There’s a lot to assess in these numbers. I’ll spend some time running through the stand-out factors I saw and deliver my ballot for DPOY at the end. First, Davis and Adams are among the leaders for rebounds, but have a defensive rebound percentage less than 25%. This makes me think that both are either deferring on rebounds to their point guards (ex. Westbrook) or they are elite at gathering offensive rebounds. The reason why I included total rebounds rather than just defensive rebounds is because the ability to grab an offensive board also benefits the team by limiting the amount of time the opposing team has to score. Defensive rebound percentage is also a underrated statistic because it ends the opponent’s offensive possession; Drummond and Capela have over 30% in this category.

As we stay on course with box score stats, Paul George is an amazing pass lane disruptor. He is racking up stacks and part of it is his length and ability to read passes, adding 4 deflections per game to his case. A surprise is that Drummond has also excelled this season in high deflection and steals numbers. Gobert and Davis are the undisputed block kings of this group of players, and they cause worry for any player that comes near them in the paint.

While it is great to get steal and blocks, it doesn’t do the team any favors if these plays result in a high number of fouls from unintelligent defense. I rounded up a stat to evaluate the strength of defensive maneuvers to fouls. The higher the ratio means that the player produce a lot of strong defensive stops without fouling too often. Davis, Durant, and Gobert all show impressive control on defense while younger players like Embiid foul more often than desirable.

Defensive rating assesses the ability to limit points per 100 possessions; any defensive rating below 100 showcases elite defensive ability. Gobert and Drummond stand out for their defensive rating.  A complicated yet comprehensive stat is defensive win shares, which attempts to compile exactly how much an individual player contributes to a victory on the defensive end. Drummond leads in DWS with no close 2^nd.

Finally, contested shots measures ability as a man-to-man and perimeter defender. Gobert and Capela are definitely going to disrupt shots in the paint. It’s also surprising at how often Davis goes out to stop threes! As impressive as Drummond and Embiid have looked thus far, they just don’t contest enough threes for a league that heavily depends on shooting beyond the arc. So far, Gobert, Davis, and Drummond have shown a lot of promise as leading candidates simply looking at their individual contribution. Before I make any conclusions, it’s important to consider a candidate’s team stats since basketball is, of course, a TEAM sport!

Utah, Boston, and Philadelphia are notably strong defenses. Utah and Boston are led by venerable coaches and like the Spurs, shouldn’t surprise anybody with their defensive success. It’s impressive that Philly has a top 4 defense. Embiid and his teammates should be recognized for their improvement this year. New Orleans and Milwaukee hold 14^th and 17^th ranked defenses in the league, which becomes a knock against Davis and Giannis. For player-specific on/off court defensive ratings, Gobert, Davis, Embiid, and Giannis all show that their team performs better defensively when they are on the court and falls apart without them. It makes a compelling case to see how impactful a single player is on their team’s defense.

For Drummond and Durant, the team’s defense actually is a better rating when they come off the court. This hurts their case as a defensive stalwart, but one should be considerate of the personnel that plays when these stars come to the bench. For Drummond’s case, I think that he provides strong box score stats, and he looks like a better defender than he actually is for his team. This is ideal for fantasy, and this is not to say that he isn’t having a wonderful season.

Some final team observations are that NOLA has poor transition defense while Detroit is actually rather good in transition. NOLA, again, shows bad paint defense as a team, while Utah is excellent, and Detroit is better than most would expect. Boston doesn’t provide the flashy box score stats as a team and they rank very poorly in team steals and blocks, but they have awesome transition and paint defense, and that seems to matter more.

To conclude, my ballot for DPOY was still a tough decision. Gobert is the best defender to me, but hasn’t played enough games to warrant the award. Davis is excellent in almost all aspects, but his team ranks so poorly in defense that I’m hesitant to give him the award. Embiid is the defensive leader for the Sixers, who is carrying them to elite levels of defense. Drummond is a box score talent, but I’m worried about his ability to guard the perimeter, and he shows the same team deficiencies as AD. Lastly, Horford is an incredibly smart defender who will get overlooked for his impact on an already strong defense. My final decision is…

1. Joel Embiid
2. Anthony Davis
3. Rudy Gobert
4. Al Horford
5. Andre Drummond

If you’re unhappy with any of this, come at me on Twitter (@undraliu) with any and all basketball discussions. Thanks for reading ?