One of the great mysteries in basketball is how to grade individual defense.  For years, the basketball fan glanced at a player’s steals and blocks to derive their opinions on whether a player was a good defender or not.  Blocks and steals were the extent of objective  information at our fingertips and conceptually, it made sense to use blocks and steals as a proxy for quality of defense.   While blocks and steals are both good contributions as a defender, they alone offer just a small window into the challenge of stopping the opposition from scoring– the ultimate goal of the defense.

Thankfully, we have more data these days.  The great resource that is Basketballvalue.com publishes the on court/off court lineup data for every player in the league.  What do on/off court defensive numbers tell us? They answer the following question:  How many points does the opposing team score when the player is on the court relative to when he’s on the bench?

In many basketball analytics circles, this is the most useful measurement available.  It ignores box score statistics all together and strictly looks at how a defender affects the bottom line: the scoreboard.

What happens when we compare the on/off court defensive stat to the box score stats?  Maybe you are interested in who tallies loads of blocks and steals, but fails to impact the team’s efforts on the scoreboard.   Perhaps you can’t sleep because J.J. Redick totaled just 32 steals and blocks in 1,808 minutes and you believe those numbers do a poor job of measuring his defensive ability.  Well, I’m gonna touch on all that in today’s post.

First, I gathered every player’s steal percentage (estimate of steals per possession on the floor) and block percentage (estimate of blocks per possession on the floor) from Basketball-Reference.com.  They are estimated because B-R’s calculation doesn’t have actual possession data but the estimate is very accurate. I used these instead of other stats measures because they remove the pace and playing time bias from overall stats numbers on the back of your old Fleer Ultras.  Then, I only looked at player’s who logged more than 500 minutes this season to remove the wild variances due to little playing time.

Next, steal percentage:

The negative trendline tells us that the players who steal the ball a lot tend to have a better (more negative) defensive on/off court differential and steal percentage is statistically significant in predicting defensive on/off differential (p=.0493).   While stealing is significant, you’ll notice that only a small relationship exists.  If they were perfectly correlated, you’d see a straight line of points but the distribution is much more scattered.

There are several reasons steals have a low correlation (-0.108) with on/off differential. For one, a player can steal the ball without playing good defense.  Most steals come from the stripping variety but players also can “steal” the ball by being in the right place at the right time and picking up a loose ball that falls to their feet.  Just like you can’t assume a double play in baseball, you can’t assume the possession would change until a player physically picks up the ball.  Additionally, players who go for steals all the time are playing risky basketball.  What we’d really like to look at is net steals, or the ratio of successful steal attempts to failed steal attempts.  Many players get tons of steals without actually improving their teams defense. Who are they? One way to find these sly cats is to compare their percentile ranks in steal percentage and defensive on/off court differential.  Don’t look at Andrei Kirilenko. He racks up a ton of steals (2.5 stl%, 95 percentile) and also helps the teams bottom line on defense (-5.1 points, 94 percentile).  Direct your eyes to these folk.

This should be a good time to mention that defensive on/off court stats have their faults as well.  It is a fact statistic but it isn’t adjusted to take into account the quality of their substitute players and the lineup they tend to play in.  Additionally, it’s still subject to random variation since there’s a lot of different lineups to tease out one player’s contribution.

Nonetheless, this is still an eye-opening exercise.  All these players saw their teams play better defense (fewer points allowed) when they were off the court.  Monta Ellis has one of the highest steals rates in the league but opposing teams scored more 4.1 points when he was playing defense than when he was on the bench.  Many of these guys are speedy guards but you also have Rasheed Wallace and Jeff Green in there too.  Jeff Green was this year’s worst defensive player if you use the on/off court number as the measuring stick.

I wouldn’t say all of these players are categorically overrated as defenders but we also shouldn’t let their steal numbers color our evaluations.  Steals are good but these players probably exhibit more risky and opportunistic defensive strategies rather than staying home and forcing bad shots.

Let’s move on to blocks.  Here’s what it looks like when we plot block percentage vs. defensive on/off court differential:

There’s  a stronger relationship between blocks and defensive on/off court differential than there was for steals.  Shot blockers clog the paint and prevent high percentage shots whereas guys who accumulate steals only get a couple per game and have less of an impact on preventing scoring.

Still, only 2.7 percent of the variation in a player’s defensive on/off court differential can be explained by their block percentage.  That might seem miniscule but also consider that there’s a fairly large percentage of variation that is simply random/luck.  But there are players who are empty shot blockers.  Typically, you see these guys swat every ball in sight, thereby leaving themselves vulnerable to pump fakes and weak side cuts.  Additionally, they tend to foul a lot and fouling a player going up for a shot is just about the worst thing a defender can do aside from laying down on the floor.

Let’s take a look at the shot blockers who actually don’t improve their team defense (as measured by defensive on/off court).

Theo Ratliff saw a huge boost in minutes after arriving to Charlotte from San Antonio this season.  Always a big-time shot blocker, he’s no longer the defensive asset of old.  He doesn’t take advantage of his height on the boards and he’s certainly slowed down at age 36.  The Bobcats were about 4 points better defensively with him on the bench, despite his shot blocking talents.

With Kurt Thomas, Nazr Mohammed, and Ratliff, we have a nice group of older veterans who may not have the quickness to stay in front of their younger opponents.  But we also have some youngsters (DeAndre Jordan, Brook Lopez, and JaVale McGee) who may have some more work to do.

As a reminder, the on/off court data aren’t adjusted for substitute effects and they are still vulnerable to random variance.  For non-rookies a good follow-up would be to do a 3-year average on/off court to get more accurate data but that would ignore yearly improvement and development.

In the end, it’s best to look at several measures to get an objective defensive evaluation. Clearly, there’s more to defense than just steals and blocks but you wouldn’t know that by looking strictly at the box score.  Steals percentage has little effect on the aggregate scoreboard and it’s best to not let them paint your overall evaluation of the player.

View the data here and you can see that J.J. Redick’s defensive on/off court differential sits in the 9th percentile.  Not so good.

Big thanks to Aaron Barzilai of basketballvalue.com for publishing on his site.

It happened during the first quarter Thursday night when Paul Pierce drove to the basket. He was fouled by Ron Artest and inexplicably not given continuation on the basket. Instead of a three-point player opportunity, the Celtics had to settle for an inbounds play and no Pierce layup.

Maybe the reason he didn’t get the continuation is because Pierce celebrated the score by punching Eddie F. Rush in the face.

Eddie F. Rush? More like Eddie F. BumRushed! AMIRIGHT?!?!

Part of me would like to think this was calculated but at the same time, if you’ve ever seen an NBA fight then you know it’s very unlikely a player could connect on a punch like this.

(via Truth About It)

Back around the turn of the millennium, the Sacramento Kings were trying to establish themselves as a force to be reckoned with. While they were building an evolving squad that was trying to find the balance between a veteran bench and a growing core of really incredible players, they had a certain group of players called “The Bench Mob.” The Bench Mob was comprised of an unusual band of brothers for Sacramento. The leaders of the mob were Jon Barry and Darrick Martin. They had Peja Stojakovic before he was Peja Stojakovic. They had scrappy guys like Lawrence Funderburke, Scot Pollard and Tony Delk. Hell, even Tyrone Corbin and Bill Wennington made an appearance from time to time.

This wasn’t the best bench in the league by any means. In fact, they had a bunch of specialists and not really anything resembling a tried and true group of proven contributors. And that’s sort of why it worked. Nobody expected much out of them. Maybe they weren’t going to make a good percentage of their shots. Maybe they weren’t going to execute with the flair and grace of Webber, Vlade and Jason Williams. But they were probably going to outwork you no matter who you threw at them.

This Boston group of pine-sitters reminds me of the same thing. It’s not so much a Bench Mob as it is a swarm. In the fourth game of the 2010 NBA Finals, the Boston bench managed to swarm the Lakers players and hit them with a deluge of energy and effort. The Lakers couldn’t help but hope for mistakes by the men in green. Rather than outwork them and exude their talents and dominance over this group, the Lakers just sort of took it. The Boston bench didn’t just outplay the Lakers bench. For much of the fourth quarter, they outplayed the Lakers starters and put on a show in doing so.

“We were like Shrek and Donkey.” – Nate Robinson on the Game Four performance of Glen Davis and himself.

It’s sort of perfect that Nate Robinson made this analogy for him and his bulbous sidekick after they helped the Celtics find a fourth-quarter groove and even up the NBA Finals with a must-win in Game Four. Nate Robinson was the pesky, annoying sidekick that you expected to provide all of the comedic relief while Big Baby bruised his way through the forest, destroying everything in his path. It was entertaining and almost cartoonish.

When Big Baby grabbed his fourth offensive rebound of the game with 8:23 remaining in the fourth quarter and powered his way back up to the basket against Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom, he absorbed the foul, scored the basket and unleashed an outburst of emotion and drool that makes Kevin Garnett look like Tim Duncan on horse tranquilizers. Effort, energy and heart were going to be needed to win the NBA Finals. The Game Four version of the Boston Celtics bench had it and the Lakers simply didn’t.

A lineup of Nate Robinson, Ray Allen, Tony Allen, Glen Davis and Rasheed Wallace played the first 9:10 of the fourth quarter against LA and left the game with an eight-point lead for the starters to play with. They survived a quick run of technical fouls by Rasheed Wallace and Nate Robinson. They survived 12 fourth quarter points from Kobe Bryant. They took control of a game in the NBA Finals, which was as close to a must-win as you can get without having a loss result in elimination.

Big Baby was fantastic. You can say that he excelled because Andrew Bynum nearly sat for the entire second half as his knee swelled up beyond belief because that’s not the entire truth. Big Baby was able to score when Bynum was out there. In fact, he scored on whomever the Lakers employed to plug up the paint. Lamar Odom was absent-minded and couldn’t find the focus to put a body on Big Baby. The Large Infant bounced off Mr. Kardashian and bounced off Pau Gasol. If there was a basketball to be had or a key bucket to be scored, the oversized-undersized power forward from LSU was going to get it done.

And as good as he was in this game, it’s just as important we recognize the rest of the bench players that did their part. Nate Robinson improbably played out of this world again by hitting threes, making plays and being the annoying ball of energy that’s only been replicated by the chicken hawk in Foghorn Leghorn cartoons. Tony Allen played remarkable defense against Kobe Bryant. Did he stop Kobe? Not even close. Kobe ended up with 33 points on 22 shots, which is sort of ridiculous. However, he did turn the ball over seven times and had Allen make some pretty big plays by stripping the ball and challenging jumpers.

You also can’t forget the job that Rasheed Wallace did in this game. Yes, he ran around after a couple of foul calls against him and eventually earned himself a tech. It was absolutely deserved. But it’s just part of the Sheed package. He plays with a fire when he’s into the game and he was definitely into this game. This time the fire gave the Lakers a technical free throw that Kobe promptly missed. One minute later, Wallace hit a three-pointer from the top of the key to give the Celtics a nine-point lead that felt insurmountable. Couple that with some tough defense inside and you’ve got the cherry on top of the sundae the Boston bench served up to their fans Thursday night.

This Celtics bench has been inconsistent all season long. It’s just as likely they’ll follow up this performance in Game Four with the exact same thing in Game Five to help Boston take a commanding three games to two lead in the Finals. It also wouldn’t surprise me to see them come up well short of the needed effort to best the Lakers and essentially give the series to Los Angeles headed back to Hollywood.

But if they’re playing with energy, bringing the fire and brimstone from the pine and playing with such fervor and raw emotion that they can’t control the saliva free-falling down out of their mouths and down their chins, I find it hard to believe the Celitcs won’t head back to Los Angeles needing to split the final two games to take hope their 18^th trophy as an NBA franchise.

Really kids, do I need to say anything more about this? In the future, this GIF will be in the grand online NBA digital dictionary of awesome stuff under ‘S’ for step-back.

YouTube – The Official Kareem Rush – New Single “Hold You Down”.

Miss u, Kareem.

So here’s the trick. I need to somehow convey that the Celtics and Ray Allen didn’t fail tonight necessarily without sacrificing the respect the Lakers’ defense earned in defending Jesus Shuttlesworth. You see, to say the Lakers shut him down would simply not be accurate. The Celtics still repeatedly created opportunities for Allen, using those double screens to force baseline shots and creating spacing issues to open up the perimeter off the dribble. Allen got looks, ones that weren’t rightly contested by LA. They simply didn’t drop. They weren’t bad shots by Allen, they just didn’t fall. And even when you’re as good a shooter as Allen is, you’re going to have those nights, just as you’re going to have Game 2s where you can’t miss if you’re shooting underhanded. You need breaks as much as anything in this game, and sometimes you’re not going to get them.

via NBA finals Lakers Celtics Game 3: Blogbook had as many field goals as Ray Allen – ProBasketballTalk – Basketball – NBC Sports.

Me, over at PBT. Go. Enjoy.

BULLETS IN YA HEAD.

• I said this many times on Twitter, but it bears repeating. This was the best I have seen Andrew Bynum play in a significant setting. He’s had better games against worse opponents. He was quick, decisive, played with a high level of intensity, worked for his possessions and above all, for most of the game, played incredibly smart. For a guy who I have continuously (and rightfully) slammed for his work ethic, it was stunning to see him respond with that kind of play on a ligament tear. That he played like he did showed not only a phenomenal effort by the Celtics, but a terrible performance by the Lakers. You cannot waste a 21 point, 7 block game from Andrew Bynum.
• Here’s one that will blow your brain open. Via HoopData, the Celtics took 38 shots at the rim compared to just 16 for the Lakers. 38-16. Boston only converted 37%, compared to 75% for LA, but it’s more a reflection of attitude, gameplan, and effort. If you’re attacking the rim and Ray Allen is shooting the lights out, you’re going to have a good chance to win if you can play defense.
• Kobe Bryant used up 27 possessions for a .83 PC/PU score. Pau Gasol only used 16, nearly half of Bryant’s, and had a 1.47 PC/PU rating. That’s higher than Ray Allen’s (1.33). So just to be clear on this, Pau Gasol got more points on average every time he touched the ball than the guy who broke the record for most three pointers in an NBA Finals game, and touched the ball four times in the second half. Look, I get that Phil Jackson has 10 rings and that the triangle is very complicated and that there are a lot of complicated factors, but honestly. The dude’s 7 feet tall. It’s not like getting him the ball means having to tail off double screens. You’d think they’d catch on to this whole “Oogly Spanish Dude need ball” concept.
• Ron Artest? 16.5 possessions for a .36 PC/PU. YAKETY SAX!
• I can understand the Celtics’ fans frustration with how this game is being played off, as more of a Lakers loss than a Celtics win. It’s just that so much of what the Lakers need to do is so simple, and they just failed to do any of it. The first game taught us a lot, and then it’s like in Game 2, the Lakers just decided to completely go away from all of it. Well, that and Ray Allen put on one of the most amazing shooting performances you’re every going to see in a Finals game.
• Of the 5 Lakers assists leading to field goals at rim (a pitifully low number), 2 were from Pau Gasol. So with Kobe Bryant, Derek Fisher, and Farmar&Brown (WONDER TWINS, ACTIVATE! FORM OF A BLOWN HIGHLIGHT! FORM OF A FREE AGENT!), Pau Gasol was the one looking for Bynum. Isn’t that what you want? Your big man using his length to throw it to the other big man? But someone else should be trying to make those plays.
• The Drunken Seal Glen Davis had himself another inconsistent game, but had a few key plays. Every time Davis is out there against the Lakers I find myself just asking “Really? Really? ” and then screaming “DRUNKEN SEAL!” every time he makes a play.
• Today’s Laker mood regarding Lamar Odom: “SUCKS! TOTALLY SUCKHEAD! WHAT A SPACE CADET! DID NOTHING! DOES HE KNOW THE FINALS HAVE STARTED?!”
• Tomorrow’s Laker mood regarding Lamar Odom: “ODOM IS AWESOME. MAN, WHEN HE’S ON, WE’RE UNSTOPPABLE! LAMAR RULES! GOTTA GO, I’M GETTING BOTOX IN MY CEREBELLUM! WOO!”
• You get the feeling that Pierce is going to have one of those games, but it’s going to come in a loss. That’s where I keep getting to. He’s going to finally break out of his slump only to find that the Lakers have stopped shooting threes and started shooting over the C’s down low.
• The lack of an athletic bench forward is something that’s hurting the Celtics in this series. It’s rare that I think “You know what’s missing? Tyrus Thomas.” But that’s the reality. They could really use a hyper-athletic guy to come in and sky for rebounds, challenge for blocks, and generally just be young and athletic. Glen Davis is supposed to be that guy. (Insert jello mold rolling down a hill joke)
• Tony Allen had an okay game. I have nothing else to add tot his.

Getting inside the head of Ron Artest is insanely difficult, but I sincerely wish I could have a stream-of-consciousness running commentary from Ron when I watch the following play. I suppose someone could just ask him, and the typically filterless Artest would probably guide us all through the process step-by-step, from how bringing the ball up the court reminded him of how it feels to be a star, to how his traced path on the court is a scale reenactment of the British Troops’ northbound march during the American Revolution, to how this sequence never once failed in Queensbridge. If I could just live in Ron’s head for one day…oh, the places we’d go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored! And games to be won! Oh, and did I mention critical late-game possessions to squander?

Hat tip to Matt Moore.

There are many NBA players for whom transgression and redemption are simply part of the journey. When the details of your job performance are constantly available for review/critique and accounts of your personal life are readily published online, things tend to explode a bit. Such is the price of transparency, and while many athletes are far from model citizens, many are victims of a ridiculous level of scrutiny; every DUI becomes a headline, every photo of a college athlete holding a beer bong an issue of national importance.

Then there’s Ron Artest.

Moore already tackled the issue of Artest’s redemption, and many other scribes have done the same all over the internet. ‘Artest: Redeemed’ is one of the more prevalent storylines of the Finals, and fittingly so given his heroics on the closing game of the conference finals. I just felt the need to play counterpoint to Moore’s initial post, if only to offer a slightly rosier view of Ron’s current success.

The Lakers, as Matt described, are beyond fortunate. They’re blessed with an incredibly talented roster, a Hall-of-Fame coach, one of the best markets in the country, and an owner willing to pay for success. Even without Artest, the Lakers would still be one the NBA’s top teams.

Don’t for a second think that means that the Lakers don’t need him. Without Artest, maybe the Lakers don’t even grab the top seed in the West. Or even if they did, the first round match-up with the Thunder becomes incredibly difficult. The Jazz are still pushed under the rug with relative ease, but the Lakers expend more energy than they should. Jason Richardson is left with more room to operate, or Grant Hill is allowed a bit more offensive freedom should Kobe be moved over defensively to account for J-Rich. The butterfly effect of a Ron-less Lakers team would get ridiculous, but the most important result is this: without Ron Artest, the Boston Celtics are the definite favorite to win the title.

It takes an embarrassment of riches to win a championship in today’s NBA. The coach needs to have the proper system in place, with the right delegation of responsibilities and leadership. The players have to buy into their roles without question, and execute on both offense and defense with little room for error. The roster needs to be blessed with talented players, both in the starting lineup and coming off the bench. The Lakers have that, thanks to Ron. There’s a place for everything, and everything is in its place — including the loony misfit with a rep for hunting shots. Just because there are other franchises struggling to compete doesn’t mean the Lakers weren’t in need of something more, and Artest has provided just that.

After the brawl, Artest was a liability for the Pacers. Then he moved to Sacramento, where his value was in the fact that he wasn’t Peja Stojakovic. Then he went to Houston, where injuries to Yao and McGrady changed Ron from the missing piece to a frivolous possession-killer. L.A. is different. Artest has been placed in a position of necessity, as without him the Lakers would stumble. He’s that important.

That’s Ron’s redemption. He’s gone from liability to frivolity to necessity, and there isn’t even a whisper of the Malice in the Palace. We’re to the point where it’s about basketball again with Artest, and that’s more than time healing all wounds. It’s Ron’s defense on Kevin Durant reminding us what got him here in the first place. It’s his awkward drives reminding us of what we could have missed had Artest not rediscovered himself. It’s a game-winning tip-in that Ron nailed because he ran all the way across the court to be in the right place at the right time, and put himself in a position to help out Kobe Bryant.

He didn’t redeem a franchise, or a fellow star, or a fan base. He never had to. All he had to do was redeem himself, and that’s Artest’s crowning achievement of these playoffs, championship or not.