Random thoughts...

[3rdside]

Rick Carlisle had his staff break down every defensive possession Indiana had this season -- more than 8,000 in all -- and the findings were staggering. Artest's guy only got off 9.4 shots per game and averaged just eight points a game. Add to that the 18 a night Artest gets at the other end, and you see why Indiana has a real chance if it gets to the Finals.

Found this quote in one of David Aldridge's aticles - this to me is a really good stat because it would seem that it proves how good Artest is defensively. How often can you not say that about stats?

 

[slinslin]

Greg Popovic had quite some negative opinions to that.

Indiana released those "stats" to help Artest's run for DPOY.

 

[3rdside]

I wasn't suggesting these stats prove that he should have been the MVDP or anything, I just brought it up to say that Artest is statistically very good; that's all. I mean what other stats are there that prove someone is good at defense? I know blocks are one but, like steals as well, these stats can be misleading about a players true defensive ability.

In regards to DPOTY, It seems to me that people perhaps make a judgement call based on their gut feeling rather than on any kind of statistics - look at Mutumbo and Wallace for example. We can say they're good defensive players cause they get a whole bunch of blocks but how much do we really know about the rest of their defensive ability (statistically as well as other aspects)?

I'm not saying these guys didn't deserve their awards cause they are good at defense (they obviously alter a lot of shots as well) but i feel like they may have been biased towards cause of the visible nature of their defense i.e blocks. It's much harder to appreciate a forced pass, a steal or sweet reading on help defense.

This stat out of indiana is really one for the small guys who don't get as much appreciation as they should. We are also able to quantify, to a better extent, just how good Artest is.

God dammit this is a boring post.

 

[Joe Mama]

Well, for comparisons sake it would be nice to see how many shots these players averaged against someone who would be considered an average defender. I think Artest is a phenomenal defender. Don't get me wrong. I mean how would you get those statistics for anybody on the Phoenix Suns within a sort of accuracy? Most of the season they ran around trying to defend several different players with their scrambling defense.

How many shots per game did Bruce Bowen's guys get off per game against him? It would just be nice to have something to which we could compare that number.

Joe

 

[3rdside]

Obviously to have something to compare it to would be good but for a stat to carry that much weight on its own (in my mind anyway) is pretty cool.

 

[George O'Brien]

Like all stats, a stat like this can be deceiving. A "good" defender on bad defensive team might not have his man score a lot simply because opponents will exploint the weakest defender on the team. In other cases, teams will encourage opponents to shoot a lot of low percentage shots and focus on getting the defensive rebound (Jerry Sloan's approach), yet this does not make Kirilenko a poor defender.

None the less, I think it would be great if the Suns kept stats like that to try to get guys like Marion to focus on tight coverage. Marion is great at steals and blocks - but keeping guys from scoring is what defense is really about.

 

[Errntknght]

There are quite a few defensive stats that are not that hard to keep - Riley had a bewildering number of them which his assistants used to score every player in every game. I never liked Riles much as a head coach but one has to admit he got his guys to play defense. He believed in his stats but I suspect it was more that he had a method of team defense that he understood fully and was able to teach. There's not much point to keeping stats unless you teach the guys what they are supposed to be doing.

I always assumed there were certain fundamental things, like blocking out on rebounds, that coaches had assistants keep track of some way so they'd know for sure who was doing it well and who wasn't. Who knows, maybe Suns coaches have never gotten around to things like that.