Comments on: Is Chris Paul Bad at Defense?

By: Chris Paul

Chris Paul — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 08:08:50 +0000

the hornets slow games to a crawl when paul is off the court, with both teams averaging 10% fewer possessions, of course there are going to be fewer points scored

the entire hornets team allows an abnormally high iFG%, perhaps paul doubles and his man sometimes gets a lucky 3 (a .333 3pt% will get you a 50% eFG)

By: eric taylor

eric taylor — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:19:09 +0000

atthehive your first ste of stats I think is a bad metric. The reason it is bad is because what you might be measuring is not defense with your metric but “pace of game.”

so guard A when he is in adds 10 points to his own team and 10 points to his opponent’s game he speeds up the tempo when he is in, you’ll grade him as as terrible as a -10.

Guard B when he is in subtracts 10 points to his own team and 10 points to his opponent’s he slows it down and will get a +10 by your calculation but both guard A and guard B are exactly equal defensively.

now the difficulty is separating offense from defense. your second set of stats are better for that.

but i’m not sure we should separate defense from offense in basketball, because they are so intertwined.

which is why we will keep on having these debates about how good of a defensive player cp3 is

By: Z

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:21:51 +0000

You didn’t really have to do all these calculations to figure out he is a bad defender. All you had to do is watch last nights game as J.Kidd vs. CP3 = A.I.

By: atthehive

atthehive — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:17:00 +0000

2.5 difference in eFG% happens also to be the difference between the New Orleans Hornets and the Minnesota Timberwolves. It’s huge.

By: junsier

junsier — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:21:01 +0000

But how exactly do you calculate “adjusted”? Wouldn’t that be pretty much impossible, throwing in all those other factors I pointed out? Whatever, you can do the math.

According to which, Chris allows the average (26%) of iFG%, but gives up 52% eFG%, which is the worst of the guards you listed. Okay, so if the crazy adjusted stuff works, Chris allows for around a 2-3% higher FG% than the other top guards in the league. While it does mean he isn’t the greatest defender, I still don’t agree with your statement “Chris Paul has been pretty darn awful at defense”. Because he only allows for 2.5% more eFG% over top guards in the league, and he does average 2.7 steals a game.

Perhaps he does gamble occasionally with the steal and that accounts for that slight increase in eFG%, but that alone does not make Chris a “bad” defender at all.

By: atthehive

atthehive — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 04:34:22 +0000

Why do you keep bringing up comparisons to East point guards? That makes no sense- I told you, it’s all adjusted. Without adjustments, +/- makes no sense as CP3 pointed out.

The point is stats can tell us things that our perception can miss. Human observation can only notice so much, and it tends to be biased towards things. Throwing out the stats in favor of “perception” doesn’t make sense.

By: junsier

junsier — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 03:08:35 +0000

Wow, so how long does measuring adjusted +/- take? Because you honestly have to combine every permutation of Hornets and opposing teams players. yeah, that’ll still be ugly.

But regardless, I refuse to admit Chris is a bad defender. In games he never slacks off on D other than the two plays you mentioned. The fact that he plays around 40 minutes a game and has to continuously match up with guards like D-Will, Nash, Ellis, Kidd, Parker, etc.. makes any comparisons to East guards adjusted +/- null.

Perception > Actual Math

By: mW

mW — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 02:29:03 +0000

I’m always baffled by how much Jazz fans relish any criticism of Chris Paul. But that’s the difference between a true MVP candidate and a poser. The latter cares about the former, while the former just takes care of business. Same goes for their fans.

By: Jake

Jake — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:31:34 +0000

Fantastic article. One of the things that supports your argument is that the Mavs defense has improved with Jason Kidd, even though we lost Devin Harris (who Hollinger and others state as one of the best defensive point guards in the league).

Who would have thought that one of the benefits of getting Jason Kidd to help the offense is that the Mavs defense would improve?

By: CP3

CP3 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:53:01 +0000

@ Junsier,

You’re talking pure +/- not adjusted +/- . Pure +/- is one of the stupidest stats out there, adjusted is not.