The Ringer NBA Show - What Does the Defensive Player of the Year Winner Reveal About the State of NBA Offenses? | The Answer

Episode Date: March 29, 2023

Seerat and Kyle get together to discuss the NBA Defensive Player of the Year award. They begin by talking about the history of the award and some of the significant winners in the past who have come to define it. Next, they profile two of the current front-runners for the trophy, Brook Lopez and Jaren Jackson Jr., and highlight the unique defensive skill sets they provide for their respective squads (22:40). They end the pod by examining players who could be future DPOYs and make their pick for who should win it this year (47:31). Hosts: Seerat Sohi and J. Kyle Mann Associate Producer: Chris Sutton Production Supervision: Conor Nevins and Benjamin Cruz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up everybody? It's Austin Rivers from the Minnesota Timberwolves. It's a new year and I have a new podcast here at the ringer Offguard hosted by me and my guy Pasha Higigi. Austin and I go way back and talk so much hoop already that we figure it was time to fire up the mics and let you in on all of these conversations. Every week, Pasha and I will hit on the biggest stories happening in the league and get Austin's perspective of someone currently hooping in the NBA. Tap into Offguard every Friday on the Ringer NBA show feed on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Hello, welcome to another episode of The Answer. I am very excited today because we are continuing our series on the awards. And today we're talking about defensive player of the year, which is a really interesting award. I think it's essentially a reactive award because defense is a reactive game.

You know, defense is essentially a reaction to what the offense is doing. And if you listen to this podcast at all, you know that it is an offense. heavy league right now. So we are going to go through the history of the award a little bit here. Kyle is actually going to take us through the history of the award. And then we're going to talk a little bit about the defensive player of the year race, which at this juncture feels like a very tight two-man race between Brooke Lopez and Jaron Jackson. And then we're going to talk about all of the ridiculous puzzles that modern offenses create for modern defenders and how somehow, somehow these giants of the game, and in some cases not giants, but guys,

like Bam at a bio, Evan Mobley, O.G. Anobie, are building out the future of what it's going to be like to play defense in this crazy spaced out movement, heavy, you know, pace and space, every single action that you could possibly imagine actions on top of action. Are you just a late night talk show now? Are you, were you getting a little nervous there? Did you, you just, I haven't let you talk yet. I haven't let you talk yet. I know. I'm getting super antsy. Could you wrap this up? My God. Well, podcasts are for rambling, essentially, in my opinion at least. But this isn't a one-man show, much like defense in the NBA these days.

You need a good partner. Are you going again? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I am. I am. I am not really do as I say, not as I do. Kyle, how you doing it? When I think about what the fuck. When I think about Syri, it's.

podcasting style, I hear Bob Seeger's voice, I got to ramble. Yeah, I just was like, are you do, are you like a late night talk show host now where you're going to do like a monologue before you bring me on like, like Ed McMahon is that kind of the, I'm just giving you shit. No, it's good to see you. I'm just trying to set you up, you know. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. It's all in love. Yeah, defensive player of the year, you know, me as somebody who's never really played much defense in my whole life, you wouldn't think I'd be somebody qualified to comment at all. And other people would argue that on many different fronts for different reasons. But this award has an interesting relationship with the public.

I feel like it's kind of been yada yada in the fact that offense is just more fun. It's more marketable. I don't know that we've ever had. Sir, can you think who's the most successfully marketed defensive player in history? We know that like MJ won it in the 80s because he was like a steel machine. He probably could have won it more times than that. You know, how many of these guys have shoes? Kauai, Janice, Dwight did for a brief time, really ugly, some pretty ugly shoes.

Kevin Garnett. I guess my point is that it's just not the sexiest thing, you know? It's not the, I think of that Nike commercial where the pitchers were trying to learn to hit home runs because chicks dig the long ball. It just seems like chicks don't dig the shot blocking, right? It's more, it's not the sexiest trade in basketball. You are my, you are my eminent authority for what chicks dig. I'm going to take your word for it. I think it's an interesting award.

Obviously, you know, offense rules the airwaves. It rules SportsCenter. I think in order to make some noise as defensive player, the guys that you mentioned, they don't have shoes because they're defense. They have shoes because of their offense, right? And I think that's kind of the range you have to be in to even get a level of acclaim as a defensive player.

You have to already be a pretty good offensive player, and then people talk about your defense. but we hear it in the MVP debate, which we can get to. Like, we'll talk about that next week, but you aren't really docked points in the MVP debate for not being a good defender. It is almost like an offensive player of the year award, even though it is supposed to be all encompassing. But I think that just speaks to how we see the game. I will say, though, in recent years, I don't know if it's the rise of NBA nerddom of, you know, sites like the ringer that really like to do. dissect the X's and nose, like, you know, guys like our pal, Ben Taylor and thinking basketball,

just the level of dissection of the game and the way that people want to talk about the game and think about the game, at least on our level and this niche has changed so much, that defensive play over the year has actually become a really interesting proxy for what we think is happening in the NBA and what we think is important in the NBA. I think we saw it last year with the debate over whether a guard, should win defensive player of the year, which we'll kind of get into some of that stuff too. But I think it's a strange award that the modern public

probably doesn't care that much about. But then if you dig into the weeds of NBA fans, they really get into it. Yeah, I think it's become increasingly the interest in it. I think the amount of information that we have and something that we can talk about is sort of the statistical kind of evolution where we've really tried and never really fully successfully

done this is like create and you know whether or not you feel strongly about catch all like metrics they sort of help we've gotten close in some areas to them like depicting reality but i feel like in defense it's been the hardest because even the catch all defensive stats can kind of you can look at them in some cases and you can rig them to match you know who we perceived to be the best NBA defenders but it still can kind of lead to odd outcomes but speaking let's start from just we We won't go too in depth on this, but we'll kind of just overview the history of this award. This one started in 1982, 83. Just as a quick aside, though, I think it's funny that, like, this is an award that Bill

Russell would have dominated. I'm pretty confident. I'm pretty positive just with his, like, sort of ranginess and a style that I think probably is more modern where he could move around the court and block shots and guard multiple types of players and things like that. But it started in 1982, 83, with Sidney Moncrief, who famously now for the young younger generation is the guy who was in the last dance who basically was just sort of the victim of Michael Jordan's like one of his big coming out parties in the NBA when he was playing for the bucks. But over the course of the history of this, you know, we've had 40 iterations of the award. We've had 21 times where it's sort of been angled. I went into this thinking that, you know, when I was a kid, I would just be like, okay, well, they just pick the blocks leader or they just pick the steels leader. 21 times the someone who is at or near the top of the blocks leaderboard has won this award.

And that's guys like in the 80s. We had Mark Eaton won it. And then we had, you know, Akeem and then, Tiki Mottombo. And then, you know, Alonzo Morning in 98, 99. And then Ben Wallace in the early 2000s. I kind of, what struck me is whenever you look at this, you think about the most dominant defenders of the era. it does seem like there are some sort of tweener players. There are some sort of tweener players that didn't win the award.

Most notably, we never saw Scotty Pippen win defensive player of the ward, who was, you know, I don't even think it's arguable that he was the preeminent, dominant premier, noteworthy wing defender of his generation. I think that's interesting, right? That, like, we look at basketball like, okay, there are a lot of iterations of, like, Alan Iverson led the league in steals for, like, a couple of few years. in a row. Chris Paul led the league in steals for several years in a row, but never won the award. And it's like the award does still seem to be tilted, even though it was 21 times. It does

seem like it's still tilted, even to this day in the game where like, okay, you know, disruption and like stealing the ball is important. But the most important thing for defense is that like you're stopping a shot at the rim. Like that's the thing that typically ends up getting valued the most. Yeah, I mean, like you have it here. Out of the 40 seasons, the award, has gone to a power forward or a center 27 times. So it definitely skews forward heavy, rim protection heavy, right? And I think that there are a few places where you see a bit of an evolution. Like I love some of the graphics that you have here of the way that perimeter defense was

played in the 80s, just giving up a ton of space. A three point line, obviously, at this point in the game is not something that is used a lot. And then you've also got these clips of Michael Jordan in the finals, like, guarding Magic Johnson out at the logo. And I don't know if that's because he's Michael Jordan or also because, you know, the game was starting to shift a little bit. And then you get to Gary Payton, who seems like he changed the game a little bit. Like, obviously, we call him the glove, right? And I think that that is indicative of, you know, the way that he just stuck, he stuck to players like Rice. and that is that that sort of to me at least i mean you're the one who dug into this but was that

indicative of a shift in the game in terms of you know you have michael jordan but you also got clyde dregsler and you've got these other perimeter players who are shooting from the outside more and just generally you know that side of the game is taking you over on offense yeah i mean it's in the half court he did lead the league in steals that season um it was disruptive i don't i don't think it takes anything away from him. It's just, and like I was going to say, too, that we don't have time to, like, go through and litigate. Like, there are a lot of guys that probably should have wanted.

You could argue maybe that, like, Garnett or Tim Duncan or people like this probably could have wanted or Pippen could have wanted. But, yeah, the evolution of what one of the screenshots you were talking about that I pulled was just from a regular season bucks, because I just wanted to kind of get a feel for how Moncrief played, and he was really just kind of a hustle player. but the screenshot you're talking about is one where, you know, ball pressure has just evolved and changed over the year because of the three-point line, as we said. And, you know, Moncrief is literally sitting at the elbow and Magic Johnson is beyond the arc just wide open because it's a

different, it's a different game too. And also, you know, and that spatial thing has impacted, you know, counting stats. If you look at some of the block totals from like earlier in the 80s, they're like astronomical. There were a couple of seasons, there were seasons where guys are getting five blocks a game, four blocks a game. I would assume that's a result of just being in a dense crowd and just there's just a lot more deflections.

The ball's just within reach and not humming around. So as a result, it's spread out. You're just not getting nearly as many blocks as you would have. Like Akeem had a season where he was averaging like, you know, over four blocks a game. But yeah, so we've seen it sort of, another guy that I think like Andre Kirolinco, interestingly, never won one, even though he was a pretty incredible, versatile defender.

But, you know, it's, it kind of opens up this question in basketball about, like, overall, what is the most valuable type of defender? Is it more valuable to disrupt a team at the point of attack? Or is it more important to have sort of a quarterback at the back of your defense? And this kind of gets into your philosophy, like, when you're building a team. I don't even know that it's totally arguable at this point, that like it does seem that like whatever iteration of the league we're in, it really, really helps to have that, that like quarterback that will just flip it, you know, that free safety there at the back of the defense, like stifling easy offense at the rim.

Yeah, I don't think that's ever been more true. I think it's a great question to ponder. I think there are moments where a perimeter guy might sneak through, especially a specific type of perimeter guy, but I think increasingly in a league where, you know, players are smarter than ever. They're more athletic than ever. They have more scoring moves than ever. You have more offensive talent on the floor than ever. You have usually an elite offense is going to have multiple star ecosystems that can essentially do a little bit of everything that can be a brain, right? Like, I think that's the biggest thing. If you, if on offense, you're going to have multiple brains

on the court alongside spacing, alongside lob threads, alongside role players who at this point, are also pretty multi-dimensional and intelligent and moving pretty quick, then you need to find a way to essentially mimic that on the other end. So, you know, I think you need intelligence, you need fluidity, you need athleticism. You essentially need players who can be in two places at once. So if you have length, then you're already ahead of the game there, right? You said that the two places in one's thing, though, what to elaborate kind of like the multi, You said the multifaceted ecosystem thing and then the two places at once.

What exactly did you mean by that? I think you need defenders who can suck up enough space to make the equation for the offense really hard. I think the most obvious, famous example of this is going to be Janice's law block in the finals on DeAndre Ait. Now, a pick and roll, especially a pick and roll with, you know, that involves Chris Paul and DeAndre Aten is going to be one that creates like just so many problems for a defense to have to solve. It's going to create a variation of decisions that could be made. And you need to have players on the other end who can a react to that in real time in terms of being able to process it, but also have the athleticism and length and smarts to be in the right position and react to that. I think that that's

essentially what defense is at this point because there are just the offense gets the first move. The offense gets a first move and we know how smart offenses are right now, right? Like let's say, you know, in other scenarios too, right? Like let's say you're the ball handler coming off a pick and roll and you're playing against a reasonably smart defense. Like, you know, just working on an OKC article and Josh Giddy who is 20 years old, who is not by any means a star yet, you know, who could be a star, but is an incredibly talented playmaker and already has such a read on the floor who is, I think, a guy who's a great example

of just how intelligent players are coming into the league, you know, turns the corner and this isn't even a guy that has a great mid-range game, but he can create impossible problems for a defense just by getting into the paint and then making the defender think, making multiple defenders think, okay, is he going to pull up for one of his floating bankers? Or is he going to hit the guy on the roll? Or is he going to get, you know, a shooter in the corner? And in that scenario, you can essentially, if you're smart enough about how you look off the defender, you can choose which guy you want to take, you know, like which option you want to take.

So that's just a really difficult proposition for a defense. And it just makes me think that as valuable as it is to be a great point of attack defender on the perimeter at this point, unless you are amongst the best, unless you were like the OG Anobis or the McHale Bridges of the world, and even those guys are going to get beat, the back line just matters a lot more because once you're beat, the guy on offense just has so many more options than just taking you in isolation. Yeah. I think the scope of their options obviously is a lot wider.

think about, well, mainly the officiating, you know, it's like, you know, trying to stay in front of guys. You get all the different sort of like touch vowels and you get all the, like, you know, obviously not garden with your hands. We've seen that like the hand check movement. We've seen, you can't bump players as easily. So it's like, like you said, like the Lou Dorts, the, the Drew holidays, the Backel bridges of the world. And those are different, you know, body types that are doing it. It is, it is a lot harder. And you're sort of trying to, you're just, it's to the point where it's more of a discussion of influencing direction, you know, which we'll get into a little bit with some of the people we're going to talk about today. But I think you're right. And like schematically,

this is like evolved too to the point where if you think about those players last year, maybe this is, this could honestly be a big part of why like block numbers are down so much is that like it's that scope. So the multifaceted thing that you were saying, I'm just picturing like a, you know, defense is used to and the NBA literally used to be in, I'm holding my hands up like a four. four by three aspect ratio, where it was just like, okay, maybe you're seeing a post up, maybe you're seeing one guy, like in the isolation. The ball is in front of you more often than not. You can keep your head in one frame, whereas in today's NBA, teams have just gotten so clever about, like, I was watching one play where they were trying basically to, at least that

was my theory, the rafters were kind of trying to work a play to get Jaron Jackson, Jr., one of the candidates that we'll talk about here in a little bit. They were just trying to get him out of the crosshairs of the lane. So he was guarding Scotty Barnes. So he was in a pick and roll and they like went out of the pick and roll and then flowed right into another dribble handoff going to the opposite side of the floor. And then Scotty Barnes lifted. And it was like they just kind of slowly like chessboard moved Jared Jackson out of the play.

But I think those are the types of things too. Like I think intelligence. And it doesn't mean that like defenders in the past weren't intelligent. I just think that like the threshold for surviving, I always compare it to, you know, you've got to be able to play multiple games of Blackjack in your head at once. If you're not good at focusing on more than one thing at a time and we've seen some of the younger big guys, I think that's one of the tougher learning curves like in the league is like for young big guys. Like if you if you struggle to see the floor in that 16 by 9 aspect ratio or even wider, you're going to structure. you're going to struggle to keep up with the action. And that doesn't even factor into the fact of the question of whether or not you're mobile or long enough to impact the game defensively, right?

Yeah, absolutely. I think modern defense at this point, you need to cover ground, essentially, because you are going to make mistakes that is just an inevitability of a game. You need to be able to communicate really well. You need multiple guys. You need to have guys, I think, to your point, just have their head on a swivel, right? We've gone from, you know, one guy being the focus of the action and not a lot else going on to you might have some side action. You might have a side pick and roll. So now you've got to, you know, watch your man.

You've got to watch on help side. But then you've also now got to watch for, you know, the cutter swinging through. I think the Warriors are probably one of the best examples of this, too. And I think I love your, I love your Jaron Jackson point here too, because after the break, we'll talk about Brooke Lopez versus Jaron Jackson. And I think one thing that really figures into that debate is just different styles of defense and different schemes. I think it's a little bit easier to get Jaron Jackson away for the play because of the way that he plays, but also because of the way that Memphis plays versus the Bucks who have a much more conservative style and they're much more invested in keeping Brooke Lopez close to the paint. So, yeah, so after the break, we are going to talk about the,

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Did he go to the LeBron James of back surgeons? Maybe that's what happened. I think there's also a lot of smart things that he's doing to make up for the. that he is not the most athletic guy on the floor. But he is probably in the lead for this award and in a slight lead, at least in my eyes, in my opinion. The Bucks have the second best defense in the league. It's four points better with Lopez on the court. And he's just one of those guys, man.

Like, let's just take a minute and appreciate the evolution of Brooke Lopez on both sides of the court. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He is one of the, I think he actually leads the NBA in seasons with over 100 blocks and 100 threes. And if you told me that that was going to happen when Brooke Lopez first entered the NBA, well, I would have been like, who's Brooke Lopez? But then after I would have been like, no, I don't believe you. Obviously, yes, the obvious joke being that you're a youngster. You don't, you didn't see the whole. Yeah, I mean, it's insane. And like, just quickly on the offensive side, the way he's adjusted his game, like 30, at age 35, like, I honestly can't believe he's 35 years old, just in general. I don't know. But he, but then you think back and it's like, yeah, he has just, he has been in the league that long since 0.8.09.

On the offensive side of the ball, yeah, I mean, he adjusted the way he played in the first. And he's just sort of, I think his conscientiousness is probably one of the biggest aspects of that. and that he wasn't, you know, dug into a certain, and I've heard people tell stories about that, like, he was working on some of these things even early in his career to the chiding of people who were working with some of these teams. But, yeah, in, like, the first five seasons of his career, 34.8% of his offensive touches were post-ups.

And if you, in the past, since, like, 2016-17, that number, his spot-up numbers are actually around, like, 26.7, and his post-up, it just falls off a cliff. He's basically, he went from becoming like this really polished, really, really effective back to the basket score, who always had like a decent shot, like shot mechanics, so he was kind of ready to do that. But I think that I think it's even more impressive that he has committed himself so much to the defensive side of the ball. I mean, other than like, I mean, when you hear him talk, he's obviously an extremely bright guy. Like that's the thing that just really, really jumps off the page.

I mean, what other, like physically, what do you think? Do you think Brooke Lopez, I guess this is a question for kind of around the box, but I mean, what do you think it is about Brooke Lopez that makes him such a dominant defender just for someone maybe who doesn't know much about him? He is, I would say the things that make him elite are the way that he uses his length and his strength. He is incredibly groundbound as a defender. he plays an old man's game,

but he has somehow regained the mobility of a young player. It's almost like watching Mark Gassol with more mobility because he's over the last few years developed the tricks of the trade in terms of how to, you know, if you're not going to jump out of the gym, how to still be a really imposing presence at the rim. And we all know, if you listen to this podcast, you know what Mike Budenholzer's principles are defensively. You know the criticisms of that, you know the adjustments to that.

You know that in Bud's first year as a head coach of the Bucks, he brought a very analytics heavy approach to both ends, basically cutting out the mid-range in their offense and also that being the shot that they conceded the most. Now, while this was a very analytically friendly approach that had them near the top of defensive rankings every year, it fell apart a little bit in the playoffs because elite mid-range scoring is basically the purview of every star in the NBA. So they were able to break that down. And you saw the year that they made the finals, they started to make some adjustments to that. They were showing more. They were switching more. And I think Lopez did a really good job of evolving through that.

They also had some more Janis heavy lineups there too. But what has really stood out to me is just this balance between the conservative style of defense that the Bucks play overall. Like that is essentially their foundation with now a level of adjustments that I think makes them pretty much playoff proof, especially with the way that they've been playing down the stretch right now. But, you know, one thing that really, really strikes me about the Bucks is that they still allow the most mid-range attempts in the league, but they're defending those attempts now

at a top four rate. And that, to me, just comes down to the way. that Broke Lopez has he just essentially mastered the cat and mouse game of playing pick and roll defense in the drop. He, in certain scenarios, will get up to the level of the screen. I think watching the Warriors' Bucks game from a couple weeks ago is a great reference point of, you know, for the most part, he's not going to get up to the level. He's going to stay a little bit lower.

But if you're going to be going up against a duel like Clay and Steph, yeah, okay, he'll go out 25 feet if he needs to and he can move his feet. He's not going to do it all the time, but he can do it enough, right? And then in the kind of lower rungs of the game, you know, watching the game against the Suns, he has just figured out exactly how to make defenders feel like they have an open shot. He doesn't get his hands up too early. He's, it looks like he's giving you the shot. It looks like he's basically sagged back behind the rim and the second you start to pull up and he's just got an incredible wingspan too so this helps him a lot too he gets an arm up and he gets usually a pretty solid contest on a shot too so at this point playing the bucks

they have just shrunk the floor more and more throughout their tenure together to the point where you're still want to try your your best bet is still going to be to try to get to the rim against them even though that by the way that's not that's not a great proposition um Lopez is more shots than anyone in the league by far. He's contesting around 17 shots, and I think the next guy is Claxton at around 10. So it's a pretty significant margin. And at the rim, you're going to be shooting around 50% at the rim

if he's anywhere near there. So that is not a very efficient proposition at the rim, but it's still your most efficient proposition. The next bet you have is probably taking it above the break three. But even in that scenario, you know, like watching them against the nuggets. That's a shot that is a Yokic pick and pop favorite. And that's another situation that he adjusted to.

So, yeah, he's just done a really good job of figuring out where, and the Bucks too, have figured out where they need to stray away from their principles in order to respect the opponent. Yeah. He's talked a lot about how situationally he like thinks a lot about who, who, actually is making the decision and he responds to accordingly. So there's not just some blanket way that he does it in that Warriors game. It was pretty funny to watch. You know, and teams will get creative where, you know, if you're trying to get downhill, they'll use

that, you know, they'll use that screen the screener, they'll spain. They're picking roles where they'll try to get him out of the play. But there is an interesting kind of dynamic with the way, and this speaks to the way the bucks are built that, you know, they have a lot of intelligent defenders who are smart helpers who, you know, who will get in these situations, well, where you're forcing the ball handler to make a play, number one, to get it to the corner. But then, you know, Bobby Portis has talked about on the flip side of that, that his sort of consistent conservative style, sort of like that everything rolls downhill to him is the thing that enables them to play so aggressively. You were talking about, and he has mentioned over and over again about like getting

getting defense or getting offense is moving in one direction, whereas they're not flipping, you know, the ball's not swinging, humming around from side to side so much, and that they bait and invite people. He was really kind of toying with Dante Devinchenzo in that game in a way that was really funny where he would have his hands down and Devinchenzo would end up taking these shots that appeared open over him that were, you know, not going in. They're really tough shots. And I think that's more to his brilliance. I think if you watch like somebody, some of the younger guys like Evan Mowgli's really good at this. That ability to like play conservatively situationally and and not and just sort of like positionally wager, you know, it's like they,

they just they play their, they place their bets really smartly. They don't come flying in like like with just boundless energy just being disrupted, which can be valuable sometimes. But, you know, and he is he's seven feet tall. He is like almost a seven foot six wing span. So the bucks they build their whole sort of strategy around that. So the Bucks are fifth in the NBA and screens where the defender goes over. So they're looking to run you off the three-point line. They're trying to run dribble pull-up shooters off the three-point line. So 31.6 per 100 picks, they're doing that.

And they are first in points allowed in those situations. And if you look at the top five teams there, it's the Bucks, it's the Pacers, Grizzlies, Heat, and the Wizards. And the interesting thing about that is that two of those teams, are, well, one of those teams is bad. One of those teams is mediocre to bad. But they all have a player who can do that. You know, the Bucks have Lopez, the Pacers have Miles Turner, the Grizzlies have Jaron Jackson, the Heat have Bamadabio,

and then the Wizards have Porzingis, who I would say is on the level of those guys. But that's what they do. They bait those players in it. And I think overall, he's right, that Portis is right, that it does allow the rest of the team to be aggressive. And it's funny, too, that, like, you were talking about early on in Boone Holzer's tenure with the Bucks,

I remember their players complaining. I remember Eric Bledsoe complaining about this style that they were playing because they would come up against these teams. I think it was like, I think it was Dame and CJ lit them up from the elbow one game on like a road trip. It was like back in like 2018. But they slowly but surely, maybe it's getting Drew in there,

getting a more effective point of attack defender in there that has really kind of solidified. And you brought something, you brought up something that this is. is maybe an argument, a counter argument, if you wanted to poke a hole in his candidacy is the existence of Drew Holiday. What do you mean by that?

Drew Holiday is essentially a cheat code for modern pick and roll defense, right? I think you had a stat in here about how he's like the on-ball defender in screenshots 35.9 times per 100 possessions, which is tops in the NBA. He's also a great deflection guy. He's great for steals. But he's, you know, anybody who's watched him play

knows that while the mid-range is a shot, for example, that the bucks will concede, that you're going to have to get it off pretty quickly because Drew Holiday is going to get around that screen very fast and he's going to be behind you blocking that shot if you even think about pump faking or making a second move there, right? Like, he's not a guy that really allows you to isolate the drop defender

and manipulate them in a... way that I think the best pick and roll got practitioners in the league really like to do. Right. So, you know, his ability to be elite on that and also is what allows Lopez to stick to the drop defense a little bit more too. So it's a symbiotic relationship. And defense is symbiotic that way. Like there is no way in the modern NBA that you are going to get away with not having a bunch of elite defenders on the floor and being a top five defense. It just doesn't work that way. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And if they're on an island, they're pretty much screwed, you know. Yeah, I guess, I guess kind of just tangibly talking about the right now.

I mean, there's a lot of belief. Portis said that he thought that he for sure was the defensive player of the year. If you go down through here and look, we should go through, just move on to the next person, I guess. This is a good segue here. I mean, Jaron Jackson is the player who's sort of been the – I don't know. You see that you feel the narrative start where people are just like, well, he's going to win it, he's going to win it. And that can kind of discredit what the player is actually doing if you're not paying attention. I mean, he's been deserving this year. Jaron Jackson coming into a league had this sort of almost comically beaten into the ground reputation for being someone who is foul prone. And that's been true. That's been rooted in reality. If you look at his fouling rate, we'll use the per 100 again in his five seasons. one of those was shorter, obviously, because of injury there in 2020, 21. He's not leading the league in fouls, but it's slowly come down.

As a rookie, it was 3.895, and this past season is the lowest of his career, and that's 3.1-1. The interesting thing about Jaron is that, like, a lot of those, he doesn't foul on the perimeter. He really, really moves really well. That's the thing. He's comparably long to Brooke. but if you think about them side by side, Brooke seems bigger, doesn't he? But he's not dramatically tall.

It's like they're roughly the same size, but Brooke is, he's bigger in his stature, but they guard the ball differently. And this is something that's interesting among the three candidates that we're going to talk about. Lopez is more of a soft drop,

58% of the time at 1.057. But you talked about him showing a little bit. he only shows 1% of the time right now. It's very rare. I guess it's probably more situational. But Brooke only switches 2% of the time. And Jaron Jackson actually switches 16% of the time. So a way more balanced sort of way that he handles ball screens.

Yeah, I think the argument for Jaron is essentially about what you would prefer, right? Jaron provides a lot more versatility. I think he provides, you know, the Grizzies are a team that love making in-game defensive adjustments, which is, I think, a thing that is also just become more in vogue. It's like the present-day NBA does not operate the way it used to where you don't make adjustments until the playoffs. And if a guy beats you a specific way that doesn't fit your scheme, he beats you that night.

I think teams are just far more creative. I think there are coaches who have more of a tendency to be problem solvers. And I think that then that has just become kind of a requirement for, you know, if you want to be an elite defender, you have to be able to defend in, multiple ways. And I think that's, that's something that Jaron has done a great job of. Rob Mahoney actually wrote an article last summer or this, this past playoffs. You know, that guy. He, and it was, you know, I think the title was essentially Jaron Jackson could be the future of the NBA if he could stay on the floor. And that's what we're seeing kind of come to fruition

this season, right? Where I think he seems, I wonder if he just seems like he's a little smaller than Lopez, which I would also maybe argue that point too. I think Lopez does seem maybe a little bit bigger, but I think it's also because Lopez uses his hands more, and I think Jaron uses his body more. Like, if you look at the fouling stuff, it's really essentially the fact that something he said in Rob's article is that he wants to block every

shot. You know, that's just kind of a tendency for him. And he's leading the NBA in blocks and legitimate blocks as well. We've gone back and done the research. We've run back the tape. Those blocks are very much real. They're spectacular. And he is, yeah, so he's just, he's a bit of a different kind of player, but Memphis also

plays a bit of a different kind of defense, too. I don't think they are, they have as analytical an approach. I think they're more situational. I think they're trying to stop specific guys a lot more. They are much more likely to compromise certain parts of the floor. in order to do that. I think like the one that I think I see the most is, you know, when Memphis, when Memphis successfully executes a trap, it's gorgeous because now they're running on the other end of the floor

and, you know, the arena's going and it's just like all that fun, exciting stuff. But on the other hand, it's usually a corner three or a shot at the rim if they don't get it. So that's kind of one of the issues with their style. But it also puts Jaron in a position where he has to make. up for a lot more than I think Lopez does. He has to cover much more ground. And I think that's especially true this season as of late with, you know, injuries to Stephen Adams, Brandon Clark going to be out for the rest of the season. The Grit and Grisley's low key, just not as gritty or grindy as they've been in the past, especially, especially on the bench, you know, and you can,

you can really feel it when Jaron isn't in the game because on top of those guys that are missing, you've also got the addition of Luke Conard, who's a turnstile on defense. And they're also playing rookies like Jake Laravia more. They're playing David Roddy more minutes. And those minutes often come without JJ on the court. And the court just the way that Grizzlies defenders have to compress into the paint in order to protect it versus. the way that they're just much more solid with uh that with uh jaron jackson on the court that visual alone is enough to tell you just how much he does for their defense but if you like numbers

and you know he also you know the grisies defense is 5.7 points per possession better with uh with jaron jackson on the floor and he has he's basically like their funnel right like the way that port is said that they can cheat a lot more with uh with lopez on the floor that's very much true of Jaron Jackson, but I don't even think it's about cheating at this juncture because they just have a lot of guys that do give up dribble penetration, especially, you know, you've had, you know, you've had Brooks miss games because of suspension too. Obviously, he's an incredible one-on-one defender. You've got Bain, who's a really good one-on-one defender, but they've thinned out a little bit, you know. So he, I think he has a very different case for a defensive player of the year, but also a very strong one.

Yeah, he's more likely to kind of, he does travel more, you know, the metrics kind of stack up in even in the eye test, you know, he statistically he travels more, more miles per game than Brooke does. But, and he's more, he's more likely to kind of make out of area plays. You talked about Switch, you know, him, him being a more of a modern idea of somebody who could come out and take tough assignments. And like I said, like the drawing the fouls and things like that, that he, most of his come in the middle. And I think that. And I think that. that's just kind of because, A, he can get a little handsy, like we've said. Like, he's not somebody that's going to hang back. He's more aggressive. I thought it was pretty hilarious that the Dremont dynamic with this team. I always forget that, like, Jaron did play for Michigan State. So, like, Draymond gave him the little shit talk, but then he kind of gave, he threw in the Michigan State part of it there as, like, a little brother pat on the head so that it, like, wasn't as bad. but I doubt that Jaron felt great about that.

But individually, you know, differential, defensive differential is a stat that I like. It's not an end-all-be-all, but it just kind of shows how field goal percentages are different whenever they're playing against an individual player. And like Lopez and Jaron Jackson are tied at the top of the league with, well, they're very close in this category. Jaron Jackson is negative 4.6 and Lopez is negative 4.4.

So in, you know, differing, slightly different styles. I don't know. I guess we'll make our pick here in a minute, but it's interesting just that we're seeing a collision of, you know, Jaron, I think, is more of the spatial generation. He's a player who comes into the league, ready, you know, ready to play this style, whereas Brooke is sort of a dinosaur who learned to survive among, you know, among, he's just this different body type that was equipped to adapt, you know, which, whereas, in a lot of situations,

these types of drop defenders end up getting kind of played off the floor. That's been sort of the catchy thing that's come up over and over again in the playoffs that we saw with Gobert, even though people will argue about that. But Lopez is just one of the more, I think he's one of the more unique cases

in the history of the league, honestly, like in terms of his evolution, really. Yeah, they have almost sort of played their way closer to each other. You know, Jaron entering the league was a lot more aggressive, a lot more, you know, as you would say, Hansy, and Brooke was a lot more conservative, and they both had to adjust that style a little bit.

Now, with Jackson, obviously, that came with learning the intricacies of the game as well. But they're both, like, they have so many stats where they're right next to each other. There's that field goal differential one, which, you know, if you filter out, like, just the amount of defensive field goal attempts that they both have to contest,

like they're both right next to each other. other two. And the bucks and the grizzlies are also tied to the top and overall field differential at negative 2.4%. So I don't know. I don't think that there's honestly a wrong choice here. This has been one of the more difficult ones for me. I think just because of the time that Jackson has missed and because I think Lopez, even though Jaron has really worked to cut down on his fouls. He still has moments where he's really foul prone. I think, you know, there's obviously the games that he missed, but, you know, the minutes

are a little bit lower, too, because he still finds himself in foul trouble a little bit more than you would like. I was looking at this on Sunday, and over the last, like, 15 games that they played, he had five fouls four times and four fouls six times. And that just forces you to make adjustments you don't necessarily want to make. I don't want to, and I go back and. forth on it. I don't want to I don't want to criticize

him too much for that, especially because of the situation that he's been put into defensively with the level of injuries and stuff. But I still think that he could actually learn from Lopez. You know, I think down low, he's a guy who uses his body a lot more.

And that's why he finds himself in foul trouble. Whereas he does have the same length and wingspan as Lopez. I think he could stand to use his length more, isolate, keep his body away from defenders. So just so you can stay on the floor a little bit more off. Now out in the perimeter, that's going to be a little bit of a different proposition. But there's just little things that I think he could do that I think he also will do. I almost want to look at it like,

like I think Lopez is probably the defensive player of the year this year for me. But I think Jaron Jackson is a guy who among some of the guys we'll talk about later is kind of the future of the game if he keeps growing the way that we expect him to. Yeah, and still super young. You know, and I understand the thinking, you know, you want to sort of like get the most out of his strengths. Like we've said, the fact that he can mirror, he can mirror ball handlers out there in the mid range and bother people. Actually, I have it in front of me now. Yeah, 43 out of his 210 fouls have come in the mid range. So it's more, his body's just flying around more.

It's just kind of the way it is. And it's like maybe, I don't know, it's one of those things where you're walking a tightrope between getting the most out of his strengths, which are, ample on the defensive end. And it's not like they tomorrow are just going to be like, okay, let's just completely change the way we defend just to protect him because you want to sort of keep those things. And even though his foul rate is down, it is still really high. The other person here in the conversation is Bam Otobio who differs in his sort of, you know, way, way, way more of a switch big and ball screens.

His switchability is actually at 37%. Like we said, Brooke only switching 2% of the time. JJJ, J, J, 16% and BAM up to 37. It kind of makes you want, you're seeing a little bit, whereas he's not nearly like the rim protector, but BAM I think is probably more of a rim deterrent, you know? Like if you meet BAM in the mid-range, you're turning the corner on him is difficult.

If you ram into him, he, like, doesn't even blink. He doesn't seem to notice it. He's so strong. Philosophically, you could make an argument that BAM, I don't know. I was just kind of trying to think of, like, who is like the best pound for Pound. defensive player in the world. Is there an argument for Bam Audubio on that front?

I think there's an incredibly strong argument for Bam Adibio on that front. I think if the heat had had a better year, Miami's defense is ranked ninth overall. I think if that was closer to fifth, then he would very much be in this conversation. I think he's a guy who also gets punished because he's not a high block guy, even though he is, to your point, a great rim deterrent. He only blocks 0.9 shots per game. but that's because he's not necessarily going for blocks, and he's also guarding a lot of guys out in the perimeter.

And Miami's scheme is not designed to funnel guys to him as much. That's not necessarily what they do. He's a guy who's, he's showing 33% of the time, and he's also defending those, you know, opponents are shooting 0.925 points per possession on those plays, which is just ridiculous. Yeah. But he's not a guy that,

he's not even necessarily trying to block those attempts. Like Evan Mobley, a guy we'll talk about, he's second in the NBA and contested three-point attempts. And that speaks to how he is a, you know, he's a future in a different kind of way. But I think Bam is also the future just because he's somebody who can actually defend one to five. Like that's a dream, right? That's what we talk about with every, you know, exciting defensive prospect that comes to the NBA. Like, oh, he's a guy who could defend one through five.

Like, this is a guy who can actually do it. Yeah. He is one of the best isolated. defenders in the NBA and one of the most versatile isolation defenders in the NBA too. He's not going to ever take anything away on that end. Like, you know, they play the Sixers and he guards Maxie, he guards Hardin. He guards Embed and he does an incredible job on both of them. He basically shuts Embed down in crunch time and gets him to pass a ball out to Hardin.

And then he has an incredible performance against Nicola Yochich too, which, by the way, is not something that Brooke Lopez can say as of lately. is not something that Jaron Jackson can really say much either. Like, you could just basically become a cheat code. And I think also this maybe speaks to the fact, we are talking about a lot of big men here, but the top two MVP candidates right now are big men. So that is probably part of the reason why,

if you think about defense being reactive, but, you know, BAM is a guy who has handled both of those guys incredibly well. And yeah, you think, you know, if he just, If Miami was just a little bit better, I think we're probably having a different conversation about BAM. It makes you think, I was just kind of like thinking about like the ceiling. The ceiling for on-ball defenders is obviously,

you know, you slow down the output of a perimeter player. You know, you slow down the playmaking that ripples out of them. But the ceiling for a drop room protector, you know, prevent easy offense, they deter penetration.

They prevent open shots. Like the playmaking that could come out of that. And they sort of enable a scheme. I just kind of feel like these hybrid guys, guys are kind of what we're talking about the future. You know, they can take on-ball assignments. They can give rim deterrent, but deterrence, but not. And it makes you think about the future is like, are we, how many, like, I still feel like the pie is probably going to be divided similarly to the way that it is now. You know, we're just not going to see as many drop guys that are like really,

really high impact. Like, I think that these guys are going to continue to be, the guys that sort of blend the archetypes. You know, Anthony Davis is in this conversation if he's healthy, which, you know, a big asterisk there. And I was going to ask you, you know, O.G. Ananovi was sort of the, the very, very chic pick earlier in the year. People were going wild about O.G. Trying to put him on different teams. What do you think has changed about him over the course of the year? And why wouldn't he, is it health? Or what, what, in your opinion, has happened with O.G. this year? I mean, I think he got hurt. And I think the Raptors just aren't very good. Those two things basically just answer the question right there. It's not all that different.

the Bamadabio situation. Because there's nothing about OG himself that should deter from his case. He's like, I mean, he's the second best. I think he's actually, you know, he's the best isolation defender in the league by the numbers. And he's also, I think, like, you know, top two or maybe the best, or he's second in the league in deflection. So he's not only is he a great help defender who's really smart with his gambles.

He is also one of the best isolation guys in the league. And he is a really great defender. in a way that actually matters. You know, he's not one to five versatile, but he still has incredible, you know, just explosion coming out of his hips. It gives him great lateral quickness, but he's also really, really strong too.

So, you know, he's a guy who is given Luca Donchish problems. Who can you say that about realistically in the NBA? Who can also then have a night where, you know, he cards Anthony Davis. You know, it's just, he's a guy that makes, he makes a difference on the perimeter and can also help you rotation-wise down low

in a way that I think really strikes a balance that separates him from some of the other perimeter guys in the NBA, right? Like, Mikhail Bridges is amongst the platonic ideals of perimeter defense in the NBA of help defense on the perimeter too. But because he just doesn't have that same frame,

he doesn't have that same level of strength, like, you know, you saw it in the playoffs. The Sons, when McHale was on the Sons, did not have an answer to Luca. I think OG just makes up for those things just slightly enough that, you know, if it wasn't such an injury-ridden weird year for the Raptors, I think he'd still be in the defensive player of the year race, and we'd probably be having more of a philosophical discussion about perimeter defense and defense at the rim and all of that stuff. but because he just hasn't been on that level this year.

So we're not having that conversation. But I wouldn't be surprised if in the future we did. Yeah, it's interesting, though, that today, you know, we don't have to pit the two things against each other just because they're blending. It's going to end up being a middle section like we were talking about. I'm sure it's going to, I feel like it'll be harder and harder for like an on-ball defender to win the award going forward. Like, you know, we've only had two in the history of the award in Marcus Smart and Gary Payton,

which if it's going to get more difficult than that, I don't really know where you go from there. To your point, though, OG is an interesting hybrid. Yeah, yeah. In the same way that BAM is a hybrid. And I do agree that that seems like where it's going. I think even taking it back to Lopez's evolution, the way that the drop as he once did it is no longer sustainable.

The way he keeps taking one more step up every season. And guys just keep meeting defenders at the level of the screen on switch. Basically, at this point, it's like, what's a difference between a drop and a switch if you're meeting a guy at the level, right? So I think we're seeing it slowly in the images of the game get legislated out. Well, it just a switch means something different for Lopez. I mean, because of the space that he, you know, we always, it kind of, it kind of defies

the definitions of the coverage just because for Lopez, a switch, for him physically, it doesn't mean he's up on the ball, just because he can hang back. and he's so smart about how conservative he is, you know, whereas like, you know, the guys that would maybe meet him at the level that are a little more ante, they're going to draw fouls. It's just, I don't know, I'm just thinking about overall. And I guess this is sort of a decent enough wrap-up spot before we just kind of pull the trigger on our picks. But I just, I think, like, you know, what really is a floor, what today is the floor-raising defensive player?

Because this year, you know, we've seen Rudy Gobert isn't even in the conversation this year. Marcus Smart kind of wasn't on. He's still been a good defender, but he hasn't been on the same level this year. And I'm just thinking like, what? Just on offense, we know that it's somebody you have to stop, and we know that it's somebody that as a result of that can pass the ball. Those are the players that we reward on the offensive side of the ball.

And it's like on defense, is it as clear an answer? Like a floor rate, like if you take a great ball pressure person and put them on a bad team, it's like, yeah, they'll be able to, you know, switch actions and take certain players. out of the play or slow down the offense. But it still just does seem like a floor-raising defensive player are these switchable guys who can do this, these Sharon Jackson's, these Bam Audubios, these. Is that a knock against Brooke, I guess? Yeah, is this a knock against Brooke, I guess? Or is is Brooke so good within his scheme within what he does that we reward him? It just kind of makes you

factor that into sort of your criteria. All that said, I'm going to reward. Brooke because I think like he's more reliable in the fact that like I know he's going to be on the floor. We've seen it in the playoffs. We've seen him block shots. The numbers don't always tell the whole story in terms of like the output of blocks. Deren Jackson's been absolutely incredible and he's only going to get better. I feel like his ceiling is higher probably than Brooks, I think, as a defensive player. But I'm going to go Brooke Lopez this year for defensive player the year. What do you think? So we're in agreement. I kind of already talked to out earlier. So I won't do it again. But yeah, I'm shocked.

Once again, we are in agreement. Well, we'll see how this shapes up next week when we talk about the MVP race. But this was a really fun conversation. I'm glad we got to sort out some of some of these wrinkles. I love sorting out wrinkles with you. You're like my personal NBA iron, and I appreciate that. We should iron clothes together as we podcast. That would be a great gimmick, like a video gimmick.

We just iron. Oh, that'd be fun. Yeah. I also just never ironed my clothes. So, like, that would be, like, the only way that that would actually happen. I'll dry, I'll tumble dry the shit out of my clothes and risk them shrinking for I pull the old iron out. Yeah. The only time I pull the iron out is, like, right before, like, a wedding when I'm like, oh, shit, oh, shit.

I haven't looked at this shirt in seven months. And it's got a big wrinkle. You know, that's the only time I really pull the iron out, to be honest with you. I feel that. I feel that. Well, we'll catch you guys next week when we talk MVP. and check out the ringer. You can read Rob Mahoney

a great column on how the MVP debate has become a proxy war about stuff that it isn't actually about. We'll try to avoid some of that in our conversation next week. I'm pulling out every petty narrative possible when we talk about the NBA. Okay, okay.

I'm going to come prepared. All right. I look forward to it. I look forward to it. Well, thank you, Kyle. Thank you, Chris for producing. Thank you, everybody for listening. We'll see you next week. Later.