Yes, the Warriors are back.

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What Defense Matters Most

Marcus Smart was named Defensive Player of the Year on Monday. He’s the first guard to win the award since Gary Payton in 1996. Mikal Bridges finished No. 2 and Rudy Gobert finished No. 3. Bam Adebayo actually had more first-place votes than Gobert (13 vs. 12) and almost beat him for No. 3.

There was some internet hubbub questioning how Smart became a favorite for an award given Gobert’s continued excellence and previous wins. This tweet from Nate Duncan sums up the sentiment nicely.

Nate Duncan @NateDuncanNBA

I always laugh at these PR campaigns for awards from teams and agents, but Marcus Smart basically won DPOY with a PR campaign over the last month. Nobody was even discussing him before then.

April 18th 2022

187 Retweets1,827 Likes

And one:

Nate Duncan @NateDuncanNBA

Absolutely nobody in the league believes Marcus Smart is as good a defensive player as Rudy Gobert. That's why Rudy is on a supermax and Smart is making $19m a year.

April 18th 2022

368 Retweets3,615 Likes

Haralabos Voulgaris puts it more bluntly.

Haralabos Voulgaris @haralabob

Marcus Smart is a fine defensive player - the idea that he is the DPOY is absurd tho.

April 18th 2022

461 Retweets5,098 Likes

Part of the issue here is that the advanced metrics point to other players, including Gobert. Even among the Celtics, the metrics in vogue aim toward Jayson Tatum, not Smart, as the best defender on the best team. Some have argued that Smart is in fact the third best defender on Boston after Tatum and Robert Williams III.

On the flip side, we’re seeing what NBA teams and analysts value change rapidly. The three MVP finalists are megaliths with varying levels of guard skills. I don’t think you’ll find anyone who thinks rim protection is not important. But that is Gobert’s primary defensive skill in addition to defensive rebounding. In a league still evolving toward more perimeter play and shooting, why wouldn’t rim protection become somewhat devalued?

Look at what the Mavericks did to beat Gobert’s superlative individual defensive skill in Monday’s win over Utah: they put five shooters on the floor, knowing that Gobert’s inclination is to close off the lane to guard penetration, leaving Maxi Kleber wide open behind the arc. And what did Kleber do with that space? Eight three-pointers.

Gobert was on the floor for five of the eight, and one was a transition scramble where Donovan Mitchell didn’t get out quick enough. This is not Gobert’s fault, largely: his guards cannot stop any penetration, so Gobert shades way off to help deter layups, and the Jazz scheme knows that so you have Bojan Bogdanovic rotating off his shooter to get a late contest after Kleber’s release while Gobert positions for a rebound. But you can’t rebound a ball slithering through the net, and on Monday it was largely Gobert’s man getting those buckets.

Notably, the Mavericks were so confident that they could neutralize Gobert in this way that they didn’t do the other thing teams do to exploit his and his team’s preference for him to close off the paint: involve him in high pick and roll action. That exploit wasn’t even necessary here: just attack the guards one-on-one and kick it when Gobert inevitably collapses.

I can already hear the Gobert backers arguing that penalizing the Stifle Tower for Mitchell and Mike Conley’s defensive failings is unfair. But I’m not blaming him for those failures. I’m merely pointing to the fact that Gobert’s defensive talent is relatively contained to a certain slice of defense, one that can be neutralized by something as pedestrian as … sticking Maxi Kleber on the perimeter and playing drive and kick basketball.

I’m not saying Gobert is overrated necessarily. He does two things really, really well. He’s pretty much the only rim protecting specialist in a major role on any team. Other prominent rim protectors a) are not as good at that skill as Gobert is (he’s the best rim protector in the league by far) and b) do some other stuff. Adebayo and Jaren Jackson Jr., who finished fifth and received 10 first-place votes, switch a lot and will defend on the perimeter, unlike Gobert. Gobert is a supreme rim protector in comparison, to the point that he actively deters guards from even shooting near the restricted area. But as the Mavericks showed, that comes at a cost to the Jazz if you have the outside shooters.

Smart and Bridges are much more versatile defenders — they don’t necessarily have any one defensive skill as good as Gobert’s rim protection, but versatility in a 5-on-5 sport — and with offenses getting more complex every year — is really valuable and important. There’s also the small matter of Gobert’s team having the worst defense among any of the five contenders for the award: Utah finished No. 10 in defense, while the C’s were No. 1, Bridges’ Suns were No. 3, Adebayo’s Heat were No. 4 and JJJ’s Grizzlies were No. 6. Maybe you’d like to give Gobert extra credit for lifting his team’s defense to “a little above average.” Don’t be surprised when other voters don’t want to do that.

I didn’t analyze enough tape to make awards picks this season, so I don’t know who I would have had No. 1 in Defensive Player of the Year. But I’ve seen enough to know that just because voters rate a player’s defensive impact differently than you and your set of boutique metrics does not make them wrong. Anyone who has fully cracked the code on measuring defensive impact should probably be in the league instead of tweeting about it.

And 1

Draymond Green absolutely would have been DPOY if he had played another 15 games or so. Ask Nikola Jokic why.

Scores

Raptors 97, Sixers 112 (PHI leads 2-0) — Toronto is down bad. Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet combined for 40 points on 43 FGAs. No fast breaks happening. No offensive glasswork. James Harden isn’t even unlocked, but the all the Raptors know is scrambling aggression, so the Sixers are picking them apart with the pass. Tyrese Maxey is attacking with glee and success (23-9-8 on 8/11 shooting, WHAT?!). There’s no answer for Joel Embiid in this country, there will probably be no answers in Canada either, someone pass the grenadine so I can make this man a Shirley Temple.

Doc Rivers only played Matisse Thybulle 10 minutes to show that he’s not going to miss him much in Canada. Not against a team that can’t score, anyway.

Toronto is down bad.

Shot:

James Herbert @outsidethenba

having a nice chat

April 19th 2022

56 Retweets494 Likes

Chaser:

Kyle Neubeck @KyleNeubeck

Embiid on the Nurse exchange: “I told him, respectfully, to stop bitching about calls”

April 19th 2022

987 Retweets7,508 Likes

Embiid had 14 free throws. The Raptors had 12.

Jazz 104, Mavericks 110 (Series tied 1-1) — We talked about Gobert and Kleber. This game was not Gobert’s fault, but Gobert didn’t really have a major positive impact late for Utah. Does that make sense?

Someone who did have an impact: Jalen Brunson. CUT. THE. CHECK.

The Jazz still almost pulled off the road sweep without Luka Doncic playing, so this is more relief than triumph for Dallas. They are still in a tough spot overall. But the longer the series goes the more likely a healthy Luka will be out there. And he’s the best player by far on either team, so the Mavericks’ chances of getting out of the first round for the first time since the championship in 2011 really do rely on that.

Here are the full game highlights in case you want to see some good stuff happen for the Jazz.

Nuggets 106, Warriors 126 (GSW leads 2-0) — It does not appear that Denver is in position to win a game in this series. It’s an atrocious match-up for the Nuggets given their real and obvious backcourt issues, and it’s made worse by the fact that Jordan Poole and Stephen Curry are basically interchangeable talents right now.

The Nuggets had the No. 6 offense in the NBA this season. But … the Warriors had the No. 2 defense. Nikola Jokic is getting much easy. He had 26 points on 9/20 shooting in 28 minutes which seems good. But he’s, like, their entire offense. When you’re letting the other team drop 70 points over 19 minutes, it’s not enough.

Here were Jokic’s makes — you can watch them all here if you want.

• Post-up on Kevon Looney, who already had two fouls in four minutes

• Putback in transition after fighting Draymond Green for the rebound

• Backed Steph into the paint for a short half-hook on a switch

• Post-up on Nemanja Bjelica

• Deep post-up on Green

• Lefty drive on Looney from the top of the key

• Catch-and-shoot foul line jumper

• Another catch-and-shoot foul line jumper

• Deep post-up on Green

Jokic went 1/6 outside the paint and had just four assists to three turnovers. He picked up a frustration tech late in the third on an obvious foul defending Jordan Poole driving through the lane; Jokic picked up a “I Don’t Wanna Be Here” tech midway through the fourth getting in a ref’s face after a no-call with contact between him and Green. You can see it at the end of this collection of Green’s defensive highlights against Jokic.

Kevin O'Connor @KevinOConnorNBA

just some clips from Draymond Green's masterful defensive performance against Nikola Jokic

April 19th 2022

808 Retweets5,156 Likes

In total I’d say Jokic did “good” against the No. 2 defense in the league and the best power forward defender of this generation. But “good” isn’t anywhere near good enough for this team in this situation. Some would say it’s not good enough for the presumptive two-time MVP, either. But I don’t know. Context is really important.

Schedule

Why

the

French onion soup

is

Wolves

vs.

Grizzlies

on

NBA TV?

All times Eastern.

Hawks at Heat, 7:30, TNT (MIA leads 1-0 but it feels like 3-0)

Wolves at Grizzlies, 8:30, NBA TV (an actual insult to the cast of Charmed) (MIN leads 1-0)

Pelicans at Suns, 10, TNT (PHX leads 1-0)

Alright, back at it again tomorrow. Be excellent to each other.