Quantifying how bad Kyrie's defense was last season

[Fafnir]

I do think he's a bad defender. I do not think he's worse than IT.

The C's defensive scheme was geared around helping and hiding IT, the Cavs didn't do that for Kyrie. My floor for Kyrie's defense is that he requires less overt help and thus improves the C's defense as they don't fall over themselves trying to cover for IT.

That doesn't mean the C's will be a better defensive team next year. Four new starters makes our defense really hard to predict, especially given that Brown/Tatum will be thrust into the lineup as well.

[Fafnir]

The thing I keep coming back to in my head is how awful Kyrie played on defense Games 1 & 2 of the Finals this year. Just not a ton of effort on the biggest stage...

[Th3M2n]

IT was literally the WORST PG on D in the entire league last year...

To have an argument over a player that CAN'T be worse is ridiculous.

[Roy H.]

IT was literally the WORST PG on D in the entire league last year...

To have an argument over a player that CAN'T be worse is ridiculous.

Based upon what? Back up your argument.

[JBcat]

I don't think it's unheard of guards becoming better defenders as they age when maybe their role changes.

DJ was probably a better defender with us than his younger days. I remember Ron Harper being a better defender when he got older.  Ray Allen might have been a better defender with us.  I don't have any stats to back it up, but I don't think it's unheard of.

Of course they weren't asked to be the number one option on offense at that point in their careers like Irving is.

I think it's a little overblown though. Bradley himself has a great reputation as a lockdown defender and he got torched by Irving in the playoffs.  It's so hard to slow down anyone with elite talent as a PG even if you have good defensive skills anyway.

[manl_lui]

can it be argued that one of the reasons why IT wasn't as terrible as the number suggests is because of Brad's system, that we were able to throw Bradley/Smart/Crowder who are all exceptional defenders to minimize that weakness?

[Vermont Green]

I don't think we are going to know how to rate Kyrie's defense until we see him on the court with our players.  Same for how his game is going to potentially change on the offensive end.

I think it is clear that when you are on the court with LeBron James, your offensive role (and defensive role) is going to be affected.  I see this going potentially two ways:

• Irving becomes more like Harden, ball dominant, higher usage, more stats, along with more lazy on defense.
• Or will our ball movement scheme be different enough that Kyrie plays altogether differently (play more like Curry), and buy in to play passable team defense.

Either way, I think it is hard to expect him to be a good defender.  I would like to think he could be better than worst in the league at his position but we shall see.  My point is that I don't think you can draw definitive conclusions based on defensive stats.  They tell part of the story but not the whole story.

I thought his defense looked passable in the playoffs (where most of my actual watching him play occurred).  I don't think he will play that tough for 82 games of course, he is just not durable enough for that, but as i said, I don't think I was watching the worst in the league at his position either.

[smokeablount]

Roy I posted this in the Kyrie superstar thread, but as you are one of the posters I respect the most on this board (along with Saltlover and a few others, though so many posters educate me frequently) who is obviously down on the trade, I wanted to post it here where I'm pretty sure you'll see it.  There's a lot more nuance I could go into but I tried to keep it short and sweet:

"Roy, I respect your opinions and I'd say 8 or 9 times out of 10 I agree with you on whatever the discussion is, but I think in the case of this Kyrie trade, it's worth taking a step back. 

This trade was a gamble and it relies a ton on luck and speculative forecasting.  Luck about the Nets pick, luck with our Lakers pick conveying, speculation about IT's injury, and speculation that Kyrie will evolve and be better for us than he has been up to this point, which makes his past performance less important to focus on rigidly. 

The Warriors got incredibly lucky after skillfully building their core, with the cap spiking and landing Durant.  I think Danny has realized that his risk tolerance needed to increase if he wanted to be a true title contender, and he thinks really really highly of Kyrie, so he bit the bullet and knows that to some degree he needs luck to get where he needs to go, just like the Warriors needed luck to get where they are.

I would advise you obviously to express your opinion, but to acknowledge that this is a gamble that we don't have the data we need yet (even Danny doesn't).  We should watch how the team starts to gel in the regular season and give it until at least this year's playoffs to see what we can expect of Kyrie moving forward. 

I think he's at absolute worst a top 15 player, but I think if things break right, his offense alone could put him in the top 8.  IT just wasn't that guy.  Let's see the how the playoffs go and where the Nets pick lands, and hope that the LA pick conveys and that we have things to celebrate."

[fairweatherfan]

The thing about IT's defense is that he usually gave good effort, at times great effort. His issues stemmed from his physical limitations.

With Kyrie it's the reverse - he's not a naturally gifted defender but he's big enough to be substantially more effective than IT. Problem is that he rarely gives the effort.

Kyrie could and should be better defensively than IT. The question is how much Brad and his teammates can get him to buy in to consistent effort on that end.

[action781]

A lot of it is individual, at least when looking at FG% allowed. If it was all team based, you'd expect all the Cavaliers to have poor defensive stats. They didn't.

That would be true if a basketball game was a 48 set of 1-on-1s. It isn't. The Celtics went to great lengths to hide Thomas on defense last season, especially in the playoffs. Remember the endless switching so that he can stay in the corner at all times?

True, we even tried to hide him on Otto Porter who is a foot taller than him because he couldn't keep up with Wall or Beal.  I have a feeling that Kyrie will keep the assignment on one of those two guards in a series.

[jambr380]

I don't know if Kyrie will suddenly be a defensive stud or if his scoring will go to another level, but I suspect we see a rejuvenated Kyrie this year. My guess is that he was just going through the motions last year after being smothered with everything Lebron. He will be held more accountable playing for Stevens and with other veterans like Hayward, Horford, and even Smart. He may even be depended on to act as a mentor to our young players - something he really hasn't ever had to do before.

As others have stated, I am not overly worried about Kyrie's defense in Boston (and Stevens is probably happy he won't need to scheme for him anymore), but I would be worried about IT's defense in Cleveland. His backcourt teammates in Rose, Calderon, and Smith might be expecting IT to make up for their shortcomings. That is brutal.

[jambr380]

That is why I'm still iffy on the trade: Kyrie needs to be a legit top 2 MVP candidate in order to justify the package.

I disagree, I think the Nets pick simply has to land outside the top 5-7 picks. If we weren't going to resign IT which seems obvious, then 2 role players and a tier 2 prospect for an Olympian closer on an NBA champ who won all star MVP at age 21 (!) is a pretty [dang] good trade for us.

Except we traded with our chief rival who was coming apart at the seams.  If IT and Crowder work out well this season, Lebron may well decide to stay.  We could end up looking up at the Cavs for the  next 3 or 4 seasons.

With a top prospect learning from Bron to make our lives miserable in the future.

Cleveland's salary next year is already at around $128M if they keep Lebron. That includes letting Rose, Calderon, Green, and Frye walk. Do you know what the luxury tax ramifications would be (with the real killer being the repeater tax) if they spend ~$35M/yr on IT and the BKN pick??

Simply stated, if Lebron miraculously decided to stay, re-signing IT is just not an option. And, if Lebron moves on, I don't see why Cleveland wouldn't drop as much salary as possible to rebuild. That also includes letting IT walk.

[action781]

I can see the title of this thread narrowly focuses on last season.  But I think we can all agree Kyrie probably did not become a worse defender from age 23 to 24.  Just like if his ft% had dipped 3 points (it didn't) we wouldn't think he became a worse free throw shooter as he matured one year.

It's worth noticing that this was Kyrie's worst defensive year of his career in terms of Defensive Rating.  That brings up some obvious questions.  What caused that?  How is he possibly a *worse* defender now than when he was a 19 year old rookie?  Could it be a fluky season?  Did he really lose talent in this one year?  Did he put in less effort last season?  I don't know the answer.

I think if you want to asses Kyrie as a whole as a defender, its better to look at his entire career stats because my opinion is that he didn't lose defensive basketball talent while maturing from age 23 to 24.  Has that ever happened, ever?  Something else was probably the cause maybe even just random variation.

EDIT:  All that said, I still think Kyrie is probably a bottom 20% defender in the NBA at his position.

[Roy H.]

That is why I'm still iffy on the trade: Kyrie needs to be a legit top 2 MVP candidate in order to justify the package.

I disagree, I think the Nets pick simply has to land outside the top 5-7 picks. If we weren't going to resign IT which seems obvious, then 2 role players and a tier 2 prospect for an Olympian closer on an NBA champ who won all star MVP at age 21 (!) is a pretty [dang] good trade for us.

Except we traded with our chief rival who was coming apart at the seams.  If IT and Crowder work out well this season, Lebron may well decide to stay.  We could end up looking up at the Cavs for the  next 3 or 4 seasons.

With a top prospect learning from Bron to make our lives miserable in the future.

Cleveland's salary next year is already at around $128M if they keep Lebron. That includes letting Rose, Calderon, Green, and Frye walk. Do you know what the luxury tax ramifications would be (with the real killer being the repeater tax) if they spend ~$35M/yr on IT and the BKN pick??

Simply stated, if Lebron miraculously decided to stay, re-signing IT is just not an option. And, if Lebron moves on, I don't see why Cleveland wouldn't drop as much salary as possible to rebuild. That also includes letting IT walk.

When Lebron's presence makes your team hundreds of millions of dollars more valuable, you can afford to appease him.  I think their salary for next season is closer to $115 million, isn't it?

[Big333223]

Those DFG% statistics are extremely problematic and should not be used in any way to define a player as a bad defender nor a good one.  What the cameras do is nothing more than mark the closest defender as responsible for defending the shot attempt.  Many times a help defender is just as responsible if not more so for the quality of shot attempt that was taken and many times the closest defender was not responsible for the result at all. 

If you stick Kyrie on the Warriors playing with an entire team of solid help guys and the ultimate help guy in Draymond his numbers would be far far better.  Kyrie was surrounded by some very poor help defenders in Cleveland, not saying he is great by any stretch but the way a player defends or is able to defend is highly dependent on who he is on the floor with.  He will certainly be a lot less problematic than I.T. was.

This is all really important to remember. These stats alone do not prove anything about Kyrie's defense.

On the flip side, let's not forget context. When IT was on the floor last year, he was usually guarding the worst offensive player (who wasn't a big) on the opposing team. Do you think being constantly given the worst player to guard affects IT's defensive stats? If IT had to cover everyone Kyrie was asked to cover last year, my guess is IT's DFG% numbers drops below Kyrie's.

Kyrie needs to improve on defense, absolutely. But there is no question in my mind he was a more effective defensive player last season than IT was and will continue to be going forward.