Judging defensive value for NBA players has come a long way over the last several years, but we’ve still zigged and zagged quite a bit recently. The "best" defensive players used to be whoever we thought was the “toughest”. Then we started valuing players who could rack up blocks because it was all about protecting the rim. Then we realized that rim protection and blocking shots don’t go hand in hand (if we hadn’t learned about this, Defensive Player of the Year this year).

We used to really value defensive rebounding –- after all, the point of defense is to end a possession without the other team scoring. You can protect the rim all day and block a million shots, but if you never grab the defensive rebound, you’re defeating the purpose of defense. But that’s not quite as sexy to us basketball watchers anymore, and it hurts our basketball eyes when we see a player who looks like a defensive negative have positive defensive metrics.

Cavaliers forward

On an NBA level, it seems that defensive rebounding actually has a higher correlation with DRPM than both block and steal percentage. Interestingly, there was essentially no correlation with any of the three stats with Defensive Rating. I’m not really sure why this is -– perhaps because Defensive Rating is much more affected by teammates, as opposed to DRPM which attempts to adjust for that?

As said above, blocking shots doesn’t always mean the rim is being protected, so this data isn’t telling us that Kevin Love is a more valuable defensive player than

This is interesting -– the correlation actually drops for bigs, although it’s still much higher for both defensive rebounding and block percentage than it is for steals. I’ve been thinking about why this could be, but don’t have a great answer right now. It could have to do with how DRPM is calculated –- perhaps it adjusts for big men? It seems like this might be true, as the very top of the DRPM charts are all big men.

I wonder what a perfect big man combination would be -– one player that can protect the rim at an elite level and one player that can defensive rebound at an elite level? If the Pelicans re-sign Nylon Calculus, will continue to illuminate how to value defenders. Rim protection is the trendy subject right now, but don’t be surprised if we come back around on elite defensive rebounders as very useful defensive players.