With Thanksgiving upon us, it makes sense to think about things we’re grateful for this time of year. And from a hoops standpoint, I often find myself appreciating good, old-fashioned NBA defense.
It’s generally a prerequisite for any team that wants to seriously contend for a title, and more than offense, it relies upon a club’s ability to be connected from one play to the next. The gift of good defense also allows us the ability to appreciate sublime offense when we see it.
With all that in mind, we went deep on three distinct storylines throughout the league (with a brief aside on the struggling Sixers’ play-in hopes), each of which delves into the defensive side of the ball.
Jump to a section:
LaMelo can’t stop scoring — or fouling out
Mikal Bridges‘ uneven start as a Knick
A 6-6 wing at center? How it helped OKC
How many wins 76ers need for the play-in
LaMelo might have the NBA’s most polarizing game
After missing the vast majority of the Charlotte Hornets’ past two seasons, LaMelo Ball’s offensive numbers, which include a 50-point performance against the Milwaukee Bucks this past week and a 44-point showing Monday in a loss to Orlando, are essentially jumping off the page.
The 23-year-old is averaging a career-best 31.0 points, second in the league to Giannis Antetokounmpo, albeit on an NBA-high 24.4 shot attempts per game. His 38.9% usage rate is not only a league high this season, it’s on pace to be the third highest ever.
Still, one eye-popping metric arguably stands out even more. And it’s one the Hornets desperately need Ball to fix. A little more than one month into the 2024-25 campaign, he leads the league in personal fouls and has fouled out in nearly a quarter of his games.
Yes, Ball, with his NBA-high 70 personals, has already fouled out four times in 17 outings. No other player in the league has done it more than twice.
Leaders in fouls are almost always big men or skilled defenders tasked with stopping players who are closer to the basket. (The last time a point guard led the NBA in personal fouls? It was technically the 2015-16 season, when then-Bucks coach Jason Kidd thrust 6-foot-11 Antetokounmpo into a floor general role in hopes of developing his game. But unlike Ball, Antetokounmpo wasn’t often defending point guards or players along the perimeter.)
Put it another way: The last time a true point guard led the league in fouls was Kevin Porter’s 320 in the 1973-74 season.
Ball can be disruptive on defense and leads the Hornets with 47 deflections. But ball handlers have been able to maneuver around him with ease, scoring 1.37 points per direct drive against him. That is the worst in the league among players who’ve defended at least 90 such plays, according to Second Spectrum tracking.
Earlier this month, first-year coach Charles Lee suggested Ball’s on-ball defense was a problem. “We have to continue to challenge him and we have to learn about can he guard one-on-one, or do we need to send a double-team every time, or [is he] going to foul?” Lee told reporters after Ball fouled out of three of the Hornets’ first six contests.
The Hornets have answered that question pretty emphatically through the way they tilt their defense to help Ball. Charlotte is bringing over a help defender a whopping 91% of the time when opponents drive against the point guard. It has been a necessary step, particularly late in games. The Hornets are surrendering an unthinkable 1.78 points per play, per Second Spectrum, when opponents drive at Ball in fourth quarters — the worst mark in the league for any player in any quarter with at least 15 drives defended.
Lee hasn’t hesitated to hold his franchise player accountable despite being new to the job. Aside from the comments about Ball’s defense, he raised eyebrows this past week when he opted to bench Ball for the final 3:47 of what turned out to be a one-point loss to the Brooklyn Nets.
Pulling Ball undoubtedly helps the defense. The Hornets give up nearly five more points per 100 possessions with Ball on the court as opposed to when he’s on the bench; a gap equivalent to the difference between the 17th-ranked Denver Nuggets and the sixth-ranked Memphis Grizzlies.
But the flipside is also clear: For all his inattention or inability defensively, Ball’s offense is what powers the Hornets. Charlotte notches almost 14 points more per 100 possessions with Ball than they do without him. It largely explains why the club is just 1-5 when Ball finishes with five personal fouls or more; they need his production on the court, even with his defensive flaws.
Even before he concluded his first meaningful game with the New York Knicks after the blockbuster summer trade from the Brooklyn Nets, Mikal Bridges was already under the microscope.
It wasn’t just that he’d started 0-for-5 during the first half of the season opener in Boston. It was that he’d also shot an uncharacteristic 2-for-19 from deep in the preseason, all while displaying an unorthodox tweak to his jumper after Bridges had knocked down more corner 3s than any other player in the two prior seasons.
Yet as fans and front office executives around the league all wondered what was happening, Bridges promptly hit seven of his eight second-half shots in Boston. It was merely the beginning of what has been a highly uneven campaign for a player who has largely been known for consistency throughout his career.
Through his first 17 contests as a Knick, the 28-year-old is struggling badly from outside, hitting 30% of his 3s, the league’s second-worst mark among players who’ve taken at least 100. (He’s 3-for-15 over the past two games, including one that saw him get benched for the final 10 minutes as a result of the cold shooting.) By contrast, Bridges has drained an impressive 57% of his 2-point jumpers; second in the NBA among players with at least 40 shots.
Bridges has looked reluctant to drive to the basket at times, even when he appears to have an open path. Just 18% of his shots have been layups or dunks, the NBA’s fourth-lowest rate and a career low for Bridges. Almost 60% of his jumpers have been fadeaways — only OKC’s Jalen Williams has taken a greater percentage. Bridges has taken just 11 free throws — on pace for 53 after getting to the line 317 times last season — as he finds his way within the Knicks’ explosive, space-friendly offense.
Then there’s Bridges’ defense, which has been perhaps the biggest surprise. Bridges, the 2022 runner-up for Defensive Player of the Year, has undoubtedly had highlight moments, such as game-sealing block against his former Brooklyn side last week. But overall, he simply hasn’t looked as sharp, and teams have repeatedly tested him.
Opponents are forcing Bridges to defend more than 25 on-ball screens per game, not only the highest number in the league this season but the most any NBA player has had to fight through since the Thunder’s Luguentz Dort in 2021-22. The result has been a poor one for the Knicks, whose defense hemorrhages 1.14 points per possession when screeners make contact with Bridges.
That’s the NBA’s second-worst rate among players who’ve defended 100 on-ball screens where contact was made, according to Second Spectrum. Coupled with the Knicks’ challenges to defend the rim with big man Karl-Anthony Towns, it illustrates why the 23rd-ranked New York defense has struggled so mightily.
The Knicks and Hornets may be struggling with elements of their defenses. But Oklahoma City certainly isn’t experiencing those sorts of problems. In fact, the Thunder aren’t really experiencing problems at all on D.
OKC, the third-youngest club at an average of 24 years old, leads the NBA in an array of key metrics, ranging from points allowed per 100 possessions, points allowed per iso possession, passes deflected, opponent turnover rate, passes deflected and points off turnovers.
Taken together, it leaves the Thunder with one of the most dominant defenses in recent league history. They’re currently allowing 103.6 points per 100 possessions — 9.7 points fewer than the league average, which would go down as the stingiest defense the league has seen since the 3-point line was first introduced ahead of the 1979-80 season.
The scariest part? Oklahoma City hasn’t even played at full strength. The Thunder have simply tapped into a different strategy and found even more ways to smother opposing offenses.
Last year’s Thunder finished fourth in defensive efficiency but had elite rim protection from 7-1 Chet Holmgren. The team lost Holmgren to a hip fracture in Game 10 this season and only this past week saw free agent pickup Isaiah Hartenstein join the lineup. (OKC has also been without backup center Jaylin Williams, who’s dealing with a hamstring strain.)
But in the space between those two events, coach Mark Daigneault tried something brash. He used third-year shooting guard Jalen Williams as a 6-6 starting center. It worked.
While the alignment certainly made Oklahoma City smaller and more vulnerable on the glass, it also made the unit far more switchable. On the season, the Thunder are surrendering an NBA-best 0.77 points per direct pick in switch situations. (Whether they switch or not, OKC is allowing just 0.80 points per direct play when teams run screen-and-rolls, a rate that would eke out the 2013-14 Chicago Bulls for the best mark in Second Spectrum’s decade-long tracking era.)
The Thunder have been the NBA’s best team in terms of protecting the rim, limiting opponents to 51.3% on layup and dunk attempts. Even when they’ve played without a traditional center on the floor, that number only inches to 54.4%, which would still rate in the league’s top three.
They play with an unusual amount of speed and are deflecting 22 passes per contest, more than any other team has in the 10-year tracking era.
Between the club’s youth, and the fact that this team is still jelling — Alex Caruso is only a month in, Hartenstein is three games in, Holmgren is still several weeks away from a return — there’s no telling just how high the ceiling is for the Thunder. But they figure to be a defensive force for a long time to come, even when they happen to be down a traditional center. Or three.
On Wednesday, ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne reported on the Sixers, who’ve quickly gone from a home run offseason to a shipwreck 2024-25. After widely being seen as one the Eastern Conference favorites, they’re now merely hoping to stay in the mix for a play-in berth, an outcome multiple team sources told her would likely take at least 33 victories to achieve.
How probable is that win total for a club that currently stands at 3-14 and is relying on a pair of over-30 stars with long injury histories?
ESPN’s Basketball Power Index (BPI) projects the Sixers to finish with 36.3 wins, with a 78% probability of getting to at least 33. But that comes with a massive caveat: The model’s forward-looking metrics aren’t equipped to analyze or project injuries or rest that Joel Embiid and Paul George might have as the season continues.
Instead, it treats those two like the rest of the players around the league, in assuming they’re going to be available to play until they’re ultimately ruled out. (To be specific, it has Embiid and George out for Wednesday’s game against Houston but projects both to be available Saturday in Detroit.)
The system also bakes in estimates for how well the duo will play when on the court. As we’ve seen thus far, neither George nor Embiid has played anywhere near their All-NBA standard, a reality nearly as troubling as their lack of availability.
For all the focus on the notion of needing at least 33 victories to reach the play-in, ESPN’s model believes that there’s a 14% chance the Sixers could amass that number and still come up short. Either way, the fact that we’re dealing with this question at all suggests Philadelphia is running out of time, a stunning truth given the season hasn’t made it to December.
ESPN Research’s Matt Williams contributed to this story.
Source: espn.com