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Dwight Howard certainly seems to be the consensus pick, but let’s think about this for a moment. What’s really the best way to judge which player has had the best year on the defensive end of the court?

I’m sure there are all sorts of advanced metrics that the teams/stat companies use that the general public are not privy to. There are only four player-by-player basic stats that are defensive in nature: steals, blocks, defensive rebounds and fouls. The first three are positive, and the last one is obviously negative. Whether a player steals or rebounds the ball, he’s ending the opponent’s possession. Not all blocks will end a possession — just look at Howard, who still insists on swatting balls into the stands instead of trying to direct them to his teammates — but there is the difficult-to-quantify “changing of shots” that goes unaccounted for, so blocks are still vitally important. Fouls give the opponent another possession or worse yet a pair of free throws. (Note: I would like to also use charges drawn, but for some reason Hoopdata hasn’t tracked that number this season.)

When I saw HoopsHype’s list of DPOY finalists, I noticed two names was missing — Andrew Bogut and Andre Iguodala. I thought Bogut deserved the DPOY last year, but he was instead rewarded with an All-NBA Third Team bid. Iguodala is one of the best perimeter defensive players in the game, but unfortunately for us that’s more based on reputation than (basic) statistics.

Let’s take a look at the league leaders in DTOT, which is my abbreviation for Defensive Total, which is simply the sum of steals, blocks and defensive rebounds, minus fouls. I’ve also included each team’s defensive efficiency (points allowed per 100 possessions) while the player is on the court along with each player’s Opponent Player Efficiency Rating. These last two stats were found at 82games.com.

First, notice that all 10 players on the list are big men. This is due to the way that defensive rebounding drives the DTOT stat. Perimeter defense is tougher to quantify for this reason.

Howard certainly has a strong case. He leads the league in DTOT by a fairly wide margin, and the guy in second place (Love) doesn’t do much in the way of blocks or steals. But look who’s sitting at #3 — Andrew Bogut. Of everyone on the list, Bogut has the second lowest defensive efficiency (next to KG) when on the court. He also holds his opponent to the second-lowest PER. Second to Howard, of course.

Wondering about Iguodala? He is #22 in DTOT, the fourth highest non-PF/C on the list after LeBron James (#11), Gerald Wallace (#14, but more of a PF) and Kevin Durant (#16). Iggy’s team defensive efficiency is a respectable 104.1 and his Opponent PER is an eye-popping 9.9, which is better than LeBron (11.4), Wallace (14.3 while in Charlotte) and Durant (12.2). He is also tied with Tim Duncan for the fewest fouls per game in the Top 30. Iggy has truly embraced his inner Scottie Pippen this season.

Interestingly, Landry Fields (#32), Dwyane Wade (#33) and Jason Kidd (#40) are the first three guards on the list, which is clearly dominated by big men due to the aforementioned defensive rebounding issue.

So does Dwight Howard deserve another DPOY? Probably. But there are other players like Bogut and Iguodala that deserve a few votes as well. This will likely be a landslide, but it shouldn’t be.

Ty Lawson broke the record for consecutive three-point makes without a miss when he made 10 straight threes against the Timberwolves. He would have also broken the record for most three-point makes in a game without a miss, but he missed his 11th attempt.

It’s award season in the NBA and today I’ll take a look at the top Sixth Man of the Year candidates. Not only will I try to predict who will win the award, I’ll also discuss who should win win the award. Those are two separate questions and they may have two separate answers.

First, to narrow down the candidates, I took a look at the winners from the past 10 seasons:

Notice that all 10 winners had the following in common:

– They started fewer than 45% of their teams games.
– They averaged at least 11.6 points per game.
– They averaged at least 18.9 total points, rebounds and assists.
– They were all on teams that won at least 47 games. Eight of 10 winners were on teams that won 50+ games.

Using this criteria to narrow down the legitimate candidates for the 2011 Sixth Man award, we’re left with this list of 11 candidates. To give us a little leeway, they all started less than half of their teams games, they averaged at least 17.3 total points, rebounds and assists, and they play on teams that have at least 38 wins on the season.

I also included Efficiency Per Minute to see how productive each player is in the minutes he gets. Bigs tend to do better in this statistic because it’s easier to post rebounds than it is to register assists and big men tend to shoot at a higher percentage because they play close to the basket (so they have fewer misses, which weight efficiency down).

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Watch as Prince’s shot rolls around the rim FIVE TIMES before falling though.

For an explanation of my methodology, check out my point guard post from a few days ago. Marcin Gortat was the only big man in the study that was traded and since he was traded early and played much bigger minutes in Phoenix, I just ignored his Orlando numbers.

Below is a chart of 51 big men. Why 51? Because it’s my study, that’s why. Round numbers are overrated anyway.

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For an explanation of my methodology, check out my point guard post from yesterday. The only difference with the wings is that I found a way to account for a full season of Opponent PER and Net Defense stats for those players that were traded, so we won’t see the outliers that we saw in the point guard study.

Below is a chart of the Top 52 wings in the NBA. I took the Top 48 in terms of Efficiency Per Game and then added four players (Marcus Thornton, Tony Allen, Ron Artest and Ben Gordon) that I was interested in studying. As always, click on the chart to see a bigger version.

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It has been a rough season for the Kings, but Tyreke Evans gives Sacramento Anaheim fans hope with this wicked dunk on the Spurs’ Gary Neal.

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Who is the best overall point guard in the NBA? The answer to this question depends on your criteria. Are you using the eye test or are you more interested in basic stats like points, assists and turnovers. Or do you want to use advanced statistics like Player Efficiency Rating (PER) or plus/minus numbers?

I am a stathead, but numbers only go so far. A point guard’s leadership, presence, poise, vision and defense is just as important as his shooting percentage or his assist to turnover ratio. As a former college player I think I know the game pretty well and I understand that numbers only go so far.

That said, let’s look at some numbers!

I like to use Efficiency Per Minute as a good overall gauge of a player’s production when he’s on the court. For this study, I took the top 30 players in Efficiency Per Game and then added a few players so that every team would be represented at least once.

EPM doesn’t take into account defense (except for steals, blocks and defensive rebounds), so for that side of things, I am putting together a custom statistic that uses both Opponent PER and on/off defensive stats from 82games.com. So, for Tony Parker, I’ll use his 48-minute opponent PER (15.1) and his Net Defense per 100 Possessions (-3.8). Both of these stats are flawed. Opponent PER doesn’t take into account what kind of team defender Parker is while his net defense could be impacted positively (or negatively) if his backup is really poor (or really great) defensively. There may also be bias of strength of schedule (i.e. there are better point guards in the West). But this is what we have to work with.

Using both Opponent PER and Net Defense, I came up with a Defensive Rating that weights each number equally versus others in this study. If the Defensive Rating is positive, he’s a better than average defender. If it’s negative, he’s below average.

Keep in mind that the EPM numbers are for an entire season while the 82games stats are only for a player’s current team, so the defensive rating for players who were traded midseason — Ray Felton, Chauncey Billups, Mike Bibby, Deron Williams, Mo Williams, Baron Davis, Devin Harris and Kirk Hinrich — will only factor in games after they were traded.

Here’s a look at the resulting chart. As always, click on the chart for a bigger version.

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Over the past few weeks, I’ve tackled the MVP race, triple-dozens, point guard characteristics and three-point shooters, and now it’s time to take a look at rebounding.

To be eligible, a player has to meet the following criteria:

1. He must appear in at least 50 games.
2. He must play in at least 24.0 minutes a game.

I took the top 30 players in terms of Total Rebounding Rate (the number of rebounds a player gets as a percentage of total available rebounds available while he’s on the floor) and plotted Offensive Rebounding Rate (ORR%) against Defensive Rebounding Rate (DRR%).

Here is the list of eligible players (in alphabetical order): Andrew Bogut, Carlos Boozer, Kwame Brown (yes, Kwame Brown), Marcus Camby, Tyson Chandler, DeMarcus Cousins, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Pau Gasol, Marcin Gortat, Blake Griffin, Chuck Hayes, Roy Hibbert, J.J. Hickson, Nene Hilario, Al Horford, Dwight Howard, Kris Humphries, Serge Ibaka, Josh Smith, Al Jefferson, Amir Johnson, DeAndre Jordan, David Lee, Kevin Love, JaVale McGee, Greg Monroe, Lamar Odom, Emeka Okafor and Zach Randolph.

Below is the chart. As always, click on it to see a bigger version.

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From NBA.com…

Lakers guard Steve Blake was driving to the basket, only to have Jason Terry shove him out of bounds. Matt Barnes tried to get into the mix and shoved Terry. Mavericks assistant coach Terry Stotts, who tried to restrain Barnes, was then shoved into a courtside spectator by Barnes, who kept screaming “get off of me.” When the dust settled, Terry, Blake, Barnes and Mavericks center Brendan Haywood were ejected. Minutes later the game had to be stopped when a spectator was kicked out of Staples for fighting and then another spectator tried to run onto the court, but was tackled by security before he could. In the final two minutes of the game, Lakers guard Shannon Brown was ejected when things got chippy between him and Mavericks forward Brian Cardinal.

If the Lakers aren’t able to catch the Spurs, there’s a good chance that these two teams will meet in the second round of the Western Conference Playoffs. If that’s the case, it looks like it will surely be a testy series.