APBRmetrics

Kobe's defensive RAPM in 14-year and 15-year RAPM is around -1.1, -1.2. It's considerably worse than players that has bad-reputation for their defense such as Nash and to some extent Iverson. And both of them suffered serious decline. In 14-year RAPM data set Kobe's decline consists of 6 games only.

Iverson was a big east defensive player of the year twice in the college and was getting a few dpoy votes now and then in NBA but afaik Nash has never been considered even a mediocre defensive player.

Considering all of these and Kobe's steal, block rates; it's insane he got 8 all-defensive first and 2 all-defensive second team selections in his career. I always thought he didn't even deserve one selection in his entire career and it was all about the media attention Kobe got when he decided to shut down a particular player in 3-4 games out of 82.

I consider prime Kobe's defense decent, in his whole career it's not good enough, and now it's terrible. What are your thoughts about Kobe's defense and his 10 all-defensive selections? Any trustworthy metrics that rank his defense that high?

Just to get an angle from the box score side of things, looked up Kobe's DBPM. This season so far, it's (-6.3)!, For his career, it's (-0.5), which would also suggest sub-par D. (-6.3) is through only through 4 games albeit, but BY FAR his most terrible rating throughout his career. I know I never understood the overrating of his defensive prowess. Like you were saying tho, most guards don't fair too well by several metric's account.

His highest DBPM was 1.7, all the way back in 1999-2000, his second full season as a starter. He has several 4.0+ DWS seasons, but as we all know, DWS is weighted in basic defensive box score stats and Team DRTG. I'd imagine playing along side the likes of Shaq, Pau Gasol, and Metta World Peace certainly helped out quite a bit.

While we're talking about Kobe, I agree with some people here that he's definetely making Lakers worse. I refused to believe that last year, i thought the attention he took was making up for it but this year he's one of the worst players in NBA right now. Airballing wide-open shots in each game is not a good sign for a scorer. He's almost zero on the defensive part also.

I believe Kobe will take considerable amount of wins from Lakers this season.

People talked for years how Kobe was the one player who mirrored Jordan the closest, as far as as a scorer and that "killer instinct" and never being satisfied, wanting championship after championship. To hear him the other day utter, "I suck right now", is definitely not a good sign. Last season he was trying to "fake it til ya make it" as far as exuding confidence in both himself and his teammates. Its going to be a loooooong season in Lakerland this year.

I'm one from the school of thought that maybe he should have been hollering for help around him for a final 2 year title push, rather than a max deal that essentially screwed the Lakers into pushing off a rebuilding "Life after Kobe" plan for another two seasons.

There's a bit of deja vu all over again here. I wish that Jeremias' http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/ still existed for reference. (What's the deal there anyway? Memory hole? xRAPM annual data to be revised and resubmitted as RPM at ESPN?) To my recollection, Kobe Bryant's career path as reflected in DxRAPM annual numbers wasn't that bad or even bad at all, compared to what should expect as his positional average.

And here, again, I refer folks to a hint of what that might be at http://www.countthebasket.com/blog/2008 ... lus-minus/. Though straight APM, Eli Witus' positional averages are fit for purpose and tell a plausible story, that, on average, SG or SF (or whatever Kobe Bryant plays) contribute negatively or not at all on the defensive end (again, in a +/- context): -0.8 and 0.2, respectively.

You can find links to 15-year RAPM numbers on RAPM request thread and 14-year RAPM numbers on DSMok's site. There you'll find that there are lots of guards that have better DRAPM values then Kobe's. Nash and Iverson were obvious examples but when you check the data it gets even worse for Kobe.

I checked the link you gave and it tells me there are many 2s and 3s better than Kobe on the defensive end in 2007-08 season also. I mean, how did he get selected to all-defensive team 10 times (8 first 2 second)? League bias? We know there has been referee bias and unfair calls thanks to Donaghy incident, wasn't there a possibility that NBA favoured him for a long time? Or is it more about media manipulation? Because my eyes had never seen him as an elite defender and there's no statistical evidence for it also. So, what's the catch here?

I always thought he didn't even deserve one selection in his entire career... my eyes had never seen him as an elite defender and there's no statistical evidence for it...

in 99-00 bryant was not the star or HOF candidate people think of today, and certainly did not have a long well known reputation at that early point in his career. yet at the young age of 21 he was named to the all-D 1st team. that's pretty impressive, for a non-big that young to be named to an all-D team. maybe your eyes didn't see it, but alot of eyes of all-D team voters thought different than you...

the lakers that year were the league's best defensive team, and he got more all-D team votes (33) that year than his teammate shaq did (29)...

from 99-00 to 03-04, when bryant (ages 21-25) was named to an all-D team each of the 5 years (shaq 3 of those seasons), the lakers as a team ranked 3rd best on shot defense in lowest FG% allowed (.432), 4th best in lowest eFG% allowed (.462), 4th best in lowest 2pt FG% allowed (.451), and 5th best in lowest 3pt FG% allowed (.343). if that's not elite shot defense as a team it's close - 3rd to 5th best in shot defense over a long 5 year period among 29-30 teams...

those 5 years bryant played the most minutes on the team, played 1/7 (14218/99275) of the lakers' total minutes played, and was on the court for 72% of the team's total time played...

I consider prime Kobe's defense decent...

let's assume by "decent" you mean average. those 5 years combined the range in eFG% allowed on defense by teams was from .447 (san) to .490 (gsw), with the average being .475...

if bryant, who played 1/7 of the total lakers' minutes, allowed just an average eFG% of .475 on defense over those 5 years, then the entire rest of the lakers team (37 other players) would have to have allowed:

(.462)(99275) = (.475)(14218) + X(85057)

X = ((.462)(99275) - (.475)(14218)) / 85057 = .460 eFG%

again - if kobe was not elite or close to elite on eFG% shot defense (in this example just average), then the other 37 lakers players over those 5 years had to have allowed on defense, combined, just a low .460 eFG%, which among those 29-30 teams those 5 years would have ranked as the 2nd lowest eFG% allowed among all teams...

while the team had very good to excellent shot defenders in shaq, horace grant, robert horry, rick fox, brian shaw, ron harper, etc. do you seriously think samaki walker, slava medvedenko, glen rice, kareem rush, mark madsen, isaiah rider, mike penberthy, luke walton, tyronn lue, etc were too?...

because they'd have to be for the team as a whole those 5 years to allow just a 4th lowest eFG% of .462 with bryant allowing a .475 eFG%...

i suggest you type up a spreadsheet, type in each player's name and minutes played, normalize FGA allowed on defense to each player, assign a defensive eFG% allowed to each player, multiply them out, and try to get the total to add up to .462 eFG% allowed on 33751 FGAs defended with kobe bryant allowing a .475 eFG%...

i think you'll find it'd be virtually impossible to do so without assigning some ungodly low eFG% allowed to a number of players who were not in fact very good shot defenders...

those 5 years somebody on the lakers was playing elite or close to elite shot defense, and the all-D team voters selected kobe bryant 5 times and shaq 3 times, and no other laker those 5 years...

and that's just shot defense - what about forcing turnovers?...

those 5 years bryant played 1/7 of the lakers' total minutes played, but by himself accounted for 631 steals, 1/5 (631/3123) of the team's total steals. and he didn't get those just because he played the most minutes - his per minute steal rate those 5 years (4.4 ST/100min) was best on the lakers for all 36 players that played 50+ total minutes over the 5 seasons...

lastly, i don't have alot of nba stats books from the mid-2000s and on, but the 2010-11 Pro Basketball Prospectus ranks kobe bryant, at the age of 31/32, as a +5 on defense, the highest rating they give (-5 to +5) on defense, and claim that this rating is "...strictly an estimate of how effectively a player limits his opponents' production...". so evidently those authors' eyes and statistical evidence see things differently than you do...

Is this all you could find to support Kobe? I hope you're also not biased because of our previous salty debate.

Yes that Lakers team was that good and it wasn't about Kobe alone. How can you give Lakers' FG% allowed value and distubute it among Lakers players randomly or evenly and tell me if Kobe wasn't this that team would be 2nd best in all time in FG% allowed etc? What a flawed argument is that? Surely he contributed but not so great that he was the best defender at the 2 position in the whole league year after year. RAPM and BPM tells me he has been below average defender. His best is 1.7 both in NPI-RAPM and BPM. His 14-year RAPM is -1.1, 15 year RAPM is -1.2.

Perhaps, you should find a reliable metric that ranks kobe as the top defender for 8 years?

Kobe was very popular since it's rookie year thanks to all-star games and slam dunk contests and he has been seen as Jordan's replacement. Perhaps you don't remember but I remember it as clear as daylight. By 1999-2000 he was one of the few most popular players in NBA.

As for my eyes and voters' eyes, I have been completely independent from media and the league officials. What about them? Also I played basketball at high school and college (at the 2 position) and I was pretty good at it. What about you? I think you should stick to stats and metrics... Just not at the team level for this argument please... Otherwise DRTG or DWS also does what you tried to do.

schtevie wrote:There's a bit of deja vu all over again here. I wish that Jeremias' http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/ still existed for reference.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150408042 ... pspot.com/

Wayback machine is awesome.

Thanks for the link statman. Kobe's xRAPM is even worse. His best is 0.8 in 2007-08. I can't see a 10-time all-defensive team caliber player. I mean it's even absurd considering the negative xRAPM, RAPM values in all those years.

I often think that this forum would be much improved if there were a sticky post titled in caps something like: SETTLED ANALYTIC ISSUES - MUST READ AND UNDERSTAND BEFORE CONTRIBUTING TO THIS FORUM. And one supposed entry would debunk the idea that potential defensive contributions are equal across all five positions (or however many one would wish to define). This is simply not true, and empirical evidence overwhelmingly confirms the very commonsensical underlying theory.

Everybody here ought to fully understand a primary implication of the fact that the highest-percentage scoring opportunities (both in terms of realized FG% and the opportunity for drawing fouls) occur right around the basket, and that is that certain positions (what correlates positively with player height) enjoy the disproportionate privilege of defending this zone. And correspondingly, those who do it well, have disproportionate positive influence on defensive outcomes.

But there is another "sticky truth" not yet invoked that ought to be rather persuasive in casting doubt on the exceptionality of Kobe Bryant's realized defensive contributions. In basketball, like any other physical activity, there's only so much energy a player has available to dispense. Exceptional effort on defense is tiring, as is exceptional effort on offense. Correspondingly, we should expect that, all else equal, those who shoulder a disproportionate burden on offense (for better or worse) are unable to exert themselves to a corresponding degree on defense. And indeed, all empirical evidence I have seen on that general point confirms it.

As to whether Kobe Bryant ought to be considered All-NBA defensively in terms of his underlying defensive ability, one can trust whatever eyes and authoriteh one wishes. Maybe in short, critical spurts he was better than all other shooting guards/small forwards, and maybe he wasn't. But the fact of the matter is that the overwhelming empirical evidence is that his actual contributions were about average, and what is unreasonable, really, given the kind of player he was, is to expect that they could be other otherwise.

If you're talking to me, ofc I know defensive contributions are not the same across all positions. But what I was trying to say is Kobe was not close to being the best in his position at all in any of those years. Also, although I kinda understand where you come from with your thesis about the energy players split between offense and defense, there are many players such as Jordan, Lebron, Dirk, KG, Kidd, Duncan, David Robinson etc. who are exceptionally good at both ends of the floor. The worst part is there's no isolated personal stat or metric to support Kobe's selections.

I don't like to use the words "overrated" or "underrated" but I can say Kobe's defense has always been overrated BY voters and mainstream media.

A team has to have a PG on the court, or multiply-skilled wing players, or both. The best ball handlers tend to be smaller, quicker players who sure enough don't stop as many opponent plays as taller guys can do.

However, a team may run with 5 guys who are not centers; their opponents then decide whether to run that way or to keep a center on the floor. A 7-footer who is effective in a normal paced game may be obsolete when the pace is pushed: As he is run ragged on defense, he loses stamina and is ineffective on offense.

A PG who holds his own on D is just as valuable, in general, as a center who is not a liability on offense. While a team may improve its D-rating by playing 5 guys 6-9 and taller, their O-Rtg likely suffers. The playmaker with D is better than the same guy with less D, and their team will be better.

An all-D team shouldn't be 4 centers and a forward, even if they are the 5 best defensive players in the league. You might put your 5 best defenders on for a final possession of a quarter, but that's about it.

Regarding Kobe as the best defensive SG for all those years, I never did buy it. It is a great disappointment when the obscurity of the situation -- who plays better defense -- is a cover for blatant deceit.