Making the case: Scottie Barnes as Defensive Player of the Year

Iranians have this concept of ‘Taroof’. Without going into a long-winded explanation about what it is, it’s when you sit down for a meal with your friends and family, and you insist that you have to pay. Or, that when you’re offered something, you refuse to accept it, as a courtesy. Vice versa, if someone offers something to you that they don’t want to give up, they are ‘Taroofing’, which, in a roundabout way, signifies humility and politeness.

There is zero room for Taroof in sports.

What you want, you have to go out and get, and you have to be almost relentless on the floor in pursuing your goals. If anything, the competitive, “against all odds” vibes of professional sports are the opposite of politeness or humility. There are exceptions, of course, and there are plenty of graceful and humble athletes, but between those lines, the game is simple: go out and win.

Awards season is much like that. So much of the way narrative-style debate about who wins MVP, or any other award, comes down to discrediting or taking away from another player’s case, instead of seeing the merits in all of them.

My natural, Iranian instinct was to Taroof about the Defensive Player of the Year award.

But Scottie Barnes blocked the 7-foot-1 Chet Holmgren on a jump shot in the clutch to help the Raptors beat the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder last night, and it knocked me right out of my Persian trance.

Barnes will almost certainly be named an NBA All-Star this week. He’s very clearly on his way to an All-Defense spot and, depending on how some injuries shake out, could squeeze into an All-NBA spot.

But his case to flat-out win Defensive Player of the Year is growing more and more appealing.

There’s visible movement in his campaign. Barnes is tied for fifth in odds to win the award alongside Evan Mobley and Derrick White and behind Thunder big man Holmgren, Spurs phenom Victor Wembanyama, Heat centre Bam Adebayo, and Timberwolves big man Rudy Gobert.

Let’s take a look at his argument against those of his peers. Throwing Taroof out the window.

Scottie Barnes

Case for:

• The Raptors have the fourth-best defense in the NBA despite Jakob Poeltl missing half the season.
• Barnes leads the NBA in total stocks and is number five in stocks per game.
• He is in the top 10 in total deflections this season.
• He leads the NBA with 8 “clutch” blocks.
• Related: The Raptors have the best clutch defense in the NBA, allowing just 96.4 points per 100 possessions. Barnes has had multiple game-winning or -saving defensive plays, which gives a whole heck of a narrative to Barnes’ award case.
• He ranks second in defensive miles traveled in the NBA.
• Barnes is also in the 87th percentile in B-Ball Index’s “Defensive Positional Versatility” tool, which measures how many positions a player defends and how often.
• He also ranks in the 94th percentile in terms of matchup difficulty, via B-Ball Index.
• He grades out as excellent isolation defender, limiting opponents to 0.727 points per possession in these situations, ranking in the 83rd percentile in the NBA — better than all three of Wemby, Holmgren, and Gobert, according to Synergy Stats provided to Raptors Republic.
• Barnes is second in the NBA in on/off opponents’ rim accuracy, meaning teams shoot 7.4 percent worse at the basket when he’s on the floor, second only to Holmgren among players who have logged over 1000 minutes, per Cleaning The Glass.

Case Against:

• The Raptors boast a 112.82 defensive rating when Barnes is on the floor (10th in the NBA) and a 114.37 defensive rating when he’s off (15th), per PBP.
• Defensively, the Raptors are only 3.9 points per 100 possessions better when Barnes is on the floor — ranking in the 80th percentile at his position, better than Holmgren, but worse than Wemby and Gobert, according to Cleaning The Glass.
• Dunks and Threes have his Defensive EPM at +1.3 — just inside the top 50.
• Of 42 players who defend more than 4.5 shots at the basket, Barnes ranks 26th, allowing opponents to score 63 percent at the basket.

Context:

The impact and advanced numbers don’t love Scottie’s case for DPOY, but context is important here. Advanced metrics like Defensive EPM tend to favour big men, their rebounding, and their ability to protect the basket, and because, for all of his defensive abilities, Barnes is defending the rim worse than those three — he loses in that department. Although not much worse. How much better the Raptors are defending the rim when Barnes is on the floor versus when he’s off is clear evidence that he still is a legitimate rim deterrer. And considering how Barnes isn’t a big, that’s actually a win for him. He can perform practically as well as the best bigs in the league, and he does a whole lot more than traditional bigs. He can morph into whatever any given defensive possession requires him to, like a chameleon shape-shifting to adapt to their environment for survival, except Barnes does it to dominate.

In that sense, he’s been a one-man wrecking crew for the Raptors and works with, undoubtedly, the worst defensive talent around him among the other three candidates. The fact that the Raptors are a top-five defence despite playing without a centre for most of the year is a testament to the pressure on Barnes to be the saviour for this Raptors group, especially in clutch moments when it matters most. The Raptors have the fifth-best net rating in the clutch, in large part, because Barnes knows when and where to be in the biggest moments.

That said, there also hasn’t been a more versatile defender in the NBA this season. On any given night, you will see Barnes tasked with guarding a point guard, chasing a shooting guard around, bodying up a wing, before defending a towering big man in the post. The Raptors’ scramble-heavy defense has also forced Barnes to clean up many of their mistakes, and that shows in his deflection and overall stock numbers. Put any other defender in Barnes’ role on this Raptors’ defence — any other– and it’s hard to see Toronto’s defence improving.

Don’t believe me? Take the time to watch the 131 instances this season Scottie has been a superhero on defense.

Victor Wembanyama

Case For:

• Wemby leads the NBA in blocks per game with 2.7 a night.
• The Spurs are 10.8 points per 100 possessions better on defense with Wemby on the floor: the third-best differential in the entire league, according to Cleaning The Glass.
• With Wemby on the floor, the Spurs have the second-best defensive rating in the NBA (107.42), with him off, their defensive rating drops to 15th (114.3), per PBP.
• His defensive EPM is +3.2 — fourth-best in the league, according to Dunks and Threes.
• He also leads the NBA in stocks per game.

Case Against:

• He can only miss 3 more games before becoming ineligible due to the 65-game rule for DPOY.
• While Wemby is an elite shot blocker, teams are shooting 55 percent at the basket against him this season, 16th among 42 players who defend more than 4.5 shots at the basket a night. Behind some players like Holmgren, Isaiah Stewart, Gobert, and others.
• Wemby has been a below-average isolation defender this season. He conceded 1.129 points per possession in 1-on-1 scenarios, ranking in the bottom third of the league.

Context:

Wemby’s impact is almost self-explanatory. There is no defender in the NBA that incites as much fear in opposing players as he does, and you see it by the number of times teams decide to avoid attacking him altogether. That explains why his at-rim numbers aren’t as good as some other candidates, because teams don’t attack him at the basket unless they are certain they will score. The real question with Wemby’s case is availability. If he misses three more games, which seems likely, he won’t be able to win it.

Chet Holmgren

Case For:

• The Oklahoma City Thunder have the best defense in the league.
• Holmgren is fourth in blocks per game with two a night.
• He leads the NBA at defending the basket, limiting opponents to 46.9 percent shooting on 6.1 attempts a game.
• Opponents shoot 7.5 percent worse at the basket when Holmgren is on the floor: number one in the NBA among players who have logged over 1000 minutes, according to Cleaning The Glass.
• He’s seventh in defensive EPM with a +3.0, per Dunks and Threes.

Case Against:

• The Thunder are only five points per 100 possessions better on defense when Holmgren is on the floor, per Cleaning The Glass.
• With Holmgren, the Thunder have the best defense in the league (105.1 rating), and without him, they’d have the top defense (108.3 rating), according to PBP.
• There are six Thunder players in the top 15 in the NBA in Defensive EPM, including Alex Caruso, Cason Wallace, Holmgren, Ajay Mitchell, Jaylin Williams, and Isaiah Hartenstein, according to Dunks and Threes.

Context:

Holmgren makes an already elite defense even better. The Thunder are armed to the teeth with very good defensive players at virtually every position, which hurts Holmgren’s overall case in terms of impact. That said, he has undoubtedly been one of the best rim protectors in the NBA and is probably the favourite to win the award if Wemby misses more time. It’s hard to hold Holmgren accountable for having good teammates on defense. Although it’s been known to happen: *cough, 2020 Raptors, cough*

Rudy Gobert

Case For:

• The Timberwolves are 14 points per 100 possessions better on defense when Gobert is on the floor. That’s the best point differential in the league, according to Cleaning The Glass.
• With Gobert on the floor, the Timberwolves have the third-best defense in the NBA (109.41 rating), and without him, they crater to 29th (120.68 rating), per PBP.
• Gobert limits opponents to 50.6-percent shooting at the basket, third-best in the NBA behind Holmgren and Kristaps Porzingis.
• Gobert is fifth in Defensive EPM, ahead of Holmgren, and behind Wembanyama, according to Dunks and Threes.
• He has played in all but two games for the Wolves this season.

Case Against:

• Rudy Gobert is ninth in blocks per game with 1.7 a night.
• While Gobert has been more versatile this season, defending more ball-handlers and guarding in isolations, he only ranks in the 52nd and 60th percentile with respect to guarding pick-and-rolls, a usual staple of his defensive acumen.
• This would be Gobert’s fifth DPOY — sharing is caring. (And awards voters think so too, with plenty of players who have been the best, such as LeBron James MVPs, losing awards because of voter fatigue.)

Context:

As I dove deeper, I became convinced that Gobert should be right in the mix for DPoY. His numbers are incredible, and his impact on the Timberwolves’ defense is off the charts. The thing with Gobert is that he’s obviously not as versatile as Wemby, or Holmgren, or Barnes, or Adebayo, and so… do you fear the man that practices 1000 kicks or the man that has practiced one kick 1000 times?

The beauty in the case for Barnes is that you have the best of both worlds.

Do you need Barnes to play centre for 20 straight games against big men of all shapes and sizes? Not a problem.

Do you need him to constantly quarterback a defense? Call out plays and coverages, intercept passes, and make openings vanish? That’s right in his wheelhouse.

If you needed one defender to get you one stop in a dire moment, regardless of the situation? Barnes does that too.

So, neither Barnes, nor the Raptors, nor Raptors fans should taroof when it comes to his DPOY case. He certainly doesn’t do any of that when he’s on the floor, blocking shots and playing stifling defense.

His case is clear. He can win it. No need for pleasantries.

The post Making the case: Scottie Barnes as Defensive Player of the Year first appeared on Raptors Republic.