Defensive Analytics

Defensive Analytics

3 metrics: Blocks, Steals, Defensive rebounds

When I was at MIT SSAC, I never knew that I was part of the future of sports. I was volunteering because I thought it would be great to develop relationships with industry executives in sports technology. I looked at myself as an individual humbly learning from individuals who were smarter than me in hopes of being right with my prediction of emerging technology being the future of sports.

I happened to be right, and not only was I right about XR being a new industry to stay but also about how everything was going to go to data and analytics. I saw it a long time ago but did not know about the industry of sports technology. It almost reminds me of how I did not know much about Venture Capital or Private Equity in college, even though I wanted to go into finance. Now I am analyzing what the individuals we’re talking about in their presentations. The presentation I am referring to today is “Counterpoints: Advanced Defense Metrics for NBA Basketball.” How do we access player performance on defense? Player tracking will be vital as we tackle how you measure how good a player is playing defense.

A guy I grew up with named PJ Tucker is a great defender in the NBA by league standards. He is tough and can guard multiple positions. I have always wondered how this is measured. After doing research, I do not think that they have figured out how to measure defensive performance. It is a hard metric to create because of all of the variables at play. We will discuss some of them below.

I think this is a massive issue in the game of basketball. How do we measure the effectiveness of a defensive player? In my opinion, we have to look at the offensive player first. We have to look at how good the player is that they are playing. We can then use the x and y-axis to determine where the offensive and defenisve players are on the court.

We have to look at the shot frequency and shot disruption to measure how active a player is according to the presentation material. The data could determine if a defender is deterring them from taking the shot and seeing how difficult they made the shot. They will need specific data on hand body placement to determine if these models are correct. When PJ Tucker guards Lebron James and Lebron shoots over him without a contested hand, would this be good defense? If PJ Tucker jumped out of defensive position on a pump fake and Lebron missed, did he do a good job defensively? There are so many variables to consider, but as we get better and better with the player tracking technology, I see an efficient individual defensive measuring system on the horizon.