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Paul Millsap is the 8th worst defender in the entire NBA

shemtheo said:
The post shows an interesting statistic that strengthens the argument that I have been trying to make for a while: Paul Millsap is too small, especially playing next to Al for the Jazz to be contenders.

Look, defense (particularly interior defense) is what wins championships. And irregardless of how much heart Millsap displays on defense, at 6' 6.25" (official measurement) he is seriously undersized at his position. Size matters in defending paint, it always has and it always will. Size isn't everything, but it does make a big difference. It wouldn't be quite as bad if Millsap was playing alongside a big center, but alongside Big Al (who is actually a right-sized PF, not a center) the Jazz are very small in the paint and opposing teams pound the ball down low almost at will.
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Your official measurement is without shoes. As Millsap plays basketball like my humans in shoes he is actually 6'7.25". He has fairly long arms so his standing reach is respectable at 8'9.5" Which is the same as Troy Murphy, Sam Young and Andre Iguodala.

But your point is correct. Millsap needs to be used in the correct situations against the correct matchups. I agree with everyone that 26 minutes of Millsap off the bench is a formula for long term success.

Jefferson's standing reach is 9'2" which is the same as Favors and a half inch smaller than Tyson Chandler and Emeka Okafor. In my book he is an average sized center who is an average athlete.
 
Millsap lead the league the year before in fouls per minutes played. Playing starting minutes clearly took something out of Sap on defense and rebounding. This year is his first year starting and teams went at him because most teams had a size advantage. I think that he will rebound and defend better in his second year of starting...if he starts.
 
I agree with this ranking... I don't care how hard the man plays, or how big of a work horse he is... if someone consistantly gets owned in the paint defensively and beaten off of the first step... that means you suck at defense. Start favors and bring millsap off bench as 6th man. Its inevitable
 
Jazz4ever said:
No he is helping the guy that just blew past Miles, Jefferson, or Harris. Thus his man is open and often scores. Locke, and you, don't understand defense is 90% team oriented.
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yes, that happens, but isn't it more likely that the number simply shows that Millsap is getting beaten by his own guy straight up? his PER-allowed numbers were hardly stellar (always 18+) in years past.
 
All this number shows is that Millsap is being dominated one on one. When he has to defend his man straight up, Millsap gets schooled. This does not show how well he does in rotations, pick and rolls, etc. When the ball is tossed into the post, and Millsap is defending the post player, most of the time the other team scores.
 
For the last three seasons, the Jazz have been significantly better with Millsap on the court than with him off the court. If Paul did nothing on D but stick to his man (like Boozer), the stat being cited in this thread would look much better, but the Jazz would be worse.

meh.
 
This stat only shows that the rest of the team needs to play better help defense.
It also shows Sap plays good help defense, because the other players "guys" are not scoring as much.
C'mon Jazz playaz, help a Techer out.
 
idiot said:
Defensive stats are always going to be far more arguable than offensive stats. I happen to think PER allowed individually and effect on team defense per 100 possessions are two of the stats that tell the most. And being extreme on either one of them is cause for at least raised eyebrows. But the two have to be balanced, because NBA defense is always a balance between individual defense and help defense.

I will say that individual PER allowed is really hard to take as a single indicator, not least because defensive assignments switch on so many plays (I'd say between 25 and 40%, depending on the game). At the same time, to have Millsap rate so extremely low on individual PER defense is concerning. But I don't think team defense is irrelevant, and in Millsap's case I have to conclude it seems to at least balance out the apparent lack of individual defense.
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This is a great post.

You gave rustbucket his stat in your previous post and follow it up with this.

I don't believe individual per defensive is a good stat. It's an almost worthless stat actually. Team PPP is a much better stat and shows better for Millsap. I still think Millsap should be a bench player.
 
r_u_s_t_b_u_c_k_e_t said:
yes, that happens, but isn't it more likely that the number simply shows that Millsap is getting beaten by his own guy straight up? his PER-allowed numbers were hardly stellar (always 18+) in years past.
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I think Boozer and Okur really shaped the way Millsap learned to play defense, he was constantly covering for these guys ineptitude on D, so tends to over help now out of natural instinct.
Does Millsap get beat 1 on 1? Of course, we know long players can abuse him. However, he isn't any worse than average. He can hold his ground pretty good led the team in steals, third in blocks.
Besides my eyes, I base this on adjusted +/-, where Millsap is 10th in the entire league, everyone above him is a superstar or all star. Either his offense or defense is putting him on that list. While his offense is solid, I think his D accounts for most of it.
 
PER Against can mean more if the team D is at least acceptable. And that doesn't even take into consideration our transition D hasn't been acceptable ever. I absolutely expect ALL our players to have bad PER Against stats because neither the Team D nor the transition D would have stopped most high school teams this year.

As to Millsap, lets not forget that the PER of 4's is much higher than any other position. So his numbers aren't going to be "good" relative to the whole league in most years.

I'm much more concerned with the system. If we can get the team playing "5 Guys On A String" as in Thib's model, with actual schematics, we'll really see who can or can't defend.
 
As an added corollary, I really wonder how this stat is computed. Does someone actually sit down and meticulously compute PER Against for every second two players play off one another? Even in that scenario, switches and breaks will distort the stats.

In a worst case scenario, the PER's of starters, per game, are matched up, and the PER's of backups, per game, are matched up. That seems more likely to me. It would give a solid ballpark picture, but not come that close to telling the whole story.
 
billyshelby said:
As an added corollary, I really wonder how this stat is computed. Does someone actually sit down and meticulously compute PER Against for every second two players play off one another? Even in that scenario, switches and breaks will distort the stats.

In a worst case scenario, the PER's of starters, per game, are matched up, and the PER's of backups, per game, are matched up. That seems more likely to me. It would give a solid ballpark picture, but not come that close to telling the whole story.
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Of course not, it is an obscure, simplistic stat based on his starting position. If Millsap moves to SF and guards the SF position, his opponent PER will still be determined by what the opposing PF is doing. I have never heard any reputable analyst or coach use opponent PER as measuring a player. For Locke to dig that up shows you the hack he is, and then you have guys like rustbucket here who reads something on the internets, and assumes it must be true! Remember Locke guaranteed Jefferson would be a fine pick and roll player because he converted most of his attempts in Minny with a tiny sample size? Hack.
 
Jazz4ever said:
Of course not, it is an obscure, simplistic stat based on his starting position. If Millsap moves to SF and guards the SF position, his opponent PER will still be determined by what the opposing PF is doing. I have never heard any reputable analyst or coach use opponent PER as measuring a player. For Locke to dig that up shows you the hack he is, and then you have guys like rustbucket here who reads something on the internets, and assumes it must be true! Remember Locke guaranteed Jefferson would be a fine pick and roll player because he converted most of his attempts in Minny with a tiny sample size? Hack.
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And some of you wildly exaggerate the points being made. Many here just reflexively defend all things Milsap, and poo-poo this stat completely. Yet did we not all see that the jazz interior D sucked all year long? Was not Sap part of that D? How well can you expect a guy to play interior D who is only 6'6"?

No one is saying throw Sap away because it is now proven that he is the worst defender the league has ever seen. What are saying is that this is just another piece of evidence showing that the Jazz would be better served with him coming off the bench, where he would mainly see shorter PF and C.
 
Millsap's help-D is overrated -- he's undersized, yet not very quick -- and his man-defense is like watching someone try to guard their older brother in a game of one-on-one.

Worst of all, Utah's rebounding-ratio crumbled with Millsap as the starter in place of Boozer, just as I predicted it would; more strikingly on the Kemp-scale, is that he couldn't even manage to pad his own stats on the boards.
 
Joe Bagadonuts said:
Eat more fiber.
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optics_bro.jpg
 
I can't tell if this argument was settled or not. But since Millsap is now the 7th best player, I'd like a poll and a vote.
 
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