What should the best defender look like?

Steve Cole, who regarded Raymond Green as “the strongest defender in the world”, had an interpretation. His standards were “omnipotent” and “no dead angle”.

If according to Cole’s standards, Anthony Davis in health also meets, especially Jaron Jackson, who ranked the top three with this year’s best defensive player award (DPOY), compared with Bruker-Lopes, Evan-mobry and other defensive generals who also won votes, such as Zhu holerdi and Claxton.

These gates mentioned above played outstanding defense under the large sample of the regular season, but they either couldn’t afford the system or exposed their weaknesses in the playoff games, which paid attention to counterpositions and tactics, now they are all out in the first round. Different from Davis, he used incredible defensive flexibility and large coverage area to prop up the Lakers’ defense system. In the six games of the series, Davis was almost impeccable in both single defense and cooperative defense.

In the series with the grizzly bear, Davis played a defensive influence far ahead of his opponent in front of Jackson, the winner of the new science’s best defensive player award.

Even if you don’t look at high-order data, just look at the basic data, what level is Davis’s average 1.3 steals plus 4.3 caps? In the history of the playoff games, olajuwang, the “big dream” of the 1994 playoff games, sent out at least one snatch and four blocks in the last game. Olajuwang did it four times in his career. Other things he did were David Robinson, Karim Abdel-Jabbar and Bob lannier, each of which was a Hall of Fame.

In the past two years, Gobel, Adebayor and Marcus-Smart have been blushed for “Who is the most comprehensive defender”. In fact, these three people advocate that they are unreasonable because they have their own defects. Gobel is easy to be removed and targeted. Adebayor cannot prevent a large center, and smart is too short. Truly comprehensive, we have to count green and Davis. They have all been tested hard.

Davis is 2 meters tall and has an explosive sports talent. Its hardware conditions are better than green. He has only entered the best defensive team four times so far and has never won the best defensive player award, it is largely due to injuries. When Davis was healthy, his defensive strength was beyond doubt.

Today’s era requires more internal defenders. The low-level attackers decreased sharply, and the number of blocking and dismantling attackers increased sharply. They took off at offensive tempo, and there were many changes in the no-ball tactics. Internal defenders should be able to consider and judge the situation through the overall situation, and at the same time give teammates orders as much as possible to play the role of commander. In addition, the internal defender needs to give consideration to the ball holder and the cover person, and expand the defensive area. Not only should we be able to hold the ball relieve a garrison, but also we should be able to “retreat”. Occasionally, when you meet a large center, you must be able to take care of it.

Looking at the whole alliance, those who meet “both ability and precision” in all these aspects may not count three, and Davis is definitely one.

Davis played 56 games in the regular season, defending only 43 low-level singles and losing 0.98 points in each round. As can be seen from his frequency of defending low-level singles, few people are willing to find it, run low to challenge Davis.

The most impressive thing for Davis is his momentum of “man guards the pass off” in the Lakers’ defense system. According to the data, Davis is the player with the best anti-demolition effect this season. Ordinary internal agents hold down (drop, the so-called potty chair), and it will be very embarrassing to meet a scorer who will throw a vote or stop the vote immediately, but Davis was the second most efficient in the league when he kept the “retreat”, because he had too much defensive flexibility to take into account the bottom and middle distance.

So we can see that Davis hit only 37% out of the 10th Morant and Morant 27 shots, and his shots were disturbed by Davis’s long arm again and again. Desmond-Bain faced Davis’s 14 votes 3, and Tyus-Jones’s 8 votes only 2. Both the former’s CIC and the latter’s cast were inaccurate. Little Jackson took part in a lot of gear splits and tried to pick Davis one by one. The result was 9 out of 30 shots, with a hit rate of 30%, which was blocked by Davis 8 times.

Open your memory bank and search for it. When was the last time insider played such a horrible defense in a series? It seems that it has to be traced back to the 2020 playoffs, and that player is also Davis. The difference is that Davis played center at the critical moment at that time, and now he is a full-time center.

The insider of the Knicks in the first round of the playoffs this year, Mitchell Robinson, Green in the playoffs last year, and adtokunbo in 2021, all of them have no such exaggerated influence as Davis this year, sensual, he turned the Lakers into a no-fly zone at half time. Davis covered little Jackson’s three-point shots three times in six games. Among them, 55 seconds before the end of the first half of the fifth game, Davis, who was still freethrow line in the last second, jumped to the bottom corner of the right side the next second, the three points of little Jackson were covered.

In the whole series, only the second game of Davis did not control the situation on the defensive end, and this was not because he was beaten up, but because Hamm changed the opposite position inexplicably and let him go against little Jackson. As a result, Davis was greatly removed from the basket and the Lakers penalty area was punched through. Starting from the third game, Hamm changed back to the opposite position. Davis took the lead in Tillman, freeing up a lot of energy to help defense and solve the problem.

For the Grizzlies, the shadow Davis left on the defensive side may last for a long time. Davis has been fighting against rivals for 19 times, suppressing the opponent’s hit rate at 33.3, which is 15.3% lower than their season average. Within 6 feet of RIM, Davis suppressed his opponent’s hit rate at 38 percent, which was 24.8 percent lower than the season average of 62.8 percent.

Davis interfered with his opponent’s 13.3 two-point shots and his opponent’s 3.3 three-point shots. He ranked second in the total number of times he interfered with his opponent’s shots, second only to Lopes.

When Davis was present, the Lakers lost only 100.4 points in the hundred rounds. When he was not present, the Lakers lost 106.3 points in the hundred rounds, nearly 6 points more.

In October 2022, The Athletic invited coaches to vote for their best defensive squad, and Davis was on The list.

In April 2023, The Athletic invited 108 active players to vote for The best defensive players in their minds. This time Davis was listed as “other. Hollerdi got 28.7 percent of the votes, Thunder Gate Dort got 11.4 percent of the votes, Davis entered the “other” with players such as Paul George and Anunoby “, only 8.9 percent of the votes were received, which was the same as Lopes and smart.

Davis was forgotten not because his strength was not recognized, but because his attendance rate was too low, and the lack of exposure affected the impression score. In the last three seasons, there were only 36 games, 40 games and 56 games in Davis regular season games played respectively. In addition, it is normal that the Lakers stopped the first round because of Davis’s injury once and did not enter the playoffs once.

Now, the healthy Davis reminds everyone of his horror. This is the standard Davis should have, and this is also what the strongest defender should have.

As James said:

“He is still the original Davis. We all know that the whole world knows that his opponents also know how dominant he is. He is still the former Davis, which is amazing.”