The NBA's Top Defensive Players

While adjusted plus/minus type ratings have become fashionable for evaluating players particularly on the defensive side, there's still many other situation specific numbers that can be of interest. Here we look at leaderboards for individual defenders, both good and bad.

-- Player On-Ball Rankings
(regular season, excludes Pick+Rolls, excludes Help+Recover situations, Points/Poss)
* appropriate minimum possessions apply throughout

Some notable players just outside the top 20 include Marcus Smart and OG Anunoby who were actually 21st/22nd.

Some important caveats:

• Defense rarely happens in a vacuum -- and the amount of help a player gets in one-on-one situations can vary tremendously by a team's scheme as well
• Pick+Roll / Help+Recover situations excluded -- P+R's are clearly a heavy two-man defensive scenario (truthfully all five defenders better be operating together), and help+recover are "disadvantaged" situations to begin with (more on those later)
• Not adjusted for quality of player guarded -- so defensive stoppers guarding the opposing best players are dealing with a tougher base expectation
• Multi-Year Ratings -- to increase the sample size to respectable levels we go back some ways, and thus some players may have different recent results than the rankings above
• Assists not factored in -- these numbers reflect the player guarded shots, free throws, and turnovers but not passes

"Big Reputation Big Men"	Gobert, Bam, Draymond, Mobley, Embiid, Jackson Jr. are all guys who get DPOY consideration, but arguably moreso for their help roles than on ball. It should be noted that they are often guarding less proficient three point shooters one on one outside of switches (which are included here). On the bottom ranked side, Myles Turner, Brook Lopez, Clint Capela are some of the rim protectors who struggle in the iso-switch circumstances.
"Small Guards"	You might not expect to see names like Brunson and McCollum on the plus side of the ledger. This could reflect they get additional help when facing one-on-one which might lead to more scoring off the pass, as their Defensive +/- numbers are largely below average. However Lowry and Paul have long held stout overall defensive reputations.
"Wing Stoppers"	The top 20 doesn't feature a lot of the Wings who get votes for DPOY and maybe the lack of adjusting for "quality of player guarded" has something to do with that...or the supposed stoppers get less help sent their way under the premise of "they can handle it alone".
"The Bottom Twenty"	Walker IV & Poole have strong command on the bottom two spots with numbers far worse than the rest of the league, but generally speaking these bottom ranked players can be taken advantage of in one-on-one conditions.
Playoffs a different story?	The sample sizes get very small even for multi-year playoff looks...but the playoff rankings show some remarkable differences...Rudy Gobert is the worst rated "On Ball" qualifying defender in the playoffs (although a somewhat better 35th percentile in '24), and Finney-Smith is also bottom ten. On the flip side, Schroder, Draymond, Embiid and Bam all are top ten in the playoffs too, while the best has been Austin Reaves. And Jordan Poole? Second worst behind Rudy!

-- Help+Recover Rankings
(regular season, closeout situations after helping off, Points/Poss)

Gobert again comes out on top for regular season stats, and in this category it's less common to find one of the defensive minded bigs at the top (Draymond is 11th, Horford 17th, Kleber 20th, Embiid 26th) since most bigs struggle to get back out to shooters after pulling off to help.

While Thybulle, Smart, Tucker, Jones have clear defensive chops, one wonders if some of the guys who are highly rated in this area perhaps aren't as aggressive at helping off and thus have an easier time getting back to their man?

In the bottom ranked players you have guys like Okoro, Murray, Covington who generally seem to give good effort on defense and could perhaps be over-aggressive at helping? Learning the balance of helping and still being able to get back is important.

And what about the same stats for the playoffs? Thybulle comes out on top, with Vanderbilt, Lively II, Kawhi, and Evan Mobley rounding out the top five. The bottom five are Bojan Bogdanovic, Hunter, Hartenstein, Grant Williams, and Klay Thompson. Rudy for what it's worth drops off again and is 20th percentile in the playoffs (67th percntile in '24...those Utah playoff days hurt him)

-- Perimeter One-on-One Defensive Rankings
(regular season, excludes Help+Recover situations, Points/Poss)

The top ranked perimeter one-on-one players are dominated by guards and wings, only Draymond Green cracks the top ten as a big. This can be a pretty volatile category that depends on how well players shoot threes against a defender, often a vulnerable data point without big sample sizes. Point Guards show out proudly! Do opponents overestimate their edge when they get a switch onto a small? Probably...

On the low end of the table Quickley has not fared well despite having a couple of good Def +/- years in New York. He is however small by NBA standards and has low steals for a point guard, so may not be a plus pure defender.

-- Guarding Offball Movement Rankings
(regular season, "Cuts and Curls", Points/Poss)

A fun one since we get superstar names in both the top and bottom lists! Certainly you can find "lowlight" videos of almost any star falling asleep on defense, but Donovan Mitchell and James Harden, often derided for being one-way players, do fine in this look.

Meanwhile Luka Doncic is still arguing the last play on offense when he's supposed to be locked in on defense so perhaps not a surprise he ranks second worst here.

-- Around the Rim Defensive Rankings
(regular season, within 6 ft, Def FG%)

No surprise this is dominated by the big centers, size matters. Imagine the luxury of having Giannis and Brook Lopez on the same team. Of course a team like Boston relies much less on the shots close in and much more on the ones from far out.

The bottom of the list is mainly small guards, but of more interest perhaps is the centers/power forwards not effective close in. Nance of course, but Jonas Valanciunas (64.9%), Nikola Vucevic (64.7%), and even Nikola Jokic (63.8%) don't provide much deterrence at the rim.

-------