If you’re an NBA fan — I mean, if you’re really spending some time buried in The Discourse — you’ve likely heard your fair share of conversations about this season’s impossible-to-parse MVP race between Joel Embiid, Nikola Jokić, and Giannis Antetokounmpo. You might even have a passionate argument for one of these dudes relative to the others.
For my part, I can admit here that I’m a Jokić apologist. Spiritually, or something, I’m persuaded by the particulars of his game. I buy into all the “He makes everyone around him better” stuff, even as I admit I’m not really sure how all that works, exactly. Even as I believe that, for example, Giannis’ visible effort level probably does something to his teammates that Jokić’s passing may not.
ANYWAY. If you’ve been in the thick of The Discourse, you’ve heard an army of dudes tell you something along the lines of, “Listen, I watch the games, and I know that the fancy metrics have Jokić as a positive defender, but he’s average at best, and Embiid is much better.” On its face, that seems right. Jokić stumbles around out there awkwardly. He’s up at the level of the screen when opponents run screen-and-roll actions, and he looks ridiculous. His arms flail. He’s on some sort of historic pace when it comes to committing kicked ball violations. I have eyes too; I see what it looks like.
At the same time, I have a computer that’s hooked up to the internet and a rudimentary understanding of how to do research, so I’m allowed to poke around a little and see if my eyes might be deceiving me. They do that from time to time. They do that to all of us. Can you admit that?
Let’s break it down a little. When we talk about defense, what are we talking about? We’re talking about preventing the opponent from scoring points, correct? So let’s take a look that. Let’s look at defensive rating (DRtg, or points allowed per 100 possessions), and let’s just look at the minutes when Jokić and Embiid are actually on the floor, since we don’t want to give Jokić too much credit for the fact that the backup center on his team is DeAndre Jordan. (All stats in this piece are taken from Cleaning the Glass with two meaningless games remaining for each team.)
Nuggets DRtg w/ Jokić on the floor: 112.1 (4,737 possessions)
Sixers DRtg w/ Embiid on the floor: 112.1 (4,543 possessions)
Hmmmm. Okay, that’s interesting. Overall for the season, the Sixers are 10th in DRtg and the Nuggets are 18th, which would lead me to believe that the Sixers have a better-than-average defense and the Nuggets have a worse-than-average defense. In fact, the different is currently 0.4 points per 100 possessions. That, to me, is a meaningless difference, and when Jokić and Embiid are on the floor, their teams give up exactly the same amount of points.
So, what’s going on here? How do the Sixers prevent opponents from scoring, specifically, when Embiid is on the floor? How do the Nuggets do it when Jokić is on the floor?
The Sixers w/ Embiid
When Embiid plays, the Sixers are all about rim protection, and it starts with not allowing shots at the rim in the first place. Only 30.6% of opponent shots come at the rim, and opponents shoot just 67.6% on those shots. The downstream impact of that is more shots in the midrange (that’s good!) and more 3s (that’s bad).
With Embiid in the game, opponents get out in transition on 14.9% of possessions (that’s pretty average). Unfortunately, they absolutely eat on those chances, scoring 131.0 points per 100 chances.
Some other things to consider. With Embiid in the game, opponents grab 25.8% of their own misses. They make 19.4 free throws per 100 field goal attempts. They turn the ball over on 14.3% of their possessions. Those numbers are all pretty good. Not elite, but better than average.
You add it all up, and opponents score, as I said, 112.1 points per 100 possessions when Joel Embiid is in the game.
The Nuggets w/ Jokić
When you hear people criticize Jokić’s defense, they usually point out that he’s terrible at protecting the rim. The numbers, unfortunately, bear that out. The Nuggets actually do a decent job of preventing shots at the rim with Jokić on the floor (32.6% of attempts, which is pretty average, though significantly worse than the Sixers with Embiid in the game). The problem is that opponents make 71.6% of those shots, which is really, really bad.
So what do Jokić’s Nuggets do to make up for that? First, they prevent transition chances. They give up 130.6 points per 100 transition chances, which is pretty similar to the Sixers’ number, but they only allow transition chances on 13.4% of possessions — significantly fewer than the Sixers with Embiid in the game.
The Nuggets with Jokić on the floor also pick up quite a bit of low-hanging fruit. Opponents grab only 24% of their own misses — an elite number that speaks to the fact that Jokić himself is a significantly better defensive rebounder than Embiid. Opponents make just 18.1 free throws per 100 field goal attempts, another elite number. The Nuggets force turnovers on 14.0% of possessions — pretty similar to the 14.3% number the Sixers with Embiid post.
You add it all up, and opponents score, as I said, 112.1 points per 100 possessions when Nikola Jokić is in the game.
So What?
I think it’s fair, of course, to suggest that Joel Embiid is a better defender than Nikola Jokić. Embiid is a monstrous deterrent at the rim. That’s clear when you watch the games, and it’s clear in the stats. Jokić doesn’t scare anybody at the rim, and that has downstream effects on the rest of his roster.
At the same time, it’s also fair — especially in the context of a regular season awards ballot — to look at the totality of a player’s impact. The truth is that Embiid rarely plays with the kind of extreme energy on defense that’s required for him to really leverage his skills in rim protection. When he’s locked in, he’s amazing; but how often is he locked in?
That’s fair to ask about Jokić too, by the way; his effort this year on the defensive end — especially since the Nuggets took a choke hold on the #1 seed in the West — has not been as good as it was last season. Jokić, I’m guessing, also gets dinged by pundits for his defense mostly because of how it looks. As I said before, at times he appears to be a flailing mess. There are plays where he gets beat at the rim and it looks really ugly. On the other hand, in the aggregate, Jokić’s prowess as a defensive rebounder and his willingness to be up at the level against screening actions impact his team’s ability to prevent points in ways that aren’t obvious in a possession-by-possession context. You kind of have to look at the defensive rating over the course of an entire season. Otherwise, the obviousness of the stuff that Embiid is great at is going to completely capture every bit of your attention.
What About Offense?
We haven’t even discussed offense. If you’re wondering:
Nuggets ORtg w/ Jokić on the floor: 125.6 (4737 possessions)
Sixers ORtg w/ Embiid on the floor: 121.0 (4543 possessions)
Both incredible of course, but one’s a little more incredible than the other, am I right? And how about this little nugget (pun intended): the Sixers with Embiid on the floor grab only 22.4% of their misses on the offensive glass, but still let opponents get out in transition on 14.9% of their possessions. The Nuggets with Jokić? They gobble up 27.9% of their own misses while only allowing their opponents to get out in transition on 13.4% of their possessions. Isn’t transition defense an important part of, like, defense? And isn’t it true that Embiid can’t really be bothered most of the time?
The point I’m trying to make is that offense, actually, is a part of defense. That’s true because in basketball, everything is part of everything else. Every decision a player make has downstream effects. Every pass, every turnover, everything.
If I Had an MVP Vote
Honestly, I’ve had to admit to myself in recent weeks that if I had a vote, I’d vote for Giannis. Since the Bucks got Khris Middleton back somewhat permanently on January 23rd, they’ve been the best team in the league by a full six games over anybody else. They’ve cruised to the best record in the league without even really breaking a sweat. They’re an obvious favorite to win the title; frankly, nobody’s all that close, and Giannis’ ferocity, effort, and dominance on both sides of the ball is the biggest reason why.
Even so, the conversation is likely to come down to Jokić and Embiid again. I’m not saying voting for Embiid is dumb. I think I’ve made the case here that Jokić is a little more valuable, but a reasonable case could be made the other way too. I’m just saying this: if your argument comes down to defense, I think you’d better take a look at the numbers and figure out what, exactly, you’re talking about when you talk about that side of the ball.