Victor Wembanyama will have the best defensive season ever in the NBA (Hot Takes We Might Actually Believe)

The 2024-25 NBA season is here. At the end of an uneventful off-season, we take our annual journey too close to the sun and challenge you to endure the heat of these vistas. These are hot takes that we might actually believe.

Last season, as Minnesota Timberwolves wingers Jaden McDaniels and Anthony Edwards stalked their Boston Celtics counterparts Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown during a game between the NBA's two top-seeded teams, I wondered: Is the Wolves center Rudy Gobert – a threesome back then? Defensive Player of the Year and the betting favorite to win the award again – even his own team's best defender?

That led me to some conversations with front office people from across the NBA about the importance of interior and perimeter defense. That discussion continued to become a hot topic among executives in 2022, as both Marcus Smart and Mikal Bridges finished ahead of Gobert in the Defensive Player of the Year voting.

When the game relies on 3-point shooting more than ever and versatility has never been more important, shouldn't the ability to switch positions on the sidelines be the most sought-after defensive skill?

Measure defensive effectiveness

There's no reason teams should bother measuring one type of defense against another. Whoever wins awards has no impact on their bottom line. Is anyone a good ball defender? A good assistant defender? A good rim protector? These are the questions. Ideally, a player can do all three well, but in our imperfect world, teams tinker with finding units of five that, as they say, populate the field “on a string.” A rim-protecting center here, a few switchable wings there, just to mask the guard who can't protect.

But could Do teams measure one aspect of defense against another?

“Sure,” an Eastern Conference executive told Yahoo Sports, “but our data is finite.”

You either block a shot or you don't. Either your opponent takes a shot or misses. Teams have access to a wealth of analytics beyond what's publicly available, but even these can't tell you everything your eyes are doing. Every possession produces a result, and statistics don't necessarily indicate how hard a fullback fought through a screen or how much the presence of a rim protector thwarted an attack.

With that in mind, we can never fully quantify a player's impact on defense. But we can add up all this finite data and determine – to some extent – ​​how many points each defender was able to save… right?

“Obviously,” said the Eastern Conference general manager.

So that's what I decided to do, at least based on the data available, which made two things clear: center defense is more important than perimeter defense, and Victor Wembanyama is already the best defender in the NBA.

First, a little about the process.

Counting statistics

I started with the basics. Steals and announces possessions. Blocks prevent scoring opportunities, some from outside the arc. The sum of these values ​​tells us exactly how many balls a defender has denied.

(STEEL + LOAD) x 1.161* + (2 POINT BLOCKS x 0.545**) x 2 + (3 POINT BLOCKS x 0.366) x 3

*Points per possession (league average)

**2 point percentage (league average)

***3-point percentage (league average)

Quantify rebounds

Defensive rebounds also end possession, but grabbing a rebound doesn't mean you've done all the defensive work to put up more points. However, the league's available tracking data can tell us what percentage of rebounds a team is grabbing when a player is on or off the court. The difference between the two shows how much better a team rebounds when someone is on the floor – and how many extra possessions that margin prevents.

{((DREB% ON/OFF / 100) x 102*) x 1,154**} x GAMES PLAYED

*Ball possession per game (league average)

**Offensive rating (league average)

A hand in the face

The NBA also tracks how many field goals a player challenges, whether those shots are successful or not, and “the difference between a shooter's normal shot percentage throughout the season and the shot percentage when the defensive player is guarding the shooter.” There are qualitative limitations to this data, including the shooter's luck and the proximity of a defender, but it is important to quantify how much worse opponents actually were when defended by a particular player, and the statistics available allow us to do this .

((D2PM x 2P%) x 2 – (D2PM x D2P%) x 2) + ((D3PM x 3P%) x 3 – (D3PM x D3P%) x 3)

Defensive presence

I wanted to find a way to quantify a player's impact on five-man defensive units – how strongly his presence was felt by opposing teams – and I think the best way to do this is his real-adjusted plus-minus. It is an individualized plus-minus statistic that is adjusted to take into account the quality of players on the field for both teams. Essentially: How many points did each player save his team without box score data?

RAPM* x 1.02**

*Real adjusted plus-minus

**Possessions per game / 100

Points defended (PD)

Add it up and you can count the points defended by a player per game. Here are the top 10 players who received at least one vote for an All-Defensive bid last season…

Hey, look at this: Wembanyama was easily the best defensive player in the league last season, at least by this metric. In fact, Wembanyama saved his team more points per game as a rookie than any other defensive player of the year, as far as public data goes. (That's only 2015. But still!)

Again, Wembanyama was a rookie last season. His ceiling here knows no bounds.

Prepare for Wembanyama to dominate

There's no question he'll lead the NBA in blocks this season. His 3.6 per game last season led the league and he is an overwhelming favorite to do so again, according to BetMGM. Instead, we should ask: Can Wembanyama average five blocks per game? Only Mark Eaton has surpassed that mark, averaging 5.6 blocks per game during the 1984-85 season. As a 19-year-old first-teamer, Wembanyama managed 4.3 per 36 minutes.

Wembanyama is also a good bet to average the most steals per game this season. De'Aaron Fox led the NBA in steals per game last season, and there's no reason Wembanyama can't increase his 1.2 steals per game to two this season.

Then there is a record by David Robinson in play. Robinson averaged 6.8 STOCKS (2.3 steals + 4.5 blocks) per game during the 1991-92 season. It is one of the best defensive seasons of all time, tied with Hakeem Olajuwon's 1989-90 season. Bill Russell would have something to say if one counted these statistics of his time.

The point is: centers rule. As another Eastern Conference executive explained, think of perimeter defense like the pencil and rim protection like the eraser. If you have perfect penmanship and good spelling, you can get by without an eraser. “But if you have crappy grammar skills, you need an eraser. It’s always nice to have him.”

Do you know what a good eraser is? A 7-foot-4, self-described “alien.” Wembanyama is ready. You would know it if you saw him hand France a respectable defeat against the very best the USA had to offer at the Olympics.

When I asked a manager if he would be surprised if Wembanyama were ranked among the best defensive players of all time, according to a metric that measures how many points someone saves in a game, he replied: “Not that much.”

So there you have it, folks: prepare for the best defensive season ever (Wemby's version).

More hot takes we might actually believe: