2020 NBA Awards Season

Who Were the Best Defenders in the NBA This Season?

Offense gets all the glory, but defense still wins championships. Let’s pick All-Defense teams and a Defensive Player of the Year…

DEFENSE WINS CHAMPIONSHIPS, SO GOES THE OLD ADAGE. It’s a lot more fun watching offense, and scoring is much easier to understand, but defense matters, too. Both defense and offense win championships, but we pay attention to only half of the game far too often. Today, we’re giving defense its due, continuing 2020 NBA Awards Season by selecting All-Defensive teams and choosing a worthy Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY).

Defense is notoriously difficult to value properly, even as we create more and more all-in-one advanced metrics. For me, the best place to start is team defense. We know how to evaluate which teams are best on defense — now who is the best defender on that team? Anyone that fits that description or close should be considered. If you’re on a great defensive team but only the third or fourth best defender on the court, I’m taking your metrics with a grain of salt. And if you’re a a presumed elite defender but your team’s defense is #20? I’m not buying it, especially if you’re a big man.

That said, I’ll refer to a handful of metrics below: Defensive Box Plus-Minus (DBPM) from Basketball Reference, Jacob Goldstein’s Defensive Player Impact Plus-Minus (DPIPM), and ESPN’s Defensive…