Originally Posted by
Pelicanidae
[I am posting this in full awareness that probably 0% of the board will read it)]
Okay, so after last night's game where we beat Utah, I got to thinking: we all know Jrue is, and should be, all-defensive first team. But what if he's got a real, legitimate, non-biased argument for all-NBA as well? Obviously, because sleeping is for suckers, I hopped on Basketball Reference and NBA.com and spent about an hour and a half looking through statistics. I haven't compared him with every single guard in the league, and really this is just a jumping-off point for the larger ''Jrue for all-nba'' discussion, but here's what I found:
I compared Jrue with the following guards: James Harden, Stephen Curry, Damian Lillard, Bradley Beal, Kemba Walker, Devin Booker, Kyrie Irving, Donovan Mitchell, Russell Westbrook, and Klay Thompson. I think that these names show a fairly representative sample of the kind of names who get pushed as some of the better guards in the league. I did not include DeMar DeRozan, because I forgot about him (gotta be honest) and I classed Ben Simmons as a forward because he is a forward. Yes, I know they push him as a PG sometimes, but I have him as a forward for two major reasons: firstly, in all three of his most common 5-man lineups, there are two other guards, and secondly, if we count him as a PG we have to count Lebron as a PG too for similar reasons, and Lebron has never been voted into an All-NBA spot as a guard.
So what did I find, comparing Jrue to this elite company. Here are his rankings (11 guards considered, so 11th is lowest, 1st is best):
Points per game: 11th (Last in Group)
Rebounds per game: 4th (Tied with Bradley Beal)
Assists per game: 2nd (After Westbrook)
Steals per game: 3rd (After Westbrook and Harden)
Blocks per game: 1st (Tied with Harden and Beal)
FG%: 4th (After Curry, Beal, and Irving)
3PT%: 9th (Better than Booker and Westbrook)
FT%: 11th (Last in Group)
Overall, I would say that that fares pretty well, actually! He sits pretty comfortably in the top handful of players in most of the categories, and there's a direct relation between the two categories that he does poorly in. If he shot 36% from 3 and shot FTs better, his points would obviously increase too, and he's barely behind Klay, Westbrook, and Mitchell in that respect.
But some might say (and those people would include me) that those are relatively standard, box-score type stats and they don't really represent that much. After all, people came up with advanced stats for a reason, right? Well, yes, so I looked at those advanced stats, and here's where we stand (remember, it's out of 11, and closer to 1 is always better, except in usage rating. Then, lower is better):
PER (Player Efficiency Rating): 8th (Better than Klay, Mitchell, and Booker: within 1 point of Westbrook and Beal)
TS% (True Shooting Percentage): 8th (Better than Westbrook, Mitchell, and Walker)
Win Shares per 48 minutes:6th (Tied with Beal, 0.002 behind Walker for 5th. Above Klay, Westbrook, Mitchell, Booker)
Offensive Win Shares:7th (More than Westbrook, Mitchell, Booker, Klay)
Defensive Win Shares:6th (More than Klay, Booker, Beal, Lillard, and Curry)
Value Over Replacement Player:6th (Better than Klay, Booker, Walker, Beal, and Mitchell)
Box Plus Minus:6th
Usage Rating:11th (By far the lowest usage rating among everyone here)
Net Rating:6th
Opponents FG%:4th (Behind Lillard, Kemba, and Klay)
On/Off Rating:1st (By a huge amount. HUGE amount.)
Again, when looking at the advanced stats, we see a similar conversation. Jrue actually rates very well among these guys, often sitting in the top half of the guards considered. I would actually argue that the most important stat here is the final one, as it is essentially a measure of how much better the team is and how much worse the opponents are when any given player is on the court. For Jrue, he leads that category for a wide margin. The Pelicans are +8.6 when Jrue is on the court, and opponents are a -6.5 That's means the Pelicans are a +15.1 on opposing teams when Jrue is on the court. The second place for this statistic went to Lillard, who made the Blaers a +14 when he was on court. After those two, there's a huge drop off, with third place going to Stephen Curry with +11. The worst in this category is Devin Booker, who is actually a -0.6 when he's on court. Surprisingly, Westbrook also finds himself in the bottom of this stat, at only a +5.6, and Harden is even worse at only +2.2.
Of course the reason for Jrue being such a huge contributor in this regard is for the defensive traits that have him a lock for an all-defensive selection this year: it's an award that nobody else on this list is even really a plausible contender for.
I did look at the most common matchups for these guards, but the results weren't really that interesting. I can post them if anyone cares, but I'll sum it up like this: the best player that Bradley Beal has defended for more than 40 possessions this year is Eric Bledsoe. The best for Westbrook is also Bledsoe, weirdly enough. The best for Kyrie is Damian Lillard (respectable, actually).
The best player Jrue has defended this season for more than 40 possessions? Kevin Durant. Who is +6 inches taller than him, easily. And one of the most potent scorers in the league's history. Jrue held him to 12 points on 42 possessions. That's 0.29 points per possession, by the way. Jrue has also logged heavy minutes defending Jimmy Butler, Paul George, Lebron James (held to 43% shooting on 27 possessions), Brandon Ingram (held to 37.5% on 12.3 possessions), Devin Booker (held to 33%), Gary Harris (held to 30.8%), Bradley Beal (held to 25% on 22 possessions), and CP3 who went scoreless on 25 possessions when defended by Jrue.
So what does this all add up to? Simple.
JRUE HOLIDAY FOR ALL-NBA.
What do you guys think?
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