Uh, yeah, Derrick White stacked up pretty equally with some of the best perimeter defenders that I could find. It’s easy enough to cherry-pick plays to make a case, but when I tallied the plays, he was still between Butler and Lillard, right? Wrong. This two-handed block at the rim caused me to audibly yelp. Regardless, his ability to block shots both at the rim and on the perimeter stood out. Standing 6’4″ with a 6’7.5″ wingspan, White isn’t a pterodactyl. Because of this, I figured that White would be right in the middle. Derrick White’s DefenseĪs I noted in my previous defense article, “The simplest conclusion here is that great perimeter defenders make significantly fewer ‘Detrimental’ plays and more ‘Great’ and ‘Outstanding’ plays than poor perimeter defenders.” Essentially, the likes of Trae and Lillard made about 3 times more detrimental errors than Simmons, Butler, and Thybulle while making less than half as many great and outstanding plays. I landed on Derrick White (+0.03 at the time of writing), Justin Holiday, and Derrick Rose, but like I said, I only ended up considering White. To start my search, I used Basketball Index’s D-LEBRON metric to find a few guards around 0 which would indicate a neutral impact over 100 possessions. Since we’re all relying on hearsay and heuristics to judge perimeter defense, it’s impossible to establish what “league average” is. We haven’t established a universal way for grading perimeter defense. There is no simple metric one can use to evaluate perimeter defense, and 2. Perimeter defense is much different for two reasons: 1. Terms like “relative True Shooting Percentage” are nearly ubiquitous on #NBATwitter because shooting percentages can be compiled, calculated, and compared in a neat little spreadsheet. My reasoning is that despite its wide usage, I have no idea what it means with regards to perimeter defense. You may have noticed that I’ve been using “league average” in quotation marks. You should go read it first.) Finding a Simple Way to Define “League Average” (Note: I’m going to refer to my previous defense an article a fair amount, but I’ll only link to it the one time. Today, I present to you Derrick White and the Curious Case of the League Average Perimeter Defender. Staring at that spreadsheet after watching his tape pushed me in another direction. After starting with Derrick White and scouting his defense, I ended up putting his numbers next to every other perimeter defender’s in a spreadsheet. My intent for this article was to pick a few “league average” perimeter defenders to provide video and statistical evidence for what makes them “league average.” That is not what I ended up doing. When I previously wrote about perimeter defense, I discussed the necessity of investigating so-called “league average” perimeter defenders as a next step.

Derrick rose wingspan