FA: Klay Thompson Comes to Dallas| 3yrs/50mil

[mvossman]

Klay’s defense looks good to my eyeballs. So I’m a bit confused by all the negative posts here. My attempt to justify optimism with stats:

1. W’s most used 5-man lineup (232 mins of Curry/Green/Wiggins/Kuminga/Podziemski) posted an excellent defensive rating of 105.0 (net 12.3) for the season per NBA.com.

2. But sub Thompson for the rookie and you have the second most used 5-man (157 mins) and an astonishing 98.0 defensive rating (net 18.1) for Curry/Green/Wiggins/Kuminga/Thompson.

3. Now swap Kuminga out for Looney—their only true center—and you get the third most used 5-man lineup (140 mins) and an awful 118.1 defensive rating (net —9.1) for Curry/Green/Wiggins/Looney/Thompson. But I don’t see how you can blame Thompson for having to play with Looney.

4. Replace the defenders from that lineup (Green/Wiggins) with the youngsters (Kuminga/Podziemski) and you get the fourth most used 5-man lineup (108 mins) and a barely conceivable defensive rating of 132.6 (net -19.1) for Curry/Kuminga/Podziemski/Looney/Thompson. And again, this is not something you can readily blame on Thompson’s decline.

5. Sitting the youngsters in favor of sometimes defensive-minded Wiggins plus 39-year-old Chris Paul gets you to the fifth most used 5-man lineup (93 mins) and a very respectable 106.5 defensive rating (net 18.2) for Curry/Wiggins/Paul/Looney/Thompson. Which further confirms Thompson’s defense wasn’t the problem with the Looney lineups (pun intended) listed above.

6. Finally, swapping out senior citizens Paul and Looney for Green and Jackson-Davis brings us to the sixth most used 5-man lineup (69 mins) and a team-best defensive rating of 89.8 (net 28.3) for Curry/Wiggins/Green/Jackson-Davis/Thompson. Which appears to be the W’s best lineup.

Of the remaining lineups, the best defensive ones all include Thompson till you get below 30-minute samples.

Perhaps there are better ways to isolate and assess Klay’s defensive play. But looking at lineups, it’s a lot easier to identify decline in Looney’s play than in Klay’s. And the cynic in me wonders if how they used Klay had more to do with attempting to manage his contract negotiations than how much his defensive abilities had actually declined.

I’ll add this. 2011 Jason Kidd was no longer a 40-minute defensive force. He was not assigned the opposition’s best scoring threat for quarters 1, 2, or 3. But come the closing 6 minutes of the game? Dude would lock somebody down. And his game-closing D looked every bit as dominant to me as in his best years. Perhaps that’s a bit too much to expect of Klay. But I’m not sure about that. It certainly isn’t too much to hope for.

I’m wondering how his lineup data looks this good while his individual defensive rating was poor?  

For me the concern is more about a starting lineup without a POA defender. Maybe that is not as important as I think. Maybe Lively makes that much less of a concern. I just know that what they were doing really worked from a defensive standpoint and I have concerns going away from it.