Sizing up the Defensive Player of the Year candidates

Kevin McHale's proclamation that Joakim Noah should win Defensive Player of the Year made things a little awkward for the candidate on his own team in Dwight Howard, and added to the growing Noah vs. Howard debate, but it also got us thinking about the race for this year's award.

So on that note, here are 10 candidates (plus four more) for 2013-14 Defensive Player of the Year, along with some relevant defensive numbers in the table at the bottom.

Roy Hibbert

Hibbert's defense has regressed over the last month or so, but he was the favorite for the award through four months of the season and remains the anchor of the league's stingiest D.

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Joakim Noah

Noah's playmaking has been all the rage lately, but it's his defensive presence that continues to stand out. When Dwight Howard's own coach is calling you the Defensive Player of the Year, you probably have a good chance to win it (Sidenote: Has anyone considered that McHale was just trying to motivate Dwight?).

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Paul George

Like Hibbert, George has slowed down in recent weeks as the Pacers have slid, but he's still the league leader in defensive win shares and is almost unanimously viewed as the best perimeter defender around.

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Dwight Howard

Okay, so he's still not quite the same player who won three straight Defensive Player of the Year awards in Orlando, but he also has a Rockets team that employs some of the worst perimeter players in the league in the top-10 in defensive efficiency.

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DeAndre Jordan

Jordan may be the most overrated defender on this list if you watch him for long enough periods at a time, but the raw defensive stats are there and Doc Rivers' constant campaigning has kept him in the race.

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Serge Ibaka

When your nickname is simply your last name with the word 'block' mixed in, you're probably a perennial DPOY candidate.

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Jimmy Butler

Butler leads the league in defensive plays per foul, and you can make the argument that no one defends LeBron James as well as he does (though Kawhi Leonard and Paul George would like a word).

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Andrew Bogut

In his first healthy season in about three or four years, Bogut has at least rejoined the fray of the DPOY conversation, teaming with Andre Iguodala to carry a Warriors' defense that is one of only three (along with Indiana and Chicago) to allow less than 100 points per 100 possessions (99.3).

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Andre Iguodala

Iguodala's scoring has dipped to the point where most fans seem to have forgotten that the defensive dynamo still exists, but make no mistake, Iggy remains one of the best two-way players in the game.

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Kawhi Leonard

He's the most dynamic defender on the league's fifth-best defensive team and improves the Spurs' D by 4.9 points per 100 possessions when he's on the court. As a reference, just 5.0 points per 100 possessions separate the No. 4 (OKC) and No. 21 (Denver) defenses right now.

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Honorable mentions: Tim Duncan, LeBron James, Anthony Davis, David West

A good debate right now would be which Spur, between Duncan and Leonard, is the most defensively valuable to the team.

LeBron has deserved Defensive Player of the Year consideration in years past without getting his due recognition, and he may very well win one in the future, but his D seemed to take a step back for the first half of this season and he's not really in the mix because of it.

West is one of the better defensive big men in the league, but it's hard to make a DPOY case for him when there's two even better defenders on his own team.

Davis leads the league in blocks and will almost surely take home a DPOY award at some point in his career, but his defensive lapses - normal for a young big - particularly in regards to his help-D, are still noticeable

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Now, the numbers...

Hibbert, George and Butler are the leaders in the three respective categories.

PPP courtesy of Synergy Sports, Win Shares courtesy of Basketball Reference, Defensive Plays per Foul courtesy of TeamRankings.com.