VIDEO: Clippers promote DeAndre Jordan for Defensive Player of the Year
It's no secret that the Los Angeles Clippers believe center DeAndre Jordan should be the 2015 NBA Defensive Player of the Year.
Not only has head coach Doc Rivers been banging that drum for weeks, but the team also released a video hyping his candidacy on Monday. There are highlights, statistics, rankings and quotes from opposing players and coaches, and altogether it makes a pretty good case in 74 seconds.
Plus, Drake.
Jordan is certainly one of the front-runners thanks to his block totals, rebounding acumen, rim protection and stellar ranking in Basketball Reference's Defensive Win Shares.
The case against Jordan is somewhat easy to make, too - the Clippers are better defensively when he hits the bench and the team ranks 16th in defensive efficiency.
For the sake of furthering the discussion, here's a look at how a few of the candidates for the award stack up using some advanced metrics and box score stats. Your mileage will vary with such measures, and defense is impossibly difficult to evaluate statistically, but these can help create a baseline and a pool of players to evaluate:
| Player | Minutes | Def. Win Shares | Def. Real +/- | Team Def. Improve (Pts/100poss) | Team Def. Rank | Def. RPG | SPG | BPG | Opp. FG% at Rim |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Draymond Green | 2335 | 5.0 | 4.95 | 7.1 | 1 | 6.6 | 1.6 | 1.3 | 46.6% |
| DeAndre Jordan | 2683 | 5.0 | 2.19 | -1.8 | 16 | 10.1 | 1.0 | 2.2 | 48.7% |
| Marc Gasol | 2553 | 4.5 | 1.80 | -6.1 | 5 | 6.4 | 0.9 | 1.6 | 49.7% |
| Tim Duncan | 2082 | 4.3 | 4.46 | 0.3 | 2 | 6.9 | 0.8 | 1.9 | 46.6% |
| Nerlens Noel | 2287 | 4.1 | 3.45 | 4.2 | 11 | 5.7 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 45.1% |
| Kawhi Leonard | 1862 | 4.1 | 4.78 | 5.7 | 2 | 5.9 | 2.3 | 0.8 | 47.1% |
| Rudy Gobert | 2000 | 3.9 | 3.57 | 8.9 | 13 | 6.1 | 0.8 | 2.3 | 39.2% |
| Anthony Davis | 2245 | 3.8 | 3.54 | 3.9 | 22 | 7.7 | 1.5 | 3.0 | 48.6% |
| Khris Middleton | 2224 | 3.1 | 4.05 | 8.2 | 3 | 3.8 | 1.5 | 0.1 | 53.8% |
| Michael Kidd-Gilchrist | 1587 | 2.3 | 3.62 | 7.9 | 6 | 5.6 | 0.5 | 0.7 | 48.1% |