Can We Show Some Love for Davion?

JW92 said:
That's interesting, because from what I see Sengun has not made the Rockets any better, at all. However, I can easily argue that Davion has been a major factor in the cultural shift of the Kings. And, they are a much better team since his arrival. Big Picture stuff... wins championships.
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I wouldn't go so far as to say that Sengun hasn't made the Rockets any better, but I appreciate the spirit of what you're saying here. Kings fans pining for Sengun, who would basically replicate the strengths and weaknesses of the All-Star center that we already have, is in the same category for me as the Kings fans who are still pining for Haliburton while Fox has been playing at the level of a top 5 guard himself. These guys would not be able to do what they're doing now if they were on the Kings and getting only a fraction of the touches that they currently get as their team's #1 options.

The whole point of the Davion pick (at #9 overall mind you -- which is on the low end of the lottery curve) was to get a guy who can excel in a role which doesn't involve pouring in tons of shots or dominating the ball. Criticizing Davion for his failure to pour in a ton of shots and/or dominate the ball (or even just benching him for his lack of offensive efficiency) just reveals to me that these people don't value the importance of defensive specialists to building a well-rounded team. Because on that end of the floor he's been every bit as good as advertised. We need more guys like Davion to fix this roster -- players who bring the same level of intensity but at the wing position and on the interior.
 
He sure would've been useful tonight, really need more of a defensive impact, Kessler Edwards wouldve been nice too instead of Barnes who took 2 literal shots in 22 minutes of game time
 
I’d like to see Davion not brick his 3’s when wide open. If he plays, they will sag that defensive player to the paint and give Fox and Domas no room. Did it last year in the playoffs.
 
dude12 said:
I’d like to see Davion not brick his 3’s when wide open. If he plays, they will sag that defensive player to the paint and give Fox and Domas no room. Did it last year in the playoffs.
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Last year in the playoffs Fox and Sabonis weren't shooting 40% from three like they are this year. Our offense isn't entirely predicated on Fox getting into the paint anymore. Davion needs to be able to hit open threes like everyone else, no one is arguing that. But it's rather hard to see us improving much on defense when one of the best defenders on the team isn't even in the rotation.
 
hrdboild said:
Last year in the playoffs Fox and Sabonis weren't shooting 40% from three like they are this year. Our offense isn't entirely predicated on Fox getting into the paint anymore. Davion needs to be able to hit open threes like everyone else, no one is arguing that. But it's rather hard to see us improving much on defense when one of the best defenders on the team isn't even in the rotation.
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This is all true, but Davion has to show he's not one of the worst offensive players in basketball to justify his spot in the rotation. He doesn't even need to be good, just not actively tanking the offense and he'll be a net positive. That hasn't been the case this year
 
The_Jamal said:
This is all true, but Davion has to show he's not one of the worst offensive players in basketball to justify his spot in the rotation. He doesn't even need to be good, just not actively tanking the offense and he'll be a net positive. That hasn't been the case this year
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In a very small sample of minutes, performing way below his career averages. I think his offensive struggles are overblown. He had a bad month and a half, he didn't forget how to play basketball to the point where he deserves no minutes on the Kings and to have his name in every trade proposal.
 
If he keep making shots, he will get playing time. He's just got to be consistent. And also need to play smart defense. He's already have all the tools to be a great defender, it's just more effort...for example, fighting through screen, taking the right angles...things like that.
 
reptilexcq2 said:
If he keep making shots, he will get playing time. He's just got to be consistent. And also need to play smart defense. He's already have all the tools to be a great defender, it's just more effort...for example, fighting through screen, taking the right angles...things like that.
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it’s not effort
 
reptilexcq2 said:
If he keep making shots, he will get playing time. He's just got to be consistent. And also need to play smart defense. He's already have all the tools to be a great defender, it's just more effort...for example, fighting through screen, taking the right angles...things like that.
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I think he needs less effort. He is closing out to hard and giving up drive bys he shouldn’t.
 
hrdboild said:
I wouldn't go so far as to say that Sengun hasn't made the Rockets any better, but I appreciate the spirit of what you're saying here. Kings fans pining for Sengun, who would basically replicate the strengths and weaknesses of the All-Star center that we already have, is in the same category for me as the Kings fans who are still pining for Haliburton while Fox has been playing at the level of a top 5 guard himself. These guys would not be able to do what they're doing now if they were on the Kings and getting only a fraction of the touches that they currently get as their team's #1 options.

The whole point of the Davion pick (at #9 overall mind you -- which is on the low end of the lottery curve) was to get a guy who can excel in a role which doesn't involve pouring in tons of shots or dominating the ball. Criticizing Davion for his failure to pour in a ton of shots and/or dominate the ball (or even just benching him for his lack of offensive efficiency) just reveals to me that these people don't value the importance of defensive specialists to building a well-rounded team. Because on that end of the floor, he's been every bit as good as advertised. We need more guys like Davion to fix this roster -- players who bring the same level of intensity but at the wing position and on the interior.
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I'm with you hrd, and certainly agree with the last part. Look, winners tend to find ways to win. I don't know this kid Sengun's background, but I do know that Mitchell has been a winner at every level for his entire life. And, he established that mentality the minute he stepped on the floor in Sac. We can find many quotes from his coaches and teammates since day 1 to back that up. You're right, Sengun on this team with Sabonis is a waste of talent. They have the right blend now... just need Brown to simmer down a bit and coach these guys up.
 
iowamcnabb said:
Props to Davion!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1758354056656064800
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consistent rotation minutes helps, knowing you will play each game rather than not because you may be struggling with your shot. He should of never been out of the rotation from the beginning and you just let him figure it out along the way but that's done with now and he and Ellis can share the court just to be pesky defensively for some minutes
 
As a fan of Davion, I'm happy to see this resurgence. If he can sustain it consistently, he can be an integral part of the playoff rotation. He may be more useful in the postseason that the regular season. He needs to keep shooting that open shots.

Still, Monte messed up by wasting a top 10 pick on a backup point guard. Imagine, if he had picked someone like Herb Jones instead? Home grown talent is the way to build a long term championship window especially for small market teams.
 
coolhandluke said:
As a fan of Davion, I'm happy to see this resurgence. If he can sustain it consistently, he can be an integral part of the playoff rotation. He may be more useful in the postseason that the regular season. He needs to keep shooting that open shots.

Still, Monte messed up by wasting a top 10 pick on a backup point guard. Imagine, if he had picked someone like Herb Jones instead? Home grown talent is the way to build a long term championship window especially for small market teams.
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Look, I liked Herb Jones coming out of college, but as a second round pick. He would have been a huge gamble to take in the lottery. There is no doubt that he would be a good defender, but offense was a huge question mark. He was a senior who shot 35% from 3 on 1.7 attempts a game (28% for his 4 seasons.). He had poor handles ( only straight line drives) and was an average passer. He was going to have to make major improvements just to get playing time. You don't risk a lottery pick on a long shot. To his credit, he has improved a lot, but GMs who risk high picks on long shots often find themselves looking for work.
 
Telemachus said:
Look, I liked Herb Jones coming out of college, but as a second round pick. He would have been a huge gamble to take in the lottery. There is no doubt that he would be a good defender, but offense was a huge question mark. He was a senior who shot 35% from 3 on 1.7 attempts a game (28% for his 4 seasons.). He had poor handles ( only straight line drives) and was an average passer. He was going to have to make major improvements just to get playing time. You don't risk a lottery pick on a long shot. To his credit, he has improved a lot, but GMs who risk high picks on long shots often find themselves looking for work.
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Agreed, sometimes being apart of an 8-9 man playoff rotation is a good outcome for a lottery/top 10 pick as plenty of those picks end up busting. Hindsight is always great, but at the time when Davion was drafted we needed defense and someone who could contribute desperately.
 
Telemachus said:
Look, I liked Herb Jones coming out of college, but as a second round pick. He would have been a huge gamble to take in the lottery. There is no doubt that he would be a good defender, but offense was a huge question mark. He was a senior who shot 35% from 3 on 1.7 attempts a game (28% for his 4 seasons.). He had poor handles ( only straight line drives) and was an average passer. He was going to have to make major improvements just to get playing time. You don't risk a lottery pick on a long shot. To his credit, he has improved a lot, but GMs who risk high picks on long shots often find themselves looking for work.
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Johnson was my swing for the fences bet at that point. But we really shouldn’t have been at that point. We should have traded Barnes to Boston and been drafting Kuminga or Wagner.
 
One concern I have had with Davion is that for a guy with a reputation for defensive chops, his Defensive rating on Basketball Reference is worst on the team at 121. That gives him a net rating of -15. The only one worse in DBPM (Defensive Box Plus Minus) is Harrison Barnes at -1.1 and -1.2, respectively.

Now, that site calculates ratings very differently from the NBA, where his defensive rating is a middling 114.5, between Ellis and Fox. But his net rating again is worst on the team at -9.4. I am glad that Davion is playing better on offense, but those numbers are brutal. Over the past ten games, per the NBA, his defensive rating is second worst on the team at 120.9. That is 3.4 points worse than Domantas Sabonis and 3.9 points worse than Malik Monk.

You can see now why I really wanted Mitchell to be traded before we reached the All Star break.
 
Caccia said:
One concern I have had with Davion is that for a guy with a reputation for defensive chops, his Defensive rating on Basketball Reference is worst on the team at 121. That gives him a net rating of -15. The only one worse in DBPM (Defensive Box Plus Minus) is Harrison Barnes at -1.1 and -1.2, respectively.

Now, that site calculates ratings very differently from the NBA, where his defensive rating is a middling 114.5, between Ellis and Fox. But his net rating again is worst on the team at -9.4. I am glad that Davion is playing better on offense, but those numbers are brutal. Over the past ten games, per the NBA, his defensive rating is second worst on the team at 120.9. That is 3.4 points worse than Domantas Sabonis and 3.9 points worse than Malik Monk.

You can see now why I really wanted Mitchell to be traded before we reached the All Star break.
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If I came up with a stat that made a player who is clearly the best individual defender on the team look like the worst, which would you trust more -- the stat or common sense?

Or put another way, which is more likely -- that the Minnesota Timberwolves currently have 5 of the top 11 defenders in the entire league in their rotation or basketball-reference.com's Defensive Rating is a team dependent stat which tells us very little about individual defensive ability because all it does is take a team's overall defensive rating and treat it as an average, assigning relative value to the players on that team based on counting stats like blocks, steals, and rebounds.
 
hrdboild said:
If I came up with a stat that made a player who is clearly the best individual defender on the team look like the worst, which would you trust more -- the stat or common sense?
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Ultimately, games are decided by a statistic (points) and not common sense. If Davion has an impact as an individual defender, there ought to be a way to measure it.

Maybe bkref's defensive rating isn't the stat that demonstrates Davion's impact. Maybe there isn't a universal defensive statistic. But if you had to pick one statistic that best exemplifies Davion's impact, what would you choose?
 
Insomniacal Fan said:
Ultimately, games are decided by a statistic (points) and not common sense. If Davion has an impact as an individual defender, there ought to be a way to measure it.

Maybe bkref's defensive rating isn't the stat that demonstrates Davion's impact. Maybe there isn't a universal defensive statistic. But if you had to pick one statistic that best exemplifies Davion's impact, what would you choose?
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There are better ways to measure individual defense related to player tracking but this is 2024 which means anything monetizable online has been monetized and most of this data is either proprietary or hidden behind paywalls.

Here's one measure from last season which shows Davion as the clear leader in defensive impact on the Kings:
The Best NBA Players According to RAPTOR '22-'23
(You'll have to scroll down and filter the data to show only Kings players)

But even if you do find a stat that you trust for this current season, Davion has played 4100 NBA minutes so far in his career and just 579 of them come from this season. Many of those minutes have come in 1-5 minute chunks at the end of games where very little actual competitive basketball is being played by either team or in a 2 week sample at the start of the season where Davion was so bad filling in for Fox as a starter that Mike Brown took him out of the rotation entirely. Any data coming from that sample set should rightly be viewed with skepticism, even more so if it doesn't align with what we've already seen in the 3500 minutes Davion has played prior to this season.
 
Insomniacal Fan said:
Ultimately, games are decided by a statistic (points) and not common sense. If Davion has an impact as an individual defender, there ought to be a way to measure it.

Maybe bkref's defensive rating isn't the stat that demonstrates Davion's impact. Maybe there isn't a universal defensive statistic. But if you had to pick one statistic that best exemplifies Davion's impact, what would you choose?
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And that’s part of the issue. A lot of the major advanced impact stats out there indicate that Mitchell is not impacting the game defensively all that much…
  • D-EPM = -1.2 (26th percentile)
  • D-DPM = -1.2 (485th overall)
  • D-RAPM = -0.1
  • D-RAPTOR = -2.4 (not a huge fan of RAPTOR in general but another data point to consider)

Those advanced defensive impact stats hardly scream good defender let alone average defender.

The more I think about this situation, the more I question if Mitchell is actually an impactful defender and it’s just the “flashiness” that makes us think he’s actually a positive on that end of the floor. Let me explain…

By “flashiness,” I’m referring to Mitchell’s elite ability to move his feet and stay in front of his man. He absolutely has some defensive plays where you’re simply in awe and it makes you ask the question “who else in the league can do that?” But I wonder if that elite skill Mitchell has can be somewhat neutralized by opposing offenses.

For example, you could simply set a screen on Mitchell which immediately neutralizes his best defensive skill (keeping his man in front of him). If the ball handler is a good shooter, it forces Mitchell to go over the top and try to slip back in front or challenge from behind. I think this is where Mitchell’s below average size/length hurt him. Having someone like Ellis on your hip or trailing behind you can be much different than having someone like Mitchell on your hip or trailing behind you. Ellis’ size/length can still bother the opponent from that position; whereas, Mitchell’s size/length…not so much.

It also somewhat explains why Murray is the POA defender when we go to that zone defense and why Mitchell is on the wing. Murray is good at keeping his man in front of him and he has great length to bother teams that put him in the PnR at the top of the key.

If Mitchell has to switch on a screen, he’s often now guarding at least a 6’5”+ player and his size/length becomes even more of an issue. Again, his elite defensive skill is somewhat negated if a player can simply pull up over him or back him down due to the size/length mismatch.

On top of all this, he doesn’t do much else to contribute defensively regarding the ending of possessions. He only averages (per 36 min)…
  • 2.4 def rebounds
  • 1.2 deflections
  • 0.6 steals
  • 0.1 blocks
  • 0.1 charges

Again, I’m starting to wonder if we’ve been fooled by his “flashiness” on defense (myself included) and that his lack of size/length ends up neutralizing the impact he can make on the defensive end considering how much more there is to defense than being able to keep your man in front of you 1-on-1.
 
twslam07 said:
And that’s part of the issue. A lot of the major advanced impact stats out there indicate that Mitchell is not impacting the game defensively all that much…
  • D-EPM = -1.2 (26th percentile)
  • D-DPM = -1.2 (485th overall)
  • D-RAPM = -0.1
  • D-RAPTOR = -2.4 (not a huge fan of RAPTOR in general but another data point to consider)

Those advanced defensive impact stats hardly scream good defender let alone average defender.

The more I think about this situation, the more I question if Mitchell is actually an impactful defender and it’s just the “flashiness” that makes us think he’s actually a positive on that end of the floor. Let me explain…

By “flashiness,” I’m referring to Mitchell’s elite ability to move his feet and stay in front of his man. He absolutely has some defensive plays where you’re simply in awe and it makes you ask the question “who else in the league can do that?” But I wonder if that elite skill Mitchell has can be somewhat neutralized by opposing offenses.

For example, you could simply set a screen on Mitchell which immediately neutralizes his best defensive skill (keeping his man in front of him). If the ball handler is a good shooter, it forces Mitchell to go over the top and try to slip back in front or challenge from behind. I think this is where Mitchell’s below average size/length hurt him. Having someone like Ellis on your hip or trailing behind you can be much different than having someone like Mitchell on your hip or trailing behind you. Ellis’ size/length can still bother the opponent from that position; whereas, Mitchell’s size/length…not so much.

It also somewhat explains why Murray is the POA defender when we go to that zone defense and why Mitchell is on the wing. Murray is good at keeping his man in front of him and he has great length to bother teams that put him in the PnR at the top of the key.

If Mitchell has to switch on a screen, he’s often now guarding at least a 6’5”+ player and his size/length becomes even more of an issue. Again, his elite defensive skill is somewhat negated if a player can simply pull up over him or back him down due to the size/length mismatch.

On top of all this, he doesn’t do much else to contribute defensively regarding the ending of possessions. He only averages (per 36 min)…
  • 2.4 def rebounds
  • 1.2 deflections
  • 0.6 steals
  • 0.1 blocks
  • 0.1 charges

Again, I’m starting to wonder if we’ve been fooled by his “flashiness” on defense (myself included) and that his lack of size/length ends up neutralizing the impact he can make on the defensive end considering how much more there is to defense than being able to keep your man in front of you 1-on-1.
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At this point this is just the tail wagging the dog to me. If you think any of that matters more than forcing your opponent into a tough shot or, even better, forcing them to give the ball up in frustration than I don't know what to say. I think a lot of this group-think about emphasizing "measurables" instead of actual stops is actively making people worse defenders.
 
hrdboild said:
At this point this is just the tail wagging the dog to me. If you think any of that matters more than forcing your opponent into a tough shot or, even better, forcing them to give the ball up in frustration than I don't know what to say. I think a lot of this group-think about emphasizing "measurables" instead of actual stops is actively making people worse defenders.
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But is it a tough shot? That’s really what it boils down to.

Also, there was only one part of my post that I’d consider measurables (rebounds, deflections, etc.) but that was the icing to my post’s cake. Advanced impact stats that attempt to quantify team performance while controlling for strength of teammates, strength of opponents, shot selection, etc. I wouldn’t really consider them measurables/counting stats but perhaps that’s just semantics and how we think about that word differently.
 
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