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The kids are all right on defense

Writer's picture: The San Juan Daily StarThe San Juan Daily Star


San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama’s greatest power is not the shots he blocks; it’s the ones opponents do not even dare to attempt. (Facebook via Victor Wembanyama)
San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama’s greatest power is not the shots he blocks; it’s the ones opponents do not even dare to attempt. (Facebook via Victor Wembanyama)

By John Hollinger / The Athletic


Something has changed in the NBA, and I’m not sure it is getting enough attention.


Let’s start with three plays from a Jan. 6 game between the Chicago Bulls and San Antonio Spurs. All three feature Bulls center Nikola Vucevic attempting to score against the Spurs’ 7-foot-3 center, Victor Wembanyama.


— Ninety seconds into the game, Vucevic goes to his bread and butter, a pick-and-pop with Josh Giddey. Vucevic has been cooking from outside this season, but when he picks and pops against Wembanyama, he knows the Spurs big man can recover and block his jump shot. So Vucevic wisely shot-fakes and cruises to the rim for what he thinks is an easy layup, only to have Wembanyama block his offering from behind.


— Two minutes later, Vucevic gets Wembanyama on the block, but he knows his usual offering of jump hooks with either hand is likely to end up in Row 7. Instead, he goes to the shot-fake. It works. Wembanyama leaves his feet! Unfortunately, he recovers so quickly that when Vucevic goes up for a layup, Wembanyama does not just block it, he swallows it with his hands.


— One minute later, Vucevic catches a pass from Zach LaVine 1 foot from the basket and seems to have an uncontested layup or dunk, except he senses the looming presence of Wembanyama. Vucevic turns down the first shot and tries to dribble into Wembanyama’s body. That does not work either. Instead, despite being a 7-footer and inches from the basket, he meekly kicks the ball out and resets the offense.


This play, what I call the “Hell naw,” is Wembanyama’s true specialty. The center’s greatest power is not the shots he blocks; it’s the ones opponents do not even dare to attempt.


Wembanyama blocked eight shots that night, and while the Bulls ended up rallying to beat San Antonio, the larger story arc of Wembanyama’s defensive dominance this season is only gaining steam.


Those three plays show the quandary of going up against Wembanyama: What are you supposed to do against him? He can cover the entire lane in a single bound, needs a nanosecond to load up for his jump (or second jump) and his arms are longer than a CVS receipt. Good luck trying to score on him.


In just his second season, Wembanyama has blocked four shots per game, the most in the NBA in nearly three decades.


He swats 5.8 shots per 100 possessions, and only 11 players in the league have played at least 500 minutes and blocked even half as many.


Want a more amazing stat? He had 127 blocks through Sunday’s games — do you know how many times he was called for goaltending?


Four. That’s it.


Needless to say, the results back up his impact. The Spurs give up 7.2 points fewer per 100 possessions when he plays and surrender a much lower field goal percentage. Inside 6 feet, opponents shoot 50.2% against the Spurs when he is the closest defender and 62.9% the rest of the time. That’s as big a difference as any other player in the NBA who has played the bulk of his team’s games.


In doing so, Wembanyama has single-handedly dragged the Spurs into the top half of the league in defensive efficiency and into the Western Conference playoff race. He has become the runaway front-runner for defensive player of the year at age 21, a year after finishing second in voting. And that, friends, is my long-winded lead-in to the real story here:


The kids are taking over on defense.


This has never been the way in this league. Mastering defense was something that was supposed to take years. But as the game has opened up and prioritized mobility and switchability, it has been easier for younger players to enter the NBA and make a more immediate impact. Wembanyama is one example — nobody is trying to mash him into the stanchion the way players might have a decade ago.


While the older cohort still has its share of elite defenders — 31-year-old Rudy Gobert was the defensive player of the year in 2023-24, most notably — we have had a fairly abrupt changing of the guard in the past few seasons that has only accelerated in 2024-25. (Note that all ages in this article are as of Feb. 1 for the season in question and all statistics were through Sunday’s games.)


Take 21-year-old Dyson Daniels in Atlanta, for instance. Liberated from a crowded backcourt in New Orleans, the Great Barrier Thief, as he is sometimes called, is running with the league lead in steals and deflections in his third season, to the point that his 225 deflections on the season are 87 more than second-place Kelly Oubre Jr. His team does not reach the midpoint of its schedule until Saturday, yet Daniels is closing in on the point where he could shut it down for the year and still lead the league in deflections.


If there were an Eastern Conference defensive player of the year race, Daniels’ biggest rival would most likely be the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Evan Mobley, 23. He has been the linchpin of the defense for a Cavaliers team that is running away from the rest of the East; he also finished third in defensive player of the year voting two years ago, when the Memphis Grizzlies’ Jaren Jackson Jr. won.


At 25, Jackson is not exactly a grizzled veteran, either. He, along with Wembanyama, Mobley and Daniels, are the four players to be recognized as defensive player of the month this season. Thus, every winner of the league’s newest honor has been 25 or younger.


Again, this is a massive difference from how things have been historically. Nobody under the age of 22 had meaningful vote share for defensive player of the year in any of the six seasons from 2016 to 2021, and the 2017, 2018 and 2019 All-Defensive teams did not feature a single player under 24. As recently as 2019, eight of the 10 players on the two All-Defensive squads were 27 or older.


This season? It is possible Wembanyama and Daniels finish first and second as 21-year-olds. We might also see all five first-team All-Defensive spots go to players 25 or younger when you add players like Mobley; Jackson; Oklahoma City’s Jalen Williams, 23, and Lu Dort, 25; Houston’s Amen Thompson, 21; Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards, 23, and Jaden McDaniels, 24; and Orlando’s Goga Bitadze, 25 — and that is with the Thunder’s fly-swatting Chet Holmgren, 22, out with an injury.


Oklahoma City is without a doubt the league’s paramount example. The top eight players in minutes all are 26 or younger. Two of the most impactful have been Williams, who has had an extended run as a 6-6 center and somehow mastered rim protection despite playing point guard in college, and 21-year-old Cason Wallace, a ball-hawking guard with the team’s highest steal rate.


Despite relying on young players, the Thunder are poised to be one of the best defensive teams in NBA history, if not the best. Their 103.9 defensive rating is 9.4 points below the league average; since team turnovers began being tracked in 1970-71, no team has ever finished a season that far below the league average.


We are at a point where the learning curve is faster because talent is mattering as much or more than strength and technique. As a result, we are seeing players make massive leaps forward as soon as their second and third seasons in the league.


Wembanyama, at the individual level, and the Thunder, at the team level, are our two shining examples. But look deeper, and examples of both types abound. Things have changed.

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