Consider first some team context. The Clippers are almost exactly league average as a per-possession defensive team, ranking 15th in the league per NBA.com. This isn’t a death sentence to a DPOY candidate by itself (one of our top five candidates below plays for a team that’s slightly worse than this for the season), but the player in question had better be something quite impressive on the defensive end to warrant inclusion if his team isn’t among the league’s top 10 or so. Here’s the thing, though: Jordan isn’t that impressive as a defender. Blocks are nice, but they have an unfortunate tendency to often overrate defenders given the fact that, until recently, they were one of the only available statistical measures of a player’s impact.
This is what’s happening here, and a particularly egregious case of it at that. The largest piece of evidence? Jordan’s own team is better defensively when he sits on the bench than when he plays. That’s right, the Clippers allow a 103.7 rating with DeAndre and a 102.3 rating when he’s off the floor.
