Andre Roberson: When defense is fun

NBAE/Getty

By L. Pektac
Special to DT

The most memorable play from the Thunder’s recent game against the Bucks came when the outcome of the game was all but over.

With about 2:00 remaining in the fourth quarter, Jabari Parker hauled down a defensive rebound, dribbled the length of the court and attacked a backpedaling Andre Roberson in transition. Parker crossed over to the left, spun toward the baseline and put up a pretty fadeaway jumper… only to have it swallowed by Roberson, who stuck with him at every turn.

It was just one play, but it reinforced something that Roberson’s been proving all season: Defense can be a blast.

Roberson is the spiritual (and positional) successor to Thabo Sefolosha, but the way the two play D couldn’t be more different. If the beauty of Sefolosha’s defense was in its subtlety — terrific closeouts, smart gambling, etc. — the beauty of Roberson’s defense is in its total lack of it.

Roberson’s a freaking bulldog. When he’s on the ball, he cuts off virtually all airspace between himself and his man, often picking up ball-handlers well beyond the 3-point line. Last year, that aggression led to a massive foul rate, and I assumed that he would have to tone it down to be a useful NBA player. I was wrong.

Roberson hasn’t toned down his aggression. He’s just vastly improved his defense. His lateral movement has been terrific this season, and he’s completely cut out the tick-tacky hand-checking that got him into trouble as a rookie. He’s fouling 4.2 times per 36 minutes, a massive improvement over last season. It’s early, but 2014-15 Roberson has looked every bit as good as peak Sefolosha defensively. He’s racking up deflections, blowing up pick-and-rolls (Roberson is maybe the only OKC wing who doesn’t get smashed by screens) and delivering tremendous close-outs.

Just by watching games, you can see that Roberson is a very strong defender. Dive into some of the analytics, and you can construct a reasonable case that he’s been perhaps the best defensive wing in the league this year.

As Royce recently pointed out, the Thunder’s defense falls off a cliff when Roberson exits the game. It’s not hard to see why. ESPN’s RPM (real plus/minus) system and Basketball-Reference’s DBPM (defensive box plus/minus) system peg him as roughly one of the five or six best perimeter defenders in the league.

Other metrics are even kinder to Roberson. Players are shooting just 32 percent—over 13 percent lower than their season average—when Roberson is defending them, per NBA.com’s Player Tracking data. I haven’t looked at the data for every player in the league, but I can confidently say that Roberson’s numbers are heads and shoulders above any player with even a sliver of a defensive reputation.

Marcus Smart is the only guard or wing outside of Roberson who boasts a double-digit differential per this data, and only two players (Sefolosha and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist) can match or exceed Roberson’s numbers at any spot on the floor. That’s insane.

There are a few caveats worth mentioning. The Thunder have played a lot of zone defense, and Roberson doesn’t get thrown at opponents’ best offensive player every night, like most of his counterparts do. Still, his lead over the rest of the league is overwhelming, even if taken with a grain of salt.

Roberson’s rebounding has also been outstanding. He’s not crashing the offensive glass like he did last year (though it looks like that’s by design), but he’s an awesome defensive rebounder, especially for his position. OKC is snagging boards at a roughly top-five level on both ends when he’s on the floor and a roughly bottom-five level when he’s sitting. It’s no secret that some of the Thunder bigs have struggled to hold onto rebounds. Roberson has made their lives a whole lot easier in that facet.

Offensively, Roberson has been good, but not great. Just kidding. He’s been truly terrible. Magnitudes worse than Sefolosha was last year. He’s now shooting a whopping six percent from deep, and defenders are treating him with “2012-13 postseason Kendrick Perkins” levels of indifference.

Roberson gets a few easy baskets off of baseline cuts every game, but that doesn’t make up for how badly he suffocates the Thunder’s spacing on most possessions. Roberson’s man essentially lives in the paint, and again, it’s hard to overstate the degree to which defenders ignore him. On one possession against New Orleans, Tyreke Evans just didn’t look at him. The whole possession.

The good news is that, to this point, he’s been more than playable when paired with a legitimate shooter on the wing. OKC is nuking teams when Roberson plays alongside either Kevin Durant or Anthony Morrow. And really, almost every Roberson combo has performed well if you ignore any minutes it spent alongside Lance Thomas (Roberson-Thomas was the offensive equivalent of just punting the ball out of bounds on every possession, minus the entertainment that would have provided).

The Thunder’s general excellence with Roberson on the court might not hold up over time. The current starters have been phenomenal, but they’ve faced mostly terrible defenses. The best teams in the league are going to take advantage of Roberson’s offense, especially in the playoffs, when they’ll have plenty of time to scheme up even more efficient ways of ignoring him.

Even so, Roberson has been so excellent defensively and as a rebounder, that there’s no real reason he shouldn’t be seeing at least 20 minutes a game (he’s at 18.5 in December). He’ll obviously keep getting burn with the starters so long as they’re playing well. But his real niche is likely as a smallball 3, where he can play alongside shooters and help cement those lineups’ defense and rebounding.

The Thunder essentially haven’t gone small at all this season, per 82games.com. But with Durant back, that should change quickly. Reggie Jackson, Morrow and Jeremy Lamb are all strong choices to take one or both of the wing spots available in small lineups, and OKC will likely give the Jackson-Morrow combo in particular a lot of run. The defense is going to be mediocre at best in those groups though, making the safer bet something like Roberson-Jackson or Roberson-Morrow.

OKC headed into this season banking on at least two of its young wings growing into legitimate contributors for a championship contributor. A quarter of the way through the 2014-15 season, one of them has. Just not the one that most were expecting.

All stats courtesy of NBA.com unless stated otherwise.