Noted basketball terrorist Trae Young, often hailed as the worst defender in the NBA has managed to pull his defensive EPM to almost 0.0 (it actually should be once tonight’s game is taken into account). All jokes aside this is pretty impressive stuff as he has managed to improve on defense year after year and is currently top 10 in steals as well. His efficiency is shaky in the new system that Quin installed but stuff like this is nice to see.
||Offensive and Defensive EPM||| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |Player |Offense|Defense||| |Trae Young|3.9|-0.1|||
Personally, I think that Trae is a vastly improved defender eventhough I wouldn’t go as far as to say that he’s neutral not yet anyway. Single player defensive metrics are imo all flawed and a single one can’t make a statement if someone’s a good defender or not. It comes down to the eye-test which Trae passes in relation to what his defense has been in the past. Just constantly competing, making smart rotations and holding up reasonably well in tough spots.