Doke on D: A Tribute
That DEF RTG tho!
Courtesy of the LJ World
KU fans are generally quite spoiled, and at the beginning of this year’s schedule, it wasn’t unusual to find fans a little underwhelmed by the Jayhawks’ early season performances. Udoka Azubuike, a 20-year-old senior center, hadn’t really added much to his offensive arsenal, at first glance: he looked a little slow on defense, too.
In his first three years at Kansas, Doke had been a really good defender, not a great one—his defensive efficiency rating hovered in the low 90s, a tick above his teams’ overall efficiency rating. It would be easy to miss his slow year-by-year uptick in stats like Rebound % and Block %, and his offensive game is what it always has been. Doke is shooting 74% around the rim this season, which translates to—you guessed it—a 74% field goal percentage overall. He still feasts on a platter of lobs and dunks, and it’ll be that way for as long as Doke is playing competitive basketball.
Once KU got into its conference slate—or at least, that’s when Doke’s emergence became most noticeable to me—he exploded. He wasn’t able to do stuff like this even a year ago:
Now, Doke’s DEF RTG is … [pause for drama] … 81.3. For every opponent possession, Doke’s mere presence on the floor is allowing for roughly .8 points a trip. That is lower than the overall team rating, which suggests that Doke is the defense’s most important player. (For reference, Marcus Garrett’s DEF RTG is 87.3). That is very good.
But you don’t have to dive into advanced stats to make the case for Azubuike’s almost-certain DPOY campaign. Having trimmed down in the offseason and dedicated himself to conditioning—injuries held him back in the past, which were obviously out of his control—Doke looks like a whole new force out there. Not really a rim protector in previous seasons, he’s proved that he now has that dimension to his game. Also: “sliding your feet” just became the game’s sexiest defensive maneuver.
What's not to love?
Here’s a little more context, thanks to a very good piece by The Athletic’s Sam Vicenie, emphases mine:
Because looking through the numbers, Azubuike is the best rim protector in America. According to Pivot Analysis’ numbers, with Azubuike on the floor, teams shoot just 45.3 percent at the rim, which would rank fourth nationally and second among teams that play primarily man-to-man defense. (On the other hand, 2-3 zones are always bunched toward the top of these rankings because they almost always lead to contested interior shots.)
But it’s not just that his 7-foot height and 7-foot-7 wingspan put a lid on the rim when he’s in there. It’s that teams don’t even really get shots at the rim. When Azubuike is on the floor, teams only take 40.3 percent of their shots at the rim, which would rank ninth of the 75 teams in high-major conferences. And among those teams in the top nine, only Virginia and Louisville allow opponents to shoot under 50 percent at the rim, and neither allows a better percentage at the rim than Kansas.
To repeat: Doke shoots SEVENTY-FOUR PERCENT at the rim while opponents shoot in the LOW FORTIES. Doke is anchoring one of college’s best-ever defenses, and he had to rebuild his game to accomplish this. At times, Doke’s back-to-the-basket dominance has been framed as a cautionary tale for the decline of the traditional big man in basketball, but his 2019-2020 campaign has shown that including him in that conversation is short-sighted. Doke is now a season-changer on defense, and I have a feeling that will not be ignored at the next level.
It’s a remarkably cool story. Let’s all enjoy it before things get crazy in about four days.