We know the traditional box score fails to wholly describe every player’s on-court impact, but few players are held in such unfairly low esteem because of it than Miami’s Joel Anthony. On Monday, Anthony finished with four points on 1-of-3 shooting and six rebounds, though he did also have three blocked shots in his 27 minutes. Even with three blocks, that’s an underwhelming line, and Anthony’s typical lack of points and boards is part of the reason why he’s often incorrectly grouped with Miami’s less-than-productive supporting cast.
J Pat Carter/Associated Press Joel Anthony’s defensive contributions to the Heat are often overlooked.Anthony has his less effective nights, but mostly, the problem is that his game doesn’t translate to the box score. It does, however, show well on the Heat’s internal gauge of player production, an exhaustive list of in-game factors. In a phenomenal profile of Anthony for ESPN.com’s Heat Index, Tom Haberstroh described Miami’s own system for evaluating player performance:
Point guards can’t turn the corner on a pick-and-roll because of him. Post players can’t get around him on the block. Penetrators can’t get a good look at the rim. These effects are all important. But in the age of the box score, Anthony’s contributions are often left in the dark.
But the Heat employ their own version of the box score, and it’s extraordinarily comprehensive. Years ago, Pat Riley devised the method, Stan van Gundy implemented it and Erik Spoelstra used to chart it. Brian Hecker, one of the team’s scouts, currently does the dirty work, grading every player on every possession based on 56 criteria. Yes, 56.It’s a system of pluses and minuses. If a defender successfully thwarts a pick-and-roll, that’s a plus. If he contains a player in the post, that’s another plus. If he player fails to box out his man, that’s a minus. Those are three of the 56 categories. Big men can tally as many as six pluses on a single possession.
And wouldn’t you know it, Anthony is an absolute monster by this measure.
“He grades out as well as any big player as we’ve ever had,” Spoelstra said. “He’s quick and leaps about as well as any center in this league.”
Don’t believe him? See for yourself:
And that was just from the second quarter of Monday night’s game.
Watch the way Anthony hedges and recovers. The way he always manages to have good defensive position in the post. His rotations to contest penetration without fouling. You can start to see the pluses piling up on Anthony’s scorecard, even as his box score numbers remain pedestrian. It’s terrific that Anthony was able to block three shots, but those swats only capture a sliver of his defensive impact. The real value is in his quickness and athleticism, which allow him to be a formidable center for the Heat despite standing just 6-9.
Yet fans who tuned in to Monday’s game are probably more likely to remember Anthony for his botched alley-oop attempt than anything he did on defense. That’s due in part to a general public devaluation of defense, but if we dig a bit deeper, Anthony has a uniquely difficult role as a defensive specialist manning the middle. Tony Allen and Andre Iguodala are tremendous perimeter defenders, but more importantly, they’re weaponized defenders. The Grizzlies can attack Manu Ginobili with Allen in their first round series, and the Sixers can send Iguodala to harass either LeBron James or Dwyane Wade in theirs.
Anthony, on the other hand, plays a more reactive role. You wouldn’t send him to “attack” Dwight Howard or Kevin Garnett, for example, because Anthony isn’t a “lockdown” defender; he’s merely one who does all of the right things within a team concept, and experiences a different kind of success as a result. That lack of overtly aggressive defensive application dooms Anthony’s reputation, as his greatest on-court strength is captured neither by the box scores we rely on so heavily nor the bite-sized analysis dispensed from our television sets.
It doesn’t take a 56-category system to appreciate his diligence and precision; the proof of Anthony’s success is evident if one knows where to look. It simply requires a glance away from the on-ball action and a broader understanding of what it means to play great defense.