We don't need 2 DPOY awards, but don't take guard defense for granted

A few weeks ago, Jalen Williams - the Oklahoma City Thunder's do-it-all guard/wing/occasional small-ball center - made a bold proposal.

"I think there should be two Defensive Players of the Year," Williams said on the "Young Man and the Three" podcast. "It's just a big every year. I feel like it does a disservice to guards that are constantly in it. Everybody that's gotten it is deserving, but defense is very different for certain players. (It should be) a big and a guard. They do two different things."

Although positional responsibilities are starting to bleed together in today's NBA, where just about everyone at every position can do a little bit of everything, Williams is right that guards and bigs serve very distinct defensive functions. Comparing them is an apples-to-oranges exercise.

It's also true that neither can succeed independently of the other. Bigs protect the most valuable real estate on the court, but they rely on guards to chase around increasingly dangerous ball-handlers and shooters, and funnel the action toward them.

"Maybe I'm biased," Celtics stalwart Jrue Holiday told me. "But I do think that, while guards don't necessarily protect the rim in terms of blocking shots, bigs also don't know how to fight over a screen or chase around a pindown."

If there's an argument over whether one of those things is more important than the other, it's seemingly been long settled in the minds of award voters; Marcus Smart is the only guard to have won DPOY in the last 29 years. And last season, when the All-Defensive teams became position-less for the first time, four of the five first-team selections were centers. (Though, in fairness, four of the five second-team spots went to guards.)

Victor Wembanyama was the runaway DPOY favorite this year before his season was cut short due to a blood clot. Now that he's out of contention, the heavy front-runners are big men Jaren Jackson Jr. and Evan Mobley. However deserving those guys might be, point-of-attack defenders around the league clearly feel their contributions aren't being fully appreciated.

"It makes no sense, when the guard is the one picking up 94 feet, the guard is the one getting over a screen before doing his work, closing out and contesting before the ball even gets to a big," said Smart, who started the season in Memphis and is now playing in Washington. "We do a lot more than we get credit for. So, nothing against the bigs, they do a good job, we need them. But us guards, we're down there working in the trenches."

Though more and more action is being run through centers and jumbo wings, guards remain the primary offensive engines in the NBA. Even the most skilled bigs can't handle the ball or shoot off the dribble or on the move the way the best guards can. This season, guards listed at 6-foot-6 or under account for 12 of the top 15 qualified players in 3-point attempts per 100 possessions, 13 of the league's 15 highest-volume drivers, and 31 of the 40 most frequent ball-handlers, according to NBA Advanced Stats. Someone has to contain all that action.

"That's the guy who's running the team," Magic point guard Jalen Suggs said of the guys he was regularly bottling up before back and knee injuries derailed his season. "Some teams have their wings handle that, but when you're able to lock down a guard with another guard, it makes it really tough for the offense to get in a flow."

Bigs are, of course, no less crucial to containing those guys with ball-screen coverage, back-line help, and rim deterrence. But without adequate resistance in front of them, they wind up stretched too thin trying to guard two players at once.

"Having that dominant big protecting the rim helps your defense a ton because you can kind of funnel things into him," Suggs said. "But if you can't guard the perimeter, it don't even matter where he's at."

Here's an explanation from Davion Mitchell, who was almost singlehandedly holding the point-of-attack dam for the Raptors before being traded to Miami at the deadline:

"Nine times out of 10, if I'm guarding a guard, I'm on his hip where he can't jump as high to even go up for the layup," Mitchell said. "Like, if I'm guarding someone like Ja Morant, he can jump over literally anyone, but if I'm close to his body to where he can't jump as high, and he misses the layup, I feel like that's just me, no matter what (the big does), because he can't get to his athleticism. It's just little things like that that people don't always see."

While it may not have risen to the importance of big-man defense, guard defense today comes with a wider array of responsibilities and more weight than ever. So many of the defensive trends currently shaping the league put the impetus on guards. Pick-up points are higher on the floor than they've been in years, up to and including full-court pressure. There's an increased focus on getting into the ball and forcing turnovers.

The ability to dodge screens has also never been more valuable given the sheer number and variety of screens being set on and off the ball. Guards who can stay connected and provide serious rear-view pressure allow their teams to play those screening actions with minimal supplemental help, keeping others home on shooters and cutters. But navigating that minefield requires a ton of awareness and preparation.

"There's so many different ways you can do it," Suggs explained. "You can do it literally by sheer force, like hitting the big so many times as they come up to screen that they're not sprinting into (the screens) as much, and not setting them as steady. That kind of gives you some grace and a bit more room to move around. You can apply so much pressure on the ball that you kind of push the guard away from any any attacking or scoring position. You can slide under. It really just depends on the night, which technique you decide to use.

"That makes it fun, because there's so many different styles of guards in the league, whether it's big, small, fast- or slow-paced, very physical or very twitchy. It's just so many styles that you have to guard while you're a perimeter defender. So with screen navigation, it's just about mixing it up and really just finding any way to get through."

Conversely, the inability to fight through screens has a cascading effect that complicates everything a defense wants to accomplish. It might mean the big has to play higher up than he's comfortable with. It might force emergency switches. It will often pull a third defender into the action on the back side. It's also likely to lead to more fouls.

Consider Milwaukee with and without Holiday. During his three seasons there, the Bucks finished first, second, and second in opponent free-throw attempt rate. In the two seasons since they traded him for Damian Lillard, they've ranked 13th and 12th. That personnel shift greatly impacted their deep-drop scheme and their defense as a whole. Brook Lopez finished runner-up in DPOY voting in Holiday's last year there but didn't come close to making an All-Defensive team last season (and likely won't this season, either). Sometimes, the best interior defense is good perimeter defense.

"A lot of the time, when you have a good guard defending, the offense isn't getting into the paint until about 8-10 seconds on the shot clock, and they gotta force a shot," Smart said. "Now the big's coming over to block it. They got 24 seconds, and we took 15 off for you."

"Us limiting guys from getting to the rim is rim-protecting in itself," Suggs said.

There are loads of other ways guard defenders can contribute to their teams' holistic rim-protecting efforts. They can stymie drivers' progress by digging from the wing and forcing them to pick up their dribble early. They can make the nail a no-fly zone on middle pick-and-rolls to protect their dropping bigs. Wiry guards like Holiday, who can survive major height mismatches, allow the defense to switch liberally and erase the north-south dimension of opponent pick-and-rolls. Others like Suggs excel at veer switching and blowing up pocket passes to roll men.

More than anything, guards can make their interior presence felt with how they rotate as low men behind the play. Done right, they can set themselves up to take charges, strip the ball, force kickouts, or - in the case of guys like Suggs, Williams, and the Celtics' Derrick White - contest and block shots.

"I think that there's multiple ways to guard the rim," Holiday said. "You can take charges, you can go vertical ... it's not all about blocks. But I think defense, especially for me and Derrick, is something that we hang our hats on, just knowing that it's what's going to help us win. So obviously I do my best to hold down the back line, whether it's getting steals or baiting people into turnovers. And I know Derrick's been, for the last few years now, blocking shots like crazy."

Plenty of elite defenses are largely being powered by guards, including Williams' historically great Thunder, Suggs' second-ranked Magic, and Holiday and White's fifth-ranked Celtics. You could include the third-ranked Clippers, depending on how you measure Kris Dunn's impact versus Ivica Zubac's.

Other teams like the Hawks, Pacers, and Kings, who aren't good defensively, have been rescued from being truly bad by guards like Dyson Daniels, Andrew Nembhard, and Keon Ellis. All of those guys have to cover for shaky defensive backcourt mates, whereas Suggs, Holiday, and Williams have the benefit of being flanked by other elite defensive guards.

"It's really nice playing with (Kentavious Caldwell-Pope) because, for as much as I love to defend, it's tiring," Suggs said. "So to get to take a step back sometimes and watch a defender like that hound guys and really shut them down, watching him kill possessions by himself just because guys aren't able to get the ball inside the 3-point line, I think shit like that is dope.

"Everybody plays a part, but being able to defend on the perimeter, I think, is one of the very important things we can do to win games on any given night."

None of that necessarily means there actually have to be two DPOYs. But when giving defensive bigs their deserved flowers, we should remember to save a few bouquets for the guys who allow those bigs to flourish.

"Shout out to the bigs," Mitchell said. "Rudy Gobert ... Wemby ... those bigs are really good defenders. But I think we should show more love to guards."

Joe Wolfond covers the NBA for theScore.