To go in hand with this morning's shooting stats post, let's look at Defensive stats for that same time frame going back to 11/18 and just including Starting players in our analysis. Again, these numbers are averages of all starters across all games since the 18th. 

Defensive Rating


Steals


Blocks


Total Rebounds


I'll start this by saying that Defensive Rating is kind of a weird one. It has a lot to do with player steals and blocks, but also how often players are 'blown by' an opponent over a proportion of possessions. The fact that Denver's Starting Lineup has the best average Defensive Rating since 11/18 has my laughing to myself a little bit. Their starting lineup is in the bottom 5 for average steals, blocks, and rebounds over the last 11 days. They also lost ALL FIVE of their games during that stretch. I guess what can be interpreted from this is that their starting lineup may not be why they lost, but rather the lack of depth due to multiple key injuries. (Our rebound Under hero from last season, MPJ, now scheduled to have back surgery). 

In my opinion from looking at this data, is that Minnesota is hands down playing the most active defense of anyone in the league. 2nd overall in total rebounds, 2nd overall in average blocks, and 1st overall in average steals. 3rd from the bottom in Defensive Rating? Again, I'm pointing this stuff out to, i suppose, draw attention to the lack in confidence that one can take out of these 'rating' measurements. The more data we can see and interpret, the better off we'll be.