NBL: Top Five Defensive Players of the Year

A deep dive into the players who provided the most value on defence this season.

Scoring efficiency is up this regular season — over two points per 100 possessions — and good offence from the elite players beats good defence from even the best defenders at times, but there’s still plenty of candidates for the Damian Martin Trophy.

Here’s my rankings, of which I see four standouts (where an order just needs to be decided), and then a good discussion to be had on fifth.

1. Shea Ili

Not yet a winner of this award, Ili finishing without a Defensive Player of the Year trophy in his career would be strange. Thankfully, he’s been able to put aside some scary concussion issues and be playing a career-high in minutes, helping his case. As the best guard defender in the league, Ili’s impact is felt in numerous ways.

You can’t get sloppy with protecting the ball around him:

There’s always multiple efforts. Here he tracks Trey Kell off the ball, denies him the catch, blocks his back cut, before scrambling in transition to defend Jacob Wiley in the post well enough to force a miss:

He’s the best at not getting screened, and if there isn’t real contact made to stop his path, he’ll be in denial mode, or even jump the lane and pick off the pass:

Another thing that he’s the best at is taking the offence out of their flow. He’ll suck a bunch of time off the shot clock and force teams into lower quality options:

If he doesn’t stop his man from getting the ball, he’ll fight through the screen, slide his speedy feet, and take one in the body to draw the charge: