I think Ben Wallace and Dennis Rodman stand out because they were all time defenders without much offense. But I think it’s the fact that we care so much about offense that it becomes noticeable with defenders like this. Bruce Bowen, Draymond Green, Dikembe Mutombo, Tony Allen, Michael Cooper, etc I mean there are lots of examples of guys who had great defensive abilities with limited offensive abilities and these guys don’t stand out to us as bigger stars because of their limited offense.
But think about the other way around – how many great offensive guys were very limited defensively? There’s all time superstars like Steve Nash, George Gervin, James Harden, Melo and Dirk Nowitzki who are like this. Basically all offense, no defense. And yet we don’t seem to criticize these guys as much for being so one way right?
The game of basketball seems to be quite focused on offensive stats and offensive players so the players who have all offense no defense can still be considered superstars, but the other way around (all defense no offense) usually cannot be superstars and are relegated to just ‘specialist’ role players. So when you’re talking about ‘lopsided’ keep in mind that we see lopsided superstars all the time in all offense no defense guys it’s just that we don’t penalize them as much as when we see all defense no offense guys because offense is much more appreciated in basketball than defense.
I want to address this comment ^ since I can’t seem to reply to him.
So, I 100% disagree with this comment. A team with all offensive players won’t even work and he’s taking that bet 10 out of 10 times? You see, there’s only one basketball which means that the team with all offensive players – they can only do a fraction of their damage each since they have to share amongst their teammates. So a team of Nash, Melo, Dirk, Harden, Towns.. none of them can fully use their abilities because they don’t have the ball in their hands all the time. On the other hand, a full defensive team of Allen, Bowen, Cooper, Mutombo and Wallace can utilize their defense to the fullest all the time, since defense doesn’t require the ball to be in anyone’s hands. Therefore they can lock down all the offense guys, while nobody on the offense guys can guard the defensive guys – just the defensive guys aren’t going to score as much. But I would wager that they would still score more than the offensive guys will since like I said, the offensive guys skillset is limited due to their limited touches.
Proof of this is the 2004 Pistons who only needed one good offensive player (Rip Hamilton) to win, and counterevidence is the Suns teams whether it be the Barkley 1993 team or the Nash incarnations or even this year’s KD/Booker version who were full of all offense guys. None of these teams were able to win anything with all that offense.
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