All his life, Nerlens Noel has been lauded for his play on the defensive end of the floor.

It’s what made him the nation’s top recruit coming out of high school in 2012. It’s what allowed him to become the only college player this millennium to average more than 4.0 blocks and 2.0 steals per game during his freshman season at Kentucky. And it’s what prompted the Sixers to select him with the sixth-overall pick in the 2013 Draft despite an existing knee injury that the team knew could cost him his entire rookie season.

Noel indeed ended up redshirting his first NBA season, spending the entire year watching his team struggle from afar while absorbing knowledge from Brett Brown and his staff and breaking down and rebuilding his jumper from scratch. He began with the basics – the placement of his feet, creating a 90-degree angle with his forearm and bicep, and releasing the ball at the apex of his jump. The process was painfully tedious.

The then 19-year-old was restricted to shooting with one hand for much of the year as the Sixers’ coaching staff looked to break the bad habits he’d acquired in regard to the placement of his guide hand. He took the vast majority of these shots from within eight feet of the hoop at first, only extending out to greater distances once the team’s coaching staff was pleased with his consistency at a given distance.

A season of unyielding patience and dedication on the part of the rookie big man allowed him to completely transform his shot by year’s end. But building up his confidence would prove to be an equally difficult task for the young big man. At Kentucky, Noel didn’t attempt a single jump shot, and in high school his size and athleticism made him a terror in the paint. A lifetime of being dissuaded from attempting shots more than five feet away from the basket made it difficult for Noel to trust his jumper, but after a lengthy process, and two-thirds of a season of trial and error, the rookie has discovered newfound confidence in his midrange game.

“All these thousands and thousands of reps we’ve gotten up over this past year and a half when I wasn’t playing... I just didn’t have the confidence I needed,” said Noel. “But now it’s coming around, and I’m just making sure that I can go out there and knock them down.”

Over the first four months of the season, Noel shot 28.2% (20/71 FG) from midrange. But in the month of February, he’s seen his conversion range on jumpers rise to 42.9% (9/21 FG). He’s also made 63.0% of his attempts in the restricted area this month, where 27 of his 59 shots this month have come; he shot 57.1% from that spot through the end of January.

Hover over the image below for a visualization of Noel's progress offensively (shot chart courtesy of StatMuse.com).

Most impressive, perhaps, has been the second-year big man’s improvement at the free-throw line. In 24 games at Kentucky, he shot 52.9% on free throws, and over his first 44 games as a pro he made 52.6%. In February, though, he’s converted 31 of his 41 free-throw attempts, good for 75.6%.

“[His improvement] is huge, and it has come with a year’s worth of work,” said Brett Brown. “If you look his shot now compared to when he came from Kentucky back when, it’s just not even close, and I credit him.

“Even when he misses, you see him, he looks so confident stepping to the line and receiving a ball from a referee. He’s got his routine, he’s got his whole system in place, and he steps up with tremendous confidence… And then to see a little bit of carryover that we thought was going to happen to his 18-foot shot, with his form and his confidence, we’re seeing the early days, the early stages of him growing his game. And it’s going to help him compliment Joel Embiid, and it’s going to help him in general.”

But despite his improvement on the offensive end of the floor, there is no question that the vast majority of Noel’s impact has and will continue to come on the defensive end.

The rookie currently ranks third in the NBA in defensive box plus-minus, allowing 4.3 fewer points per 100 possessions than a statistically average replacement player would. For context, no player under the age of 21 has ever posted a defensive box plus-minus greater than 3.0, and nearly half of the 32 players who have won Defensive Player of the Year in NBA history have done so with a worse number in that category than Noel is posting as a rookie.

His 99 blocks lead all rookies by nearly 30, and his 85 steals are good for second behind Orlando point guard Elfrid Payton (89); Noel is the only player in the league ranked top-20 in both blocks and steals. With one more block, he’d join Anthony Davis, Bismack Biyombo, and Taj Gibson as the only rookies in the past five seasons to reach triple digits in that category. And if his current pace holds, he’d hit 146 blocks by year’s end, which would be the second-most for a rookie since 2001-02, when Pau Gasol and Andrei Kirilenko both eclipsed that mark.

So what’s the next step for Noel?

Simply put, adding muscle. The 20-year-old said on Wednesday that he’s actually been able to gain weight this season, a rare feat for any player during the grueling NBA campaign, and is now up to 220 pounds. During the offseason, he’ll look to bulk up further, strengthening his lanky 6’11” frame and becoming more consistent on the low block. But even as he’s had to stretch the limitations of his understandably underdeveloped body and play 30 minutes a night from the jump, Noel has still been one of the most impactful defenders in the league.

He has defended more shots at the rim than all but seven other players, only one of whom (Gorgui Dieng, second season) has played fewer than five NBA seasons. Among those players, he ranks second in field-goal percentage allowed, giving up a basket on just 45.8% of the 8.9 shots per game that he defends.

Time will tell what the future holds for the rookie, but one thing is certain: the Sixers have something special in Nerlens Noel.