The Curious Case of Kyle O’Quinn’s Defense

All the numbers suggest that Kyle O’Quinn is a good defensive big man, but what does the film suggest? A deeper look into whether the tape confirms the metrics.

Kyle O’Quinn is having the best season of his career … statistically speaking. His 14.9 points, 13.1 rebounds, and 3.1 blocks per 36, 114 ORtg, 21 PER, 55.5 TS%, 0.152 Win Shares per 48, 3.4 Box Plus Minus, and 1.2 VORP are all career highs. O’Quinn also leads the New York Knicks in DRtg, PER, block percentage, Defensive BPM, BPM, WS/48, and VORP, per Basketball Reference. He’s only averaging 15.5 minutes per game, and just by looking at numbers, you may be asking yourself why isn’t he playing more minutes and why did the Knicks have to spend all that money on Joakim Noah? Kyle O’Quinn could easily fill Noah’s role. And now that Noah is out for the remainder of the season, O’Quinn should be seeing more consistent minutes.

What may be even more shocking is that O’Quinn ranks 21st of 317 players in defended field goal percentage differential with a -4.4% figure, with the qualification of played in at least 20 games and average at least 5 defended shots a game, per NBA.com. He has a better defended field goal percentage differential figure than Kristaps Porzingis (-4.2%), Dwight Howard (-3.7%), LeBron James (-3.6%), and Giannis Antetokounmpo (-3.4%). O’Quinn also has a Defensive RPM of 0.80 (last among qualified Knicks big men, for what it’s worth). Essentially every defensive statistic suggests that Kyle O’Quinn is a good defensive player.

If that’s the case, how come I regularly see O’Quinn slacking off on defense like the clip below?

If you have the audio on, you can hear Mike Breen say that O’Quinn failed to hustle back on that play to at least try to prevent DeAndre Jordan from having a clear and easy path to the basket. O’Quinn is good for at least one of these type of brain fart plays every other game. So, if the numbers are telling me O’Quinn is “good” defensively, but when I watch games, I do not see this “good” defender, what’s happening? Why is there a disconnect between the numbers and my eye test memory? Are the numbers or my eyes lying to me?

For those who have been following my writing with Gotham Sports Network (maybe even some of my stuff back when I was irregularly posting on my blog), you should know that I am a numbers guys. When it comes to the statistics or my memory of any given game, I’m going to rely more on the numbers than the eye test; however, this comes with a caveat. Statistics should never be used in a vacuum as the foundation of an argument. The same goes with simply watching NBA games. Statistics and film should be used in conjunction with one another in order to provide the most accurate representation. In other words, both numbers and film need context.

In that case, let’s then provide some context about Kyle O’Quinn. Going over the film suggests that for the most part, Kyle O’Quinn is not a good defender. If anything, the best way to describe his defense is “inconsistent.” Below we have O’Quinn defending Karl-Anthony Towns in the opening minutes of the Knicks-Timberwolves game.

O’Quinn both over-commits and falls for a terrible pump fake by Towns. On the season, Towns is shooting just under 40% from midrange versus just under 50% in the paint (non-restricted area) and 66.8% in the restricted area, per NBA.com. Keep your hands up and don’t give him an easy driving lane, two things O’Quinn doesn’t do; let him shoot the midrange jumper. He then fails to box out Towns, giving up the easy offensive rebound and then gets bailed out by Towns missing an easy putback (Towns also went 5–18 that game).

Later in the game, O’Quinn falls for another Towns pump fake (a much better one, though) and is again bailed out by KAT missing an easy shot.

But, then you watch plays where O’Quinn plays quality post defense and contains the offensive players from driving, forcing him to take a contested midrange jumper.

In the first clip where O’Quinn is defending Marcin Gortat on the first play of the game, O’Quinn forces Gortat to go left on the baseline and contains Gortat under the basket. Gortat does not have many options and he was looking to score, so he elects to take a difficult shot where O’Quinn is ready to make the easy block. In the second clip, O’Quinn contains Eric Bledsoe on a pick and roll (Jennings just doesn’t even try to get around the Chandler screen), preventing any easy driving lane. Bledsoe decides to take a contested midrange pull-up jumper, a shot that the defense is willing to give up, especially considering that Bledsoe is shooting 38.1% on 2-point pull-up jumpers, per NBA.com. In both cases, O’Quinn played good defense.

As I alluded to in the very first clip, O’Quinn does not have the best defensive awareness, or basketball IQ if you would prefer to call it that. In the same Phoenix game, he leaves his man (Tyson Chandler) to go help Ron Baker on Brandon Knight. Ron Baker defends Knight’s drive just fine, in that he stays with him and contests the shot; Knight may have even gotten away with a push-off. O’Quinn commits too much, leaving Chandler in a perfect position to box out Carmelo Anthony and get an easy putback dunk. O’Quinn doesn’t even try to go back to box out Chandler and just stares at the ball, since he is more concerned with the rebound than getting in proper position before trying to get the rebound.

In the Wizards game, O’Quinn helps Baker (again) with Bradley Beal at the sidelines just over half court. He does a good job sealing the only path available for Beal after Gortat sets a good screen on Baker, forcing Beal to pick up his dribble. That’s good defense, until O’Quinn decides to double team Beal (unsure what he’s actually doing), allowing Gortat to have a free run at the basket. O’Quinn really isn’t in a position to help with a double team, and Beal easily spins free to pass to Markieff Morris, who then finds a wide open Gortat cutting to the basket for the easy dunk. O’Quinn even looks at Morris like “oh shit” as he tries to catch up to Gortat, but it’s too late.

On this play against the Sixers, O’Quinn makes a basket and falls back on defense into the paint. Nothing necessarily wrong with this, except for the fact that the Sixers are hustle up the court to initiate some quick offense and O’Quinn’s defensive responsibility is Joel Embiid, who gets a wide open look from about the break. Embiid is shooting 37.5% from above the break and 38.8% on wide open 3-point shots, per NBA.com. O’Quinn is bailed out by Embiid missing the shot.

And if O’Quinn couldn’t be even more lost in space, here he is allowing DeAndre Jordan to free up J.J. Reddick for a WIDE OPEN 3-point shot as he just sits back and hangs out at the elbow.

Defending in space and Kyle O’Quinn do not go together. He is either lost or over-commits to the offensive player, and sometimes even both. So, the question becomes why are his individual defensive metrics so good? Why is Kyle O’Quinn considered a plus defender by the metrics?

This is where understanding the formulas that calculate these figures are so important. For example, O’Quinn has a nice Box Plus Minus because its final equation is based on counting stat percentages. And the one thing Kyle O’Quinn is good at is generating impressive counting statistics. O’Quinn also has played a significant amount of his minutes coming off the bench, which in turn means that he is also playing against teams’ bench units; bench units equals easier competition. With that being said, Kyle O’Quinn is quite good at blocking shots. When O’Quinn is not having to defend in space and is in position to defend the rim, he’s an effective rim protector.

In the second clip against the Clippers, O’Quinn defends the Griffin spin move well, forces a missed shot, blocks Jordan’s putback attempt, and then eventually gives up the second putback attempt by Jordan because he became out of position after the successful block attempt. In the sequence, the offensive players go 1–3, or 33.3% shooting, and O’Quinn gets a blocked shot. This Clippers clip, along with the Hawks one, helps explain how O’Quinn has these numbers. Hell, the Clippers clip is almost an embodiment of O’Quinn’s defense as a whole: he can block shots when close to the rim, but is regularly out of position, which allows the offensive player an easy basket.

The numbers are not necessarily lying about Kyle O’Quinn’s defensive abilities, but rather measuring what they can (so technically they aren’t lying, but rather potentially misleading). Kyle O’Quinn is good at blocking shots and grabbing defensive rebounds, which is why his BPM figure is as high as it is. He is also good at defending the rim when he is close to it and in position to do so, which is why his defended field goal percentage differential is as good as it is (the blocked shots help that figure out as well). Even that metric is somewhat flawed because it does not capture whether or not the defender is in good or bad position on the shot attempt; for example, O’Quinn technically defended Town successfully in the two Timberwolves clips because Towns missed those shots. The statistics do not take into account that O’Quinn played poor defense both times.

Furthermore, O’Quinn does not do a good job consistently defending, especially in space, due to his low defensive awareness. As mentioned previously, this is something difficult to measure, and you have to go watch the tape in order to provide context for the numbers. In sum, I think the best way to describe Kyle O’Quinn defensively is that he is really good at grabbing defensive rebounds and blocking shots, but when it comes to performing the other facets of defense, he is inconsistent at best.