Los Angeles Lakers: Should Avery Bradley play point guard or shooting guard?
Avery Bradley’s Defense
Let’s compare Bradley’s defensive ratings and defensive box plus/minus marks while he was primarily used as a point guard versus the seasons he was utilized as a shooting guard.
Avery Bradley as a point guard:
- 2010-2011: 101 DRtg, 0.0 DBPM
- 2011-2012: 102 DRtg, 0.3 DBPM
- 2012-2013: 105 DRtg, 0.2 DBPM
- 2013-2014: 109 DRtg, -1.4 DBPM
Avery Bradley as a shooting guard:
- 2016-2017: 108 DRtg, -0.4 DBPM
- 2017-2018: 110 DRtg, -1.4 DBPM
- 2018-2019: 115 DRtg, -1.0 DBPM
The numbers show that Avery Bradley was a much better defender during the early portion of his career when he was almost solely deployed as a point guard.
That makes sense. Avery Bradley is only 6’2″, 180 lbs, which is too small to handle the strength of shooting guards like Jimmy Butler, Victor Oladipo, Bradley Beal, and DeMar DeRozan. There’s no method Bradley can use to successfully stop the shooting guards in the NBA from getting to the rack, he’s not powerful enough.
He’s also too short to really affect most of the sharpshooting 2’s from getting off high-quality looks from deep. It’s hard to imagine Bradley dissuading the likes of Klay Thompson, Buddy Hield, J.J. Redick, or Terrence Ross from shooting a 3-pointer.
However, Bradley does have the speed and length to pester the point guards throughout the NBA. He’s very good at fighting over screens and bothering opposing ball handlers as they try to shoot from beyond the arc. Bradley also has good side-to-side movement, which allows him to stay in front of the shifty 1’s that play in the NBA.
Bradley suffered a variety of small, nagging injuries over the last three seasons, and perhaps those ailments have slowed him down some on the less glamorous side of the ball. However, all professional athletes play through injuries, it’s much more likely that Bradley has struggled on defense recently because he was playing out of position as a shooting guard.