Monday 19 March 2012

The Most Underrated Player in the NBA -- By Far

In the Air Canada Center in Toronto the least talked about, most forgotten, and most underrated team in the NBA play about twice each week. That team of course is the The Toronto Raptors. On that forgotten team are 12 players who all deserve more media attention and most of them are very underrated. The most underrated player (by far), on the most underrated team is James Johnson.

The 6 ft 9 starting SF for the Raptors has been having an amazing season. Johnson is underrated by fans, writers, reporters, virtually everyone outside of Toronto. The players know how good Johnson is though. He is as strong defensively at his position as anyone else in the NBA. LeBron, Igoudala, Gay and Durant are generally looked at as the best small forward defenders, but James Johnson is equal to all of them, if not better. He defends the opponents' best scorers, and defends them just as well as the names I previously listed. Don't believe me? Look at the stats below.




















As the charts show James Johnson is one of the best defenders in the NBA even though outside of Toronto he's virtually unknown. He definitely deserves to be in the Defensive Player of the Year discussions, but given how underrated he is, he may not. James Johnson deserves way more credit than he receives for his defense, and he's improving on the offensive side as well.

5 comments:

  1. Man, this guy is good but but to compare him with James or Durant is just stupid.
    I like the Raptors but they are one of the worst defensive teams in the league. I'm talking about overall team defense.

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  2. Blocks and steals don't prove someone is being a good defender if they are gambling a lot... what are the points per 48 of those he defends vs. their normal scoring?

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  3. Hey it is Noah Flatt and i couldn't agree with you more. He is one of my favs. he can dunk see the game and dran threes. A perfect example of his clutch is the game against the bulls when he made that sick block with 13 seconds left in the game. Good choice bud

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  4. Yes, blocks and steals tell you exactly how good a player is defensively! He may be as good as you say, but because he helps out your fantasy team does not necessarily mean he's good in real life. And I love how it's "steals per 48 mins". Eric Bledsoe averages 3.84 steals per 48 minutes, therefore he is 3 times a better defender than James Johnson! This is terrible logic

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  5. You are forgetting about Shawn Marion... He is also a very underrated player, who has played very effective defense this season. He has guarded Rubio, D-Will, Kobe, Durant, Lin... Even some PF's... He should be in the discussion for DPY as well

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