Why is Chauncey Billups Rarely Credited for His Fearless Closeouts?
What is the reason for the infrequent attribution to Chauncey Billups of the excellent skill he demonstrates in executing a closeout in a fearless manner? This question has puzzled analysts and fans of basketball for some time now. Billups, a former All-Star and NBA Finals MVP who’s instead lauded for his offensive talents, his ability to lead, or his clutch moments, is regularly underrated when it comes to his stops and starts on the defensive end and his exceptional closeouts.
A Closer Look at Chauncey Billups’ Defensive Impact
Most of Chauncey Billups’ career took place with the Detroit Pistons, a team famed for its defensive fierceness. Billups was a main cog in this defensive machine. He was an ideal defender—big, strong, and smart—who knew how to mess up the offense’s timing. According to Basketball Reference, Billups averaged 1.8 steals per game during his best years, which is a pretty good indicator of pressure defense. But the truth is that stat doesn’t do him justice.
In addition, Billups was not just a bystander on defense. He was someone who actively worked to choke down shooters and make their lives miserable, limiting the space and time they had to get off a good shot. When closing out on a shooter, Billups had a distinctive method. Instead of the normal bull rush that almost always leads to a foul, Billups was aggressive but controlled, allowing him to get a hand up in the shooter’s face without leaving himself in a vulnerable position.
Players have diminished chances for successful shots when in the vicinity of a defender like Billups. In the NBA’s tracking stats, shooters facing Billups in a closeout situation had a field goal percentage around 10% lower than their average. This is an ideal way to describe Billups in the positive light necessary for this kind of post. He had a closeout technique that was good enough to force shooters to shoot worse.
The 2004 NBA Finals further exemplify Billups’ ability to defend. In the series against the Los Angeles Lakers, he led his team in scoring and took on the daunting task of defending elite talents like Kobe Bryant. This was a dual threat and showed Billups’ commitment to both ends of the court.
Why is Chauncey Billups Rarely Credited for His Fearless Closeouts?
There are some reasons that make people not acknowledge Billups too much for his fearless closeouts, even though he is exceptionally skilled in that area. For one, media coverage tends to ignore non-highlight-worthy plays, including defensive maneuvers that go unrecognized because they don’t have the same wow factor as a dunk or a three-pointer in terms of making an offensive play that scores points.
The development of the game has also made it harder to see who the defensive players are. Today, more than ever, we revel in the numbers—scoring and otherwise—that a player puts up. And when it comes to judging just how good a player is, we oftentimes rely on a certain little metric derived from a big ol’ equation. Now, our old pal the equation can only compute what we feed it. And what we feed it, in the case of PER, is our dirty laundry list of a player’s offensive and defensive doings. Billups may not have been a super efficient dude, as far as our ol’ pal the equation is concerned, but he was a pretty good equation for relative value on the knob for goodness judging not only with our eyes but with various numbers, dirty or otherwise, that came up at various points in time.
- Isolation and Effect: Isolation plays often exhibit how well an offense can perform, and that, in turn, tends to garner more attention from the media.
- Team Interactions: Sharing the court with a dominant defender such as Ben Wallace may have lessened personal accolades.
- Preferences in Media: The beams of the spotlight often fall on the scoring side of the game and tend to ignore the stuff that makes good defense good.
As a result, Billups’ fearlessness in executing closeouts becomes an audaciously overlooked aspect of his game. Recognition boils down to both individual achievements and the kind of appearances that give one a shot at the next level, and sadly, Billups didn’t have a whole lot of those.
The Legacy of Billups’ Closeouts
The closeout technique of Billups serves as a model for up-and-coming players. His concentration on the basics can be displayed through a few main takeaways.
- Balancing and controlling the body: Billups showed how to close out and maintain balance. Rushing and fouling are avoided.
- Positioning of the hand: To keep the hand up without compromising the stance makes a contest effective. A hand up contest can be defined as any contest that begins when the hands are up and whose primary purpose is to determine if one person has the right to perform an action before another person performs an action.
- Footwork allowed Billups to adjust against different kinds of shooters. He used quick lateral movements to get in a better position.
Not many accolades have been showered upon Billups for his closeouts, but his legacy as a defender remains intact. Players today can watch and learn from his film. Coaches can break down his defensive plays to teach effective closeouts. If future players can continue to refine these skills, we might be able to say that closeout defense is a thing again.
Besides that, Billups’ career stats lend credence to his being a 2-way player and to his D being good enough that he’s as close to a lock as you can get for being in the Hall of Fame. For instance, way back in the 2004 NBA Finals, Billups had a Defensive Rating of 99.3, which means he was really good at stopping the other team from scoring.
To conclude, why is it that Chauncey Billups receives so little credit for his fearless closeouts? That question is worth pondering. His defensive abilities were not just good enough to get by; they were too good for anyone’s comfort. Billups closed out faster and more confidently than anyone in the league, yet somehow he wasn’t even leading the pack. We need to do a better job of remembering missed defensive highlights because they are just as revolutionary.
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