Who defends point guards these days?

Plus, early-season Adjusted Efficiency and Moreyball Rate updates

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As I was watching Bucks-Rockets on Monday night, it occurred on me that Damian Lillard was spending almost the entire game being defended by players who are much bigger than him. When you look at the NBA’s tracking data, you see that Lillard (6-2) spent about 60% of his possessions being defended by one of Dillon Brooks (6-6), Amen Thompson (6-7), or Tari Eason (6-8).

That seems like a lot. But then I started thinking about it, and damn if it doesn’t seem like everybody is doing this to every point guard these days. I feel like every game I watch, at least one of the point guards is routinely seeing a wing as his primary defender.

Then I flashed back to last season, when I wrote about how defenses had been defending Jalen Brunson with taller and taller players as the season went along, and how that trend had continued into the playoffs. So, I decided to run the same analysis that I did for Brunson, for all point guards league-wide, going back to the start of the player tracking era.