NBA All-Defense rules bring unintended effects; scouting Donovan Clingan, Tre Johnson

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — You learn more about a franchise from the role players it honors than what it does with its superstars.

Every team retires the numbers of its first-team All-NBA guys, but for a secondary player to get the same honor requires them to resonate with the franchise and fan base in a particularly rare way.

So it was when the Miami Heat put the number of Udonis Haslem — the keeper of the #HeatCulture flame for two decades despite never averaging more than 12 points per game — in the rafters a year ago. And so it was on Saturday, when Memphis raised Tony Allen’s No. 9 jersey to the FedEx Forum ceiling following the Grizzlies’ 125-91 annihilation of a reeling Heat team.

Allen played seven seasons (2010-17) in Memphis and never averaged double figures, yet few recent players are more readily identifiable with one team. (Full disclosure: I was the Grizzlies’ vice president of basketball operations from 2012 to 2019.) His walk-off interview with Rob Fischer after a February 2011 win in Oklahoma City became a franchise ethos — “Grit and grind” — that exists to this day.

“He’s the perfect example,” Allen’s former teammate Marc Gasol said at Saturday’s postgame ceremony. “At the beginning, he wasn’t playing. He just showed up with a great attitude and competing with his teammates. To me, that’s what grit and grind culture means. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but he never changed his attitude about the game.”

“It’s so cool,” Grizzlies coach Taylor Jenkins said. “He’s getting recognized for the impact on winning through defense. His energy, his commitment, his passion, his leadership.”

Yet there’s another well-known Allen saying that might be more relevant to a current issue in the NBA, one that impacts defensive specialists like Allen in particular.

Allen loved to yell out “First-team All-Defense!” — sometimes just shortened to “First team!” — most memorably after a steal from Klay Thompson when Allen was mic’d up during a 2015 playoff game in Golden State.

Allen indeed made first-team All-Defense three times with the Grizzlies, along with three selections to the second team. He finished in the top eight in Defensive Player of the Year voting in five of those six seasons.

That total would read very differently in 2025, thanks to changes in the rules for award eligibility in the last collective bargaining agreement. Although it was not the intent, those changes have made things far more difficult for defensive specialists in particular. The league requires players to play 65 games to be eligible for major awards, including All-Defense. However, a particular piece of fine print — that they must play at least 20 minutes in at least 63 of those games — is hugely damaging to several of the league’s role players, whose playing time is more likely to fluctuate depending on game conditions.

You know how many times Allen would have made All-Defense under the current rules? One. Allen only reached the 65-game threshold in three of his six All-Defense seasons, although he might have been motivated to chase it in 2015 and 2016 (he played 63 and 64 games, respectively, in those two seasons).

What really kills defensive specialists, however, is the 20-minute requirement. For instance, Allen fell short 10 times in 2017; you get two mulligans, but the other eight would have taken him down to 63 for award purposes.

And in 2010-11 — one of the most electrifying defensive seasons you’ll ever see — Allen’s All-Defense bid would have been over before it even started. On Dec. 6, 2010, he played 23 seconds in a loss at the Utah Jazz, and that was the 20th time he played fewer than 20 minutes in a game that year; at that point, he’d only played more than 20 twice. That season ended with Allen posting the highest steal rate of any player with 1,000 or more minutes this century*, leading an unlikely Memphis charge into the playoffs after the team started 12-17 and finishing fourth in Defensive Player of the Year voting.

( * — Minimum 1,000 minutes; it’s technically a tie with Metta Sandiford-Artest’s 2001-02 season, but don’t slow my roll. Allen’s 4.5 percent steal rate that year dwarfed second-place Chris Paul’s 3.5 percent. Even Atlanta’s phenomenal Dyson Daniels is only at 4.2 percent this season.)

Two years ago, the Chicago Bulls’ Alex Caruso would have been disqualified from making All-Defense in early March. He played 67 games and 1,575 minutes but was on the court for fewer than 20 in several of them. More prominently, that season’s Defensive Player of the Year, Memphis’ Jaren Jackson Jr., only played 63 games.

Wait, it gets better. In 2021-22, nearly the entire All-Defense second team failed to meet the standard. The Philadelphia 76ers’ Matisse Thybulle played 66 but was on the court for fewer than 20 minutes in 13 of them, taking his award-eligibility total down to 55. The Boston Celtics’ Robert Williams played 61 games; the Heat’s Bam Adebayo played 56, and the Warriors’ Draymond Green played 46. The only player to make it, barely, was Milwaukee’s Jrue Holiday with 67 games, including an eight-second stint in the season finale to meet a contract incentive.

That takes us this year to the ironic case of Kris Dunn. In an incredible full-circle moment, the LA Clippers’ defensive ace is going to be ineligible for All-Defense because the league was upset at Kawhi Leonard three years ago. (The origination point for the awards requirement was the league’s discomfort with the “load management” era.)

Dunn is perhaps the shining example of the unintended consequence of the award eligibility rules. An undeniably elite defender having a monstrous season on that end, he’s been the symbolic heart of an overachieving Clippers team that is 38-30 and has the league’s fourth-ranked defense.

Dunn has the league’s second-highest steal rate, leads the NBA in defensive BPM and is rated very highly by most of the other alphabet soup advanced metrics. Or you could just watch the tape, which is jaw-dropping.

Oh, one other thing: Dunn was ineligible to make All-Defense as of Jan. 27. At the time he was eliminated from consideration, he had missed four games all year. Since then, he’s missed three more, but he’s played in 60 of the Clippers’ 67 contests and started 44 of them, playing an average of 24 minutes a night. His season minutes total, already at 1,444, is likely to finish around 1,800.

Again, these games-played and minutes rules were put in place to keep stars from sitting out games they were healthy enough to play. They were never intended to block a player like Dunn from getting his flowers because of a few nights when the Clippers needed more offense, but that’s what is happening.

He’s not the only one, although the other candidates affected this year are likely fringier choices. For instance, the Sacramento Kings’ Keon Ellis has only missed two games but fell short of the minutes threshold in 23 others. He’s ineligible. The Oklahoma City Thunder’s Cason Wallace has missed it six times; he’ll have to play at least 20 minutes in 10 of the Thunder’s final 14 games to be eligible.

And then there’s Green, with 53 out of 67 games played and both “under 20” mulligans already used. He can only miss three games the rest of the way and has accumulated 12 technical fouls, setting up the alluring spectacle of him being eliminated from All-Defense consideration due to a one-game suspension.

All told, fundamentally, the guys who are up for All-Defense are often very different from the ones who are up for other awards — a lot of them aren’t superstars or even All-Stars — and the criteria needs to reflect that. Because of that, the 65-game and 20-minute thresholds should either be relaxed or eliminated for All-Defense.

Rookie of the week: Donovan Clingan, 7-2 C, Portland

Despite the meh impact of most of this year’s rookie class, Donovan Clingan’s consistent productivity has gone relatively unheralded. The seventh pick out of Connecticut was blocked out of playing time early by the presence of veteran bigs Deandre Ayton and Robert Williams, but injuries have opened more playing time of late.

And Clingan has used that time to make an impact. His 17.1 PER is second only to Memphis’ Zach Edey among rookies who have played more than 500 minutes, and his 4.4 blocks per 100 possessions ranks second in the whole league, behind only the San Antonio Spurs’ Victor Wembanyama.

Sorry, Gary Payton II, the rim area is a no-fly zone in Portland:

Clingan has succeeded by playing drop coverage, which has some limitations, but he’s incredibly effective when he can stay near the basket. He’s an agile behemoth who can get out to block floaters and stymie transition attempts, like here:

Defensively, Clingan is going to be a monster; he may never quite have the mobility to play switch-heavy schemes, but he can be pretty active in drop coverage and blots out the sun in the lane. He also offers outlines of more utility at the offensive end, where he is a capable passer from the high post, rarely makes mistakes with the ball and offers periodic hints of some stretch capability as he develops.

Unsurprisingly for a player of his size, he’s a beast on the glass, too, sporting a 22.1 percent rebound rate that ranks fifth in the league among players with at least 500 minutes played.

Thus, two other questions now loom large in his developmental pathway: Will he stop fouling enough to stay on the court, and will he score enough to suffice as a long-term starter?

First, the fouling. A lot of rookies suffer from this, but Clingan has been a special case, with a league-leading rate of 7.4 personals per 100 minutes. He fouled out in 11 minutes against the Cleveland Cavaliers on March 2 and has seen his playing time limited by fouls in several other contests. While the rate has come down a bit as the year has gone on, he still gets caught in awkward positions far too often. In this clip, he’s a half step alate and smears Jimmy Butler at the rim.

However, a far bigger issue for Clingan is his lack of offensive impact around the rim. At his size, he should be a terrifying lob threat, but it hasn’t really worked out that way. Clingan averages just 16.1 points per 100 possessions, and his 57.7 true shooting percentage is disappointing for a big man whose shot diet is all at the rim. Clingan shoots 67.1 percent in the restricted area and still rarely scores outside the charge circle; post-ups against smaller opponents have been a particular problem.

As a result, the tape shows a series of missed opportunities — failed lobs, missed chippies against guards on switches and blown layups. Timing his jump for lobs seems to be an issue. This has to be two points:

Can Clingan find an identity on that end by putting away enough lobs and rim runs? Even as a starter, he’s only averaging 7.4 points per game; it’s his biggest limitation as a prospect going forward. The Blazers don’t need him to become a first option, but if he can combine his shot-blocking with enough offensive gravity to open the floor for his teammates, his long-term upside becomes a lot more tempting.

Prospect of the Week: Tre Johnson, 6-5 Fr. SG, Texas

I got three straight days of the Tre Johnson Experience at the SEC tournament this past week, after the Texas Longhorns unexpectedly won their first two games to slip into the NCAA Tournament as the 14th team from the conference. Johnson’s Longhorns will be in a First Four game this week and still might not make it to the main event, so I thought it would be a good time to wrap up what I saw.

Let’s start with the good news: Johnson can let it rip. It’s not hard to see what makes him alluring as an offensive prospect, with deep, accurate shooting and a quick release. Johnson shot 39.2 percent from 3 and 89.1 percent from the line this season and averaged 33.6 points per 100 possessions.

Notably, he can get to sidestep 3s going to either side off the dribble, footwork he often uses in concert with a shot fake.

Johnson also shows some chops as a passer; he’s looking to score, but he finds the open man when the defense overcommits to his shooting threat, and his assist rate is pretty solid for an off-ball player.

Now for the bad news: Johnson lacks a point guard’s handle and struggles to gain separation if he can’t shot-fake his defender out of the play. He’s an infrequent visitor to the paint even at the college level and is likely to be heavily dependent on his long-range shooting as a pro; he shot just 45.2 percent on 2s this season.

His athletic indicators won’t knock your socks off, either. Johnson’s rebound rate is pathetic for a player of his size (5.0 percent), and his low rates of blocks and steals add to the concern that he might be athletically overmatched at the next level.

Defensively, he had a couple of nice stands in the SEC tournament but also a lot of moments where … let’s say he could have been better. Watch here as Johnson (No. 20 in orange) has his head turned while an errant pass whizzes by and hits him in the back, then gets beat for an easy layup off the dribble.

Overall, it gets hard to buy Johnson as a high lottery guy in the draft because of his limitations as a defender and shot creator. Once the discussion shifts to role players, however, it becomes much easier to see how he can make an impact. His skill as a shooter and passer is likely to help him offset some of the athletic limitations he’ll face at the next level and could make him a valuable role player for years.

(Top photo of Paul George and Kris Dunn: Harry How / Getty Images)



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