(December 12th) If we were looking at Miles Rubin’s profile from last year, it would almost certainly be that of an elite defender, due in large part to elite rim protection, who does enough offensively to contribute by finishing well around the rim.
This season, all of that is still true of Rubin. He’s still in the 97th percentile for blocks, an unquestionably good figure, and has finished his two-point shots at a 90th percentile rate. But his defensive numbers have dropped off a bit – he now ranks in the 78th percentile by DBPM instead of the 95th+ percentile. We figure it’s worth using our time here to explain that Rubin is still absolutely still an elite defender, and the reason his numbers have dropped is basically immaterial. Part of the drop-off is that his block rate has dropped a bit – from the 99th percentile to the 97th – but the biggest thing driving the decrease in DBPM is that Rubin’s steal rate has dropped from an approximately average value to a poor value.
Now, those steals were absolutely valuable last season, but there are two things you should know about steals. First, they tend to happen highly randomly, because they’re extremely rare, and also because deflections turn into steals in a fairly uncontrollable way, so even if you’re doing the things that cause steals, you might just get unlucky and not accrue any. Second, they don’t really tell us all that much about Rubin as a prospect, but they’re still included in the aggregate defensive metric. Whichever team signs Rubin isn’t going to be doing so because he gets an average amount of steals. They’re there for the shot-blocking. While the steals are certainly a good thing, the difference in a very bad rate – which is almost certainly being driven by randomness – and an average rate is basically zero in terms of the real value to NBA teams. Overall, Rubin stands out as a defensive specialist, and his numbers can easily be explained to illustrate that.