I got one friend whos a sports fan
 

He uses stats as his end all

like for instance "Iverson got steals! he played defense."

we don't argue much, I only like arguing with sports fans

You can't quantify defense in basketball. Some advance metrics try to but they're still flawed. You have to actually watch the player on d, including off ball, and realize what his role in the system is to judge their defense.

That's a perfect example of stats not painting the full picture.

Stats can be valuable in a lot of cases though.

valuable of course

the problem is when people think stats are the bible

Iverson got a ton of steals because he played top key zone or box in one when he was always on the ball but he had that first step that was unreal esp in his younger years plus dudes would try to cross him up and you just couldn't early in his career ... One dude on every team thought they could out dribble dude and it just led to a lot of sloppy play and AI benefitting from it.

But yeah D isn't something you have to watch but something that some players get overlooked on because of stats ... Lebron blocks shots you can read about it in a stat sheet but you just don't know how well he does it unless you watch him recover chase someone down from behind and throw that shit against the backboard

AI was the god of handles in his prime

& word at the lebron blocking shit, he can straight up block niggas like he did against splitter in the finals but he usually does a chasedown