I amassed all the opponent shooting figures from NBA.com for 11 select star point guards during the regular season and playoffs during 2016-17 and this is how it looks (once again, I don't know anything about this data, how they accrue it):
First column is opponent shooting percentages, second is expected shooting percentages, third is difference (before the first and second column are rounded, thus there may be a tenth of a point differences).
- Code: Select all
REGULAR SEASON
1. John Wall (6'4"): 42.9 44.5 -1.6 (78 games)
2. Mike Conley (6'1"): 44.6 45.1 -0.5 (69 games)
3. Kemba Walker (6'1"): 44.7 44.8 -0.1 (79 games)
4. Stephen Curry (6'3"): 44.4 44.3 +0.0 (79 games)
5. James Harden (6'5"): 46.1 45.0 +1.0 (81 games)
6. Isaiah Thomas (5'9"): 45.5 44.3 +1.2 (76 games)
7. Chris Paul (6'0"): 46.2 44.9 +1.2 (61 games)
8. Damian Lillard (6'3"): 45.6 44.1 +1.5 (75 games)
9. Kyle Lowry (6'0"): 47.1 44.5 +2.6 (60 games)
10. Russell Westbrook (6'3"): 48.6 45.2 +3.4 (81 games)
11. Kyrie Irving (6'3"): 49.9 44.7 +5.2 (72 games)
PLAYOFFS
1. James Harden (6'5"): 35.7 45.3 -9.6 (11 games)
2. Mike Conley (6'1"): 36.8 46.1 -9.3 (6 games)
3. Russell Westbrook (6'3"): 40.6 45.9 -5.3 (5 games)
4. Stephen Curry (6'3"): 39.3 43.8 -4.5 (17 games)
5. Kyle Lowry (6'0"): 41.9 46.3 -4.5 (8 games)
6. Kyrie Irving (6'3"): 43.7 46.3 -2.7 (18 games)
7. John Wall (6'4"): 42.4 44.6 -2.2 (13 games)
8. Isaiah Thomas (5'9"): 44.7 45.5 -0.8 (15 games)
9. Damian Lillard (6'3"): 51.2 49.8 +1.3 (4 games)
10. Chris Paul (6'0"): 50.0 46.4 +3.6 (7 games)
N/A Kemba Walker (6'1"): -
So only 3 of 11 had better than expected opponent shooting percentages, and Isaiah is middle ranked during the season while Kyrie Irving was dead last! While all players, including Kyrie, improved their game in the playoffs, most improved dramatically and Isaiah was on the lower end of that improvement and ranked 8/10 despite opponents scoring less than expected against him.
I'll assume this data means something and that the defensive inadequacies coming from Isaiah's height are completely overblown until someone explains why it is flawed.
EDIT: Earlier I posted that he was getting 12 FTA per game. It is in fact 8. 12 is his per 100 possessions score. I sometimes miss the headers on basketball reference pages... It did seem really high, though, and it should have have set off an alarm that the data was wrong. All I can say to that is I've been getting 3 hours of sleep per day for most of the last 2 weeks and am always occupied, so maybe that's it... Still, it's almost twice as much as Irving per game.