NBA Ben Wallace vs Dennis Rodman, who would you rather have

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Lukedanieljames
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NBA Ben Wallace vs Dennis Rodman, who would you rather have

Post by Lukedanieljames »

I'm a huge basketball fan, and lately I've been downloading A LOT of old bulls games, and I've been watching rodman especially, he is an AMAZING player, oh my god. He defends big guys, small guys, perimeter, in the paint, doesn't matter. He gets more rebounds than everyone else, he fights to the last second.


I'm also a huge pistons fan, and I really like ben wallace. Considering they are both defensive experts, who would you rather have at their prime on your NBA team if you were an owner?

Hrmmmmmm
Jim Raynor
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Post by Jim Raynor »

I would take Wallace. Dennis Rodman is the far better rebounder, but Wallace scores more (they both suck at this, but Ben is better), can block shots, and steal the ball.

Seeing as how you're a basketball fan and on SD.net, you might be interested in looking at some of these sites. The APBRmetrics community is made up of researchers, statisticians, and sportswriters looking for new in-depth stats to measure basketball performance and objectively judge players with. One of them, John Hollinger, currently writes for ESPN.com's Insider. It's fascinating stuff, and the objective discussion they have about basketball is to mainstream sports media and forums as SD.net is to most VS. forums (without the cursing and intolerance for idiocy).

Some players (such as Bill Russell and Wilt back in the day) had higher rpg than Rodman did, because they played in a different era that was much more fast paced. These APBRmetrics guys actually record the percentage of rebounding opportunities that a player grabbed, and in his best rebounding season, Rodman grabbed almost 3/10 rebounds while he was on the floor. With 10 players on the court at all times, that's just amazing, and makes him by far the best rebounder in the history of the league.
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Lukedanieljames
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Post by Lukedanieljames »

Jim Raynor wrote:I would take Wallace. Dennis Rodman is the far better rebounder, but Wallace scores more (they both suck at this, but Ben is better), can block shots, and steal the ball.

Seeing as how you're a basketball fan and on SD.net, you might be interested in looking at some of these sites. The APBRmetrics community is made up of researchers, statisticians, and sportswriters looking for new in-depth stats to measure basketball performance and objectively judge players with. One of them, John Hollinger, currently writes for ESPN.com's Insider. It's fascinating stuff, and the objective discussion they have about basketball is to mainstream sports media and forums as SD.net is to most VS. forums (without the cursing and intolerance for idiocy).

Some players (such as Bill Russell and Wilt back in the day) had higher rpg than Rodman did, because they played in a different era that was much more fast paced. These APBRmetrics guys actually record the percentage of rebounding opportunities that a player grabbed, and in his best rebounding season, Rodman grabbed almost 3/10 rebounds while he was on the floor. With 10 players on the court at all times, that's just amazing, and makes him by far the best rebounder in the history of the league.
thanks for the site!

As for who'd I'd choose, I'd go with rodman

statistically, Rodman scores more per game actually with 7.3 ppg compared to 6.6 for wallace. Now each player, because they are all defensive players seems to take a few years to get into the groove of things, so even putting aside the career averages and just looking at their single season bests, it goes like this

Wallace (best stats, doesn't have to be the same season)
ppg- 9.7
rebounds per game
-offensive = 4 rpg
-defensive = 11.4 rpg
total reounbds (best, not using those 2 figures or years) = 15.4

Now the year that he managed to do that, which was well beyond what he usually does, he's usually around 12-13 rpg, he scored 6.9ppg that season

Rodman (best stats, doesn't have to be the same season)
ppg = 11.6
rebounds per game
-offensive = 6.4,
-defensive = 12.30 did it two years in a row
total reounbds (best, not using those 2 figures or years combined) = 18.70

His ppg while he snatched 18.70 was 9.8ppg

so we can see that rodman actually does outperform wallace in points in his career ppg and in a single season. Rodman also had several seasons above 17rpg, and over 8ppg. I dont' think there is any comparison there, he is leaps and bounds above wallace, its like comparing big ben to someone scoring 7rpg, you don't even consider them.

Another reason why I like rodman is that he is a great perimeter defender as well as interior, he'll cover anyone, from iverson to shaq to jordan(when he was on the pistons) (who he shutdown in the playoffs and swept the magic). Rodman also covered people like karl malone and magic johnson back in the 80's when the pistons and lakers did battle. Rodman has a proven track record for covering big men, small men, fast men, strong men. Unfortunately wallace can't make the same claim, as he is usually only covering power forwards or centers in todays game.

One last thing I would to say about rodman, his personal fouls per game for his career were 3.10 while bens were 2.10. So rodman had 1 more foul per game on average, not too bad, still well below shaq or yao ming fouls per game. However, rodman CAUSED people to foul him like mad. He fouled people out of games all the time, in the finals, in the playoffs, regular season didn't matter, people say he was one of the most annoying people to play against because he over acted everything and the refs bought it everytime because he did it so well.

Anyway just my two cents
(I can't invision Ben Wallace covering michael jordan)
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