Recently, I was reading the post by Basketball Smurf which commented on Dwyer’s list of the top 30 SGs in the league and one statement stood out to me that made me think of various points I have argued in the past.

Last year shooting guard was by far the Bulls least productive position, with an average PER of 12.8 a game.  By comparison, other top point guards (guys ranked 1 thru 4 on Dwyers list ) received better production out of their back court mates than Rose

What sprung to mind is how much of a bias offensive production receives counter to defensive production. Most arguments I hear arguing about which player is better than another player almost always start on the offensive side of the ball,  in fact, I can’t remember the last time I saw an unprompted discussion about a certain player’s worth start defensively except when said player is known as a "Defensive Specialist".

PER is known mostly to be a measure of offense and from what I read in the Dwyer article every player mentioned either got an entire blurb on offense or a blurb that started on offense and afterwards threw in a mention of the "Defensive Specialty" (Thabo Sefolosha) or Anti-Defensive Specialty (Gilbert Arenas).

Simply, I think that defense is just as valuable as offense is, as you have the same number of possessions on both sides of the ball over an entire game and that each player's total value should stem from their relative usefulness compared to what others bring in alternative cases.

There are a few reasons that I believe people shy away from defense or understate how important it is.

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