The Portland Trail Blazers waited nearly a year to see guard Matisse Thybulle return to the court. In his two games since returning from injury, he had the game-saving block in one game and changed the defensive energy with five steals in the other. The eye test says he’s a special defensive player. The stats back that up.
In a sample size smaller than the number of Dallas Mavericks fans who think their franchise is heading in the right direction, Thybulle leads the NBA in defensive box plus minus (DBPM), a made-up-sounding stat that attempts to estimate the number of defensive points per 100 possessions a player contributed above a league-average player:
And it’s not close: Thybulle leads Blazers legend Jamaree Bouyea (who played six games with Portland last year) by nearly 50%, pairing that with a league-leading 12.2% steal rate. That means one in eight opponent possessions with Thybulle on the floor have ended with him getting the steal. Sheesh.
The catch is obvious: He’s played two games, and only 28 total minutes at that. It won’t be a surprise to see things settle back closer the 3.4 DBPM he held last year. That, by the way, was good enough for second in the league for players who played at least 100 minutes just behind Nikola Jokic (4.2), and just ahead of Victor Wembanyama (3.3).
To be fair, anyone who’s paid attention to Thybulle’s career (or even just his short time in Portland) wouldn’t need a two-game sample to make wild declarations about his defensive prowess. We can do that anyway: Matisse Thybulle is one of the best defensive players in the NBA, full stop. And the only thing that’s prevented him from getting more recognition for it is because his offense has never been strong enough to allow him to stay on the court longer. But for a Trail Blazers team that’s finally found its identity through defense, watching him and Toumani Camara share the court on a possession-by-possession basis when they REALLY need a stop is going to be a lot of fun.