Even as a rookie in the NBA, Matisse Thybulle had little room for improvement on the defensive side of the ball.
Just a couple of months into his debut season with the 76ers, he was ranked by FiveThirtyEight as the seventh-best defender in the entire league (via Cody Taylor of USA Today). By the end of the season, of all players with at least 1,000 minutes played, Thybulle ranked second with 2.6 steals per 36 minutes. He ranked first in blocks per 36 minutes (1.3) of all players that were 6-foot-6 or shorter. He ranked fourth out of all players with a 3.1 defensive box plus/minus, trailing only Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nerlens Noel and Kris Dunn.
That was all as a rookie coming off the bench of a somewhat dysfunctional 76ers team. And, again, there wasn't much room for growth in that sense — you can tell from the stats above. But somehow, he's gotten even better in his sophomore season, with a new coach who's helping him to develop, a revamped supporting cast, and a couple of other legitimate All-Defensive candidates surrounding him. He's disruptive. He's confident. He's a bringer of chaos, a wreaker (?) of havoc. And his impact can be felt throughout the whole game, in five-minute stretches, or in individual plays. Check out this incredible sequence from Monday night's game that can only be made by so many guys in today's game.
Are you kidding me? Did he really find a way around two screens, block a true seven-footer on a three-point attempt after closing a significant gap, recover in a timely manner, read how an offensive play was developing and subsequently crash a passing lane to come up with a steal? Or am I just imagining things?
It's just wild. Thybulle is third in the league with 33 games of at least one block and one steal, third in the league with 23 quarters in which he recorded at least one block and one steal, and — though we can't find the stat for it — he's probably up there on the leaderboard for "5-second spans in which a player recorded at least one block and one steal." It can't be a very big list.
He's upped his per-36 defensive numbers from last season (2.6 steals and 1.3 blocks) to 2.8 steals and 1.9 blocks throughout 2020-21. He ranks first in defensive box plus/minus (4.2) and steal percentage (3.8), third in defensive rating (103.4) and in the top 12 in block percentage (4.8). Is he the best pure defender in the NBA? There's definitely an argument to be made based on his skills and production. Imagine Thybulle with the frame of a Ben Simmons or Giannis Antetokounmpo-type player... it's just so wonderfully terrifying.
Will he win Defensive Player of the Year? Eventually, perhaps, but considering he isn't in the top five of NBA.com's most recent ranking, it's not in the cards this year. Maybe he never will, because his offense may not develop to the point that a team requires in order to play him in an everyday starting role... or will it?
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