If you have ever played on a basketball team, at some point a coach told you that defense wins championships. Even if you haven’t, it is not hard to find coaches or commentators who will tell you that today either. I suspect the inspiration behind these statements is not some sort of long-standing history of great defenses winning championships, but from a need to motivate players to work on the defense as much as they work on their offense.
Deep in their hearts, few basketball people really believe that defense wins championships. As the kids say, those people have told on themselves with respect to their analysis of Gonzaga this season. In the first half of the season, the Zags have put together the most impressive offensive performances that Bill Self and Tony Bennett have witnessed from an opponent in their careers. After both games, there was little criticism of the defense played by Kansas or Virginia and a ton of praise for Gonzaga’s offense. Even on Twitter, where people are not exactly afraid to share negative opinions.
And you know what? That is the correct takeaway. Neither Kansas nor Virginia may not feature a vintage defense by each program’s standards, but both are still among the game’s best. However, Gonzaga’s offense is on another level. And history tells us that if anything, great offense is behind most champions. This is true whether we look at the very highest levels of the game or at conference champions.
Let’s start with the national title winners. Since 1997, 23 national champions have been crowned. Just four of those had a better adjusted defensive efficiency than adjusted offensive efficiency, relative to the national average. The last team to win with a better defense was UConn in 2014. The others prior to that: 2013 Louisville, 2008 Kansas and 1999 UConn. And that Kansas team had a defense that was nearly identical to its offense. With another made bucket here and there, they wouldn’t have made the list.
(One historical footnote worth mentioning is that last season, Kansas and Baylor were headed to the Big 12 tournament with a better defense than offense. Given that both were on track to be 1-seeds, it would have been interesting to see how their respective chases for a national title would have played out.)
The ’14 UConn team was the most lopsided defensive champ, with a defensive rating 5.1 points better than its offensive rating relative to the national average. However, eight champions have had an offensive imbalance greater than that. The 2018 Villanova team set the standard with an offense that was 11.7 points per 100 possessions better than its defense.
On a related note, it’s almost certain that the best offenses are better than the best defenses in a given season. Last season Gonzaga had the highest-rated offense, beating the national average by 18.9 points per 100 possessions, while Virginia’s top-ranked defense beat the average by “just” 17.3 points. That marked the 21st time in the past 24 seasons that the best offense was more dominant than the best defense.
Digging a little deeper into the rankings shows this effect better. Just once in the past 24 seasons has the 10th-best defense been better than the 10th-best offense, and in every season since 1997, the 20th-best offense has been better than the 20th-best defense. Basically, the ceiling is higher for offense than defense. When Corey Kispert is heating up, an opponent can only do so much. A defense is more at the mercy of whether an offense is clicking on all cylinders than vice versa.
Even if your program isn’t chasing a national title, these same lessons are learned when looking at past conference champions. Since 1997, 952 teams have won a regular-season conference title, either outright or shared. Of those, 433 finished regular-season play with the conference’s best offensive efficiency, while 409 finished with the best defensive efficiency. (It’s worth noting that 167 were ranked first in both categories.)
But relative to their conference’s average, the champs had a better offense 549 times (58 percent) compared to 403 teams that had a better defense. It’s not that a team can’t win with defense, but the best teams are more likely to win with their offense, no matter what level we’re talking about. They’re also more likely to win with a mediocre defense than a mediocre offense. Just 54 conference champs were able to win a title with an offense ranked in the bottom half of their league, while 80 did so with a below-average defense.
A useful corollary is that bad teams tend to be better defensively than offensively. It’s easier to fake a competent defense than a competent offense when a team lacks talent. One simple example is that a team can focus one’s efforts on preventing transition by ignoring offensive rebounds after their missed shots. At any rate, maybe that’s where the canard of “defense wins championships” got started. Coaches without talent know the best chance for their team to win games is to get stops because their own shots are probably not going in at a rate to overcome bad defense.
Among the 925 teams that have finished last in their conference race since 1997, 479 were last in their league in offensive efficiency, while just 383 were last in defense. A total of 590 of those last-place teams (64 percent) had a better defense than offense. But those teams weren’t winning championships — they were dead last in their league.
The truth is that great offense generally beats great defense. For the best college teams, that means the path to greatness is more often about scoring than preventing scores. Gonzaga’s run is another example of that, but it’s not the only one. Three of the top four teams in my ratings — Gonzaga, Villanova and Iowa — are significantly better on offense than defense. If those teams have a bad offensive game, it will more likely be due to shots not falling or poor execution than the defensive scheme they face.
Basketball is too complicated to be boiled down to three-word clichés. But history tells us that great teams are more likely to be driven by their offense and poor teams are more likely to be doomed by their inability to score. I think coaches understand this. One giveaway is that recruiting services and coaches alike put a premium on valuing players who can score over those that can defend. Deep down, basketball people understand that offense is more important than defense at the college level, even if they don’t want to say it out loud.
