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, (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:
Fun with small sample sizes: Matisse Thybulle leads the NBA in defensive plus/minus with an absurd (and let's be real, statistically unhelpful given how little he's played) 14.