The Miami Heat have a chaos creator

Smith is a defensive specialist. What he lacks in offense he more than makes up for it on the defensive end. He is scrappy and is a thorn in the opposing team’s offense nightly. He is like that lingering pain that no matter what you do, it never seems to go away. That is Dru Smith on the basketball court, he is always finding a way to make your life hard. This can be seen in 2 very similar stats.

When adjusted for per/75 possessions, so everyone is on an even playing field, Smith is 3rd (tied for 2nd when rounded) in the whole NBA on getting defensive deflections. For every 75 possessions Smtih deflects the ball 5.9 times, which is simply ridiculous. Once again, he is always making life hard on offenses.

He gets steals too

Then when looking at steals he is 8th in the NBA in steals per game and is 5th in total steals. When looking at the minutes each player ahead of him plays, it is a significant margin. In the “total steals” statistic all of the 4 players ahead of him have played 330+ more minutes than him and most are close to double his minutes. Smith plays 17.2 minutes per game, the ones above him all play 26.9 or more minutes. Interestingly to find someone else averaging less than 20 minutes per game on the leaderboard you would have to go all the way down to Alex Caruso at 20th.

Dru Smith might not be the perfect player, but he sure is a defensive mastermind. Few players match his ability to generate disruption in the passing lanes. When accounting for both statistics and time played, there is no doubt that Smith is the ultimate chaos creator in the league.

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