Brison Gresham And The Basketball World’s Best Defense

Among the many other things it offers, RealGM.com has a far-reaching database of men’s international basketball statistics. It incorporates leagues and competitions on all sides of all oceans, totalling 99 of them in all, and notwithstanding some North American/European bias in the coverage – born out of practical realities and accessibility of said data, rather than an editorial decision – it is an emphatic data set that covers near-enough everyone and everywhere worth covering.

Cumulatively, those 99 competitions feature data on a total of 989 teams. And when sorting those 989 by defensive rating*, there exists only one team in the world with a defensive rating of less than 90.0 – nine-time champions of Cyprus, AEK Larnaca.

_{(* – Discounting those who only played a tiny sample size of games, as well as youth teams, reserve teams, and three teams from the Belarusian league for reasons not worth going into here – suffice to say that a 12-team league featuring a team that went 1-28 might be prone to anomalous results.)}

To put a complex calculation into as simple of terms as possible, a team’s defensive rating is a measure of how many points their opponent scores per 100 possessions; the advantage of measuring per possession rather than in total eliminates the variable pace of play that can obfuscate defensive ability in a more standard points-per-game-against calculation. The lower the number, the better. And Larnaca’s 89.3 team defensive rating this season is extremely low.

Consider for a minute that the best team defensive rating in the NBA this season, again per RealGM, is the 110.6 mark posted by the Cleveland Cavaliers and their Defensive Player of the Year candidate, Evan Mobley. Elsewhere in Europe, the best mark in Spain’s ACB – usually considered to be the best domestic league on the continent – is the 102.9 rating posted by Unicaja Malaga, while transcendent French defensive talent Victor Wembanyama has managed only a 108.9 rating with his Boulogne-Levallois team.

Certainly, offensive units in the Cypriot league are not at the levels of those others. The small Mediterranean island nation does not have the large population base to be able to produce much in the way of high-quality domestic talent, nor the revenues to be able to bring in the premium quality import leagues. It is some tiers below the ACB; in terms of quality, it anecdotally measures out at the level of, say, Portugal or Uruguay.

That said, some quality players still come through, as do some under-heralded players who are looking to level up to the higher tiers. And one such player this past season has been Larnaca’s American centre, Brison Gresham, the Nic Claxton of Cyprus.

In his first professional season, Gresham, a 6’9 240lb centre, has averaged a double-double. With Larnaca up 1-0 in the Cypriot finals at the time of writing, he has appeared in all 26 of his team’s Division A games and averaged 10.6 points, 10.5 rebounds, 1.8 blocks and 1.4 assists, all in only 24.8 minutes per game. This follows on from a senior season at Texas Southern in which he recorded averages of 7.3 points, 6.9 rebounds and 2.3 blocks in only 19.6 minutes a contest. Whenever he is on the court, then, Gresham pours in the more traditional big man numbers.

Gresham does this largely by being more athletic than the opposition. Viewed through any lens other than an NBA one, he is an above average athlete at the five spot, and he plays accordingly. Playing in the paint and leaving it only to screen, Gresham is always a threat in the dunker spot, offering a pass option over the top, as well as an athletic and powerful finisher on the role.

He is similarly paint-based on defence, too, where his excellent reach, defensive energy and shot-blocking timing make him a real presence in the back line. Similarly, Gresham fights for position regularly and pursues all forms of rebounds, with the long arms to keep the ball alive (especially on the offensive end), the quick leaping ability to rebound over the top of the traffic, and enough foot speed to track caroms out of his immediate error.

This style of energetic, active, contest-heavy play inevitably results in a high foul rate, something compounded by Gresham also biting on too many fakes and leaving a few bumps on players when he needn’t. Therefore, no matter how productive he is per minute, he can only ever play half the game.

Nevertheless, in that half of a game, Gresham leaves quite the impact. This is true on the offensive end – through his rolls, dunks, high offensive rebounding rate, occasional paint touch to a short hook, put-backs, occasional foul line jumper and much-improved free throw stroke – and is even truer on defence. On that end, he is the game-changer.

In 2021/22, Gresham’s Texas Southern rode a typically difficult non-conference schedule all the way to the NCAA Tournament, losing only to the ultimate national champion, Kansas. In 2020/21, his Houston Cougars were fifth (out of 347) in the nation. And in 2022/23, his AEK Larnaca team are the best in the world. Wherever Brison Gresham goes, good team defence follows. It is not a coincidence.

At the levels he has been playing at these past couple of seasons, Gresham has been a defensive terror. Time for a higher one.