He's dropped off.. Gladness could win it.

He hasn't been his usual dominant self in the last month or so. I'm starting to see glimpses again though. I wouldn't count him out, but he has competition for a change this season. Agree with Nat that Gladness is a good shot at it, now that the refs have stopped killing him

I think they'd like to be able to name somebody new.

Not exactly sure what they vote on, but Damo is ahead stats wise.
Gladness is a good shot-blocker, but doesn't get enough steals IMHO.

Gladness protects the paint...not everything he does shows on the stats page.

He has had some awesome defensive games but also had some lesser patches (though still very good by human standards). I think Martin, Jackson and Gladness would all be worthy winners.

My All-Defensive Team would be Gladness, Petrie, Vukona, Jackson, Martin. Try scoring against them!

I'd favour Martin and Gladness over Jackson.

In offence Jackson makes a lot more turnovers that let the other teams score relatively easily. For mine, that tends to reduce his overall defensive effectiveness.

On a side note, Cairns are the best defensive team in the league this season, giving up 76.5 points per game thus far. Only Perth come close to that (77.3).

However none of us have mentioned any Cairns players' names. Probably says something about the value of good team defensive execution relative to individual defensive brilliance.

I don't think offensive factors like turnovers get factored into DPOTY voting, do they? Because if they did you'd have to factor in how many times a player helps his team put the ball in the basket, giving them time to get their defence set.

I'm not sure how I feel about Gladness getting votes considering he is on one of the worst (if not THE worst) defensive teams in the league.

Again that's not entirely his fault, but it just doesn't sit well with me.

It's like giving the MVP to a great player on a wooden spoon team.

@PeterJohn: that stat has a whole lot of noise. When not adjusted for pace, it doesn't mean a whole lot.

Did they end up correcting Gladness' block stats?

Did the NBL end up correcting anything, ever?

replayed a game once

at least they have never done a netball , and post National League Grand final discovered the score was wrong and had to give the game to the real winner, but still let the actual losing team keep the trophy and title. LOL

Gladness is an elite rim protector but struggles with on-ball defense at times.

Some of that is due to the dumb defensive schemes that Townsville run that put guys in a position to fail, but some if it is him being a block-craving stat-grabber.

In a lot of ways Martin is lucky he is a good defender because his offensive game would see him struggle to make some starting line ups in the NBL.

Don't get me wrong, he's not useless with the ball in his hands and he can turn it on at times (in that respect he kinda reminds me of Peter Ali). But I honestly think he would struggle if it wasn't for his D.

Being realistic though, the DPOY is probably going to be between Martin and Gladness, with the likes of Gibbo also getting some votes.

In a lot of ways Andrew Gaze would have struggled if he wasn't a good scorer.
But ... he was a bloody good one!

paul - don;t know how the voting works for DPOTY, just offering my view. As it happens, Jackson would also suffer on the 'filling the basket' measure, given his fairly low shooting percentage (38.7%).

Mick - yes, adjusting for pace applies to most stats, such as steals. Sorry, didn't have time to do that. And Adelaide are the worst defensive team in the league (based on PPG against). Again. But that's to do with pace too.

Townsville are 4th worst, so middle of the pack.

In addition to his strong defence, Martin is a "classic" play-making PG, rather than the offensive weapons we tend to see in NBL (especially import PGs.) Not only would he NOT "struggle to make some starting line ups in the NBL," most teams would bend-over backwards to snap him up. Having someone like Martin at the point means you can have an import SG like Beal (or Macrae.)

Gladness is great at defending the basket inside the paint, but I'm not sure that qualifies him as DPOY.

Be interested to know exactly what they vote on, and even HOW exactly a "steal" is recorded.

Last night's game was a Defensive BEAST. There should definitely be a more than a few DPOTY votes going for players on both teams.
T/O's were counted at 29, and I'd say most of those were forced, yet only 12 steals (and 5 blocks) recorded.
Martin was at his defensive best, yet only recorded two actual steals.
I lost count how many times the ball was knocked away, but many times it would not have resulted in a steal or even a T/O.