Current advanced defensive metrics in the world of NBA basketball do not achieve the necessary level of accuracy, which prompted us to develop our own. Our metric, called Rim Perimeter Defensive Factor (RPDEF), consists of two key components: rim protection rating and perimeter defense rating. With the aim of providing a more comprehensive insight into players' defensive abilities, we divided the rating into specific areas. In the course of our research, we compared the RPDEF rating with established advanced metrics and found that RPDEF performs better in evaluating players selected for the All-Defensive teams. To ensure public accessibility of this data, we developed a website that displays and provides easy access to the results. We also created visualizations which enable a better and easier interpretation of the RPDEF rating, and simultaneously, we have developed our own predictive model for assessing team defense based on the RPDEF rating. The goal of the thesis is to provide more reliable assessments of players' defensive capabilities and offer broader public visibility into this field.
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