2003 Top 50 List: Not eligible
Dan Collins List: Not eligible
If you want a shortcut way to identify the best players in ACC history, look for players who were consensus first or second team All-America more than once. Those players, and there are 31 of them, are probably going to be in the top 50, and they’re going to include almost all of the top 25 or so. Malcolm Brogdon is one of those 31 players. After a lot of thought, I’m coming down on the side of Brogdon being a borderline top 50 player. An outstanding player, but near the bottom of that list of 31 two-time All-Americans. There is a lot to be said for him, and a little to be said against him, so let me try to lay it out.
Brogdon is unique in that his case is built largely on defensive value that is difficult to measure. I don’t think he would be even a Top 100 player purely based on his numbers. To support that, let’s do a blind comparison of Brogdon’s sophomore/junior/senior numbers with another guard who played at the same time, reordering their seasons to make the similarity more apparent:
| Player 1 | G | TS% | Reb | Ast | Stl | Blk | TO | PTS |
| Year 1 | 37 | 54.5% | 5.4 | 2.7 | 1.2 | 0.1 | 1.4 | 12.7 |
| Year 2 | 34 | 54.5% | 3.9 | 2.4 | 0.7 | 0.4 | 1.7 | 14 |
| Year 3 | 37 | 58.5% | 4.1 | 3.1 | 0.9 | 0.2 | 1.4 | 18.2 |
| Totals | 108 | 55.8% | 4.5 | 2.8 | 1 | 0.3 | 1.5 | 15 |
| Player 2 | G | TS% | Reb | Ast | Stl | Blk | TO | PTS |
| Year 1 | 34 | 53.7% | 2.5 | 3.8 | 1.1 | 0.4 | 1.2 | 12.6 |
| Year 2 | 38 | 57.0% | 2.9 | 4.5 | 1.7 | 0.2 | 1.9 | 14.1 |
| Year 3 | 34 | 59.2% | 3.2 | 4.2 | 1.5 | 0.2 | 2.1 | 17.5 |
| Totals | 106 | 56.6% | 2.9 | 4.2 | 1.5 | 0.3 | 1.8 | 14.7 |
Look closely. Who would you rather have? Player 1 is a better rebounder; player 2 is more of a playmaker. Player 2 generated more steals. Other than that, they’re about as even as you can get. Again, they played in the same conference at the exact same time.
Player 1 is Brogdon. Player 2 is Marcus Paige. Marcus Paige was a good player, but I don’t think anyone is pleading his case as one of the 100 greatest players in ACC history. Part of that is that Paige peaked as a sophomore and went downhill after that, which is why I put his seasons in a different order. But my point is, there is essentially no difference between Brogdon and Paige purely on the basis of numbers. Brogdon’s advantage is his (mostly unmeasurable) defense.
And unlike most good defensive guards, he didn’t generate a lot of steals, because that’s not the kind of defense that Virginia plays. So how do we really know that Brogdon was a great defender? Well, we know two things. One, we know that Virginia was a great defensive team, and that is measurable. So clearly someone on the Cavaliers was playing great defense. And we know that observers consistently named Brogdon as an outstanding individual defender. He was first team ACC All-Defense as a junior, and he was ACC and national Defensive Player of the Year as a senior.
At the risk of getting too nerdy, I will point out a couple of things about Brogdon’s NBA career, and what it can tell us about whether he is, in fact, a great defender. The two most common ways of measuring individual defensive contributions are through box score stats and on/off analysis. Box score stats are exactly what you would think – steals, blocks, defensive rebounds, things you can identify from a box score. On/off analysis compares how the team plays defense when the player is on the court versus when the player is off the court. If you look at NBA advanced metrics, Brogdon doesn’t show as a good defender in terms of box score stats, but he shows as an above-average defender in terms of on/off analysis. This seems consistent with his college record – he really is a player who does things on defense that don’t show up in the box score but help the team win.
I have no reason to doubt that Brogdon was as good a defender as everybody said he was. Heck, I watched him, and I thought he was great, too. I’m just pointing out that aspect of his game is hard to measure and therefore quite subjective.
As for Brogdon’s All-America accolades, they aren’t quite as impressive as they look. As a junior, he made second team AP, but he was 10th in the voting, finishing just two points ahead of Buddy Hield. As a senior, he made first team, but he was 5th in the voting, just four points ahead of Jakob Poeltl. So with just the slightest change in the voting, he could’ve been third team and second team, rather than second team and first team.
What does it all add up to? Certainly a great player, worthy of consideration for the Top 50. But I can’t get behind him as a Top 30-type player.