NBA All-Perimeter-Defense First Team: Dyson Daniels, OG Anunoby and more

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An oft-expressionless player could not hold back a celebration.

During a mid-January match, All-Star point guard Jalen Brunson had received an inbounds pass and swiveled into his defender, Dyson Daniels, a culprit with hand speed that rivals Billy the Kid’s — and with a rap sheet of steals to match. This time, Daniels had slapped Brunson’s finger ever so slightly.

The swipe was Daniels’ second foul of the first quarter. And clearly, Brunson was keeping track.

As soon as the whistle blew, the New York Knicks guard turned to the official who made the call, extended his arm in her direction and held up his index and middle fingers. This was not the peace sign, though it looked like it. He then spun to face the scorer’s table, pointing with the same gesture.

“That’s two!” Brunson said.

Daniels sat for the rest of the period. And Brunson, who breaks character only for his patented 3-point celebration, could not contain his excitement that one of the NBA’s most-respected stoppers was leaving the court.

The Athletic released its All-Perimeter-Defense Second Team earlier this week. Now, we’re onto the first team for an award that’s fake but really should be real. It should come as no surprise that Daniels leads it.

As the NBA drifts farther and farther from the paint, defensive playmakers have become increasingly important. No one has been friskier than Daniels.

He has totaled more steals this season than anyone since Gary Payton in 1995-96. His more than 400 deflections are the most in a season since the NBA began tracking that stat in 2016. No player has ever come within 100 deflections of his total. Daniels has combined for 663 steals and deflections in 2024-25. Second place in the NBA belongs to the Sacramento Kings’ Keon Ellis, who has 385.

Many of those steals come not from Daniels jumping passing lanes but from him poking dribbles away from the world’s top talent. Atlanta’s defense doesn’t function if Daniels isn’t on the other team’s best player. He has faced the toughest assignments in the NBA this season, according to Bball-Index’s matchup difficulty rating.

Even the league’s most competitive personalities are rejoicing in his brief absences.

The All-Perimeter-Defense First Team will have the same criteria as the second team, meaning players must qualify for postseason awards, per the NBA’s 65-game rule.

Daniels will show up on Defensive Player of the Year ballots, and deservingly so. Here is the rest of the All-Perimeter-Defense First Team, in no particular order:

Lu Dort, wing, Thunder

A scoring outburst from Jordan Poole appeared innocuous. At the end of December, the Washington Wizards’ chucker went for 31 points against the NBA’s top defense, a game Washington dropped by double digits.

No one built a statue for Poole, though maybe a clairvoyant sculptor should have — because the Thunder, mostly thanks to Dort, were about to do away with performances like these.

Poole’s heater came on Dec. 23 in a game that both Dort and fellow All-Perimeter-Defense member Cason Wallace manned him. A game later, Dort swallowed up one of the NBA’s most high-powered point guards, holding the Indiana Pacers’ Tyrese Haliburton to just four points on six shots.

Then began a run for the ages.

The Thunder did not allow a 30-point performance against the Pacers. Or in their next game. Or in the following one. In an age where 60 is the new 50, 50 is the new 40 and 30 seems like the new 12, OKC spanned from the Poole performance until March 2 without allowing one 30-point game.

That’s two and a half months. Just as much as this is trivia about the Thunder, it is a Dort stat.

Like Daniels, Dort takes on the other team’s top facilitator each night. It’s no coincidence that he and the Hawks’ stopper are first and second in BBall-Index’s average matchup difficulty statistic. And like Daniels, most of those All-Stars don’t stand a chance to reach their usual numbers with Dort in their face.

In that run from December to March, Dort clamped down on Anthony Edwards, Kyrie Irving, Lauri Markkanen and others. At the beginning of January, during one of the best games of the NBA slate, when the Cleveland Cavaliers downed the Thunder in a shootout, six-time All-Star Donovan Mitchell was the one man who couldn’t seem to get a bucket. No coincidence, Dort was on him. Mitchell finished with 3-of-16 shooting from the field.

Dort will defend quicker guards like Mitchell but lives for the brute matchups. He will switch onto anyone. Screeners near him must beware; labeling Dort a flopper is too easy. There is a method to his flails.

He’ll notice when a screener approaches, a credit to the communication from his big men, and will often step up into the ballhandler before the pick arrives. It gives him just enough room to slide between the dribbler and screener — though not enough to find daylight without contact.

The play below is a typical illegal screen Dort will force. The Los Angeles Lakers’ Jaxson Hayes ventured up top for a pick-and-roll, but before he got there, Dort pressed up against five-time All-NBA performer Luka Dončić. Once the screen comes, Dort smacked his inside leg into Hayes’ outside one.

Dort may end up on the ground, but that’s a foul. Hayes’ legs are too spread. And it’s one that occurred because Dort beat everyone else to the most advantageous spot.

This is Dort’s move. The above play was the second time during that Lakers game Hayes got Dorted. Look at him Dort the Houston Rockets’ Jock Landale here:

Dort studies screeners’ tendencies. He keeps a file of the league’s most difficult scorers to guard in the notes app on his phone.

The great ones obsess over tendencies. And Dort has reached a level few do.

OG Anunoby, forward, Knicks

Anunoby and Dort think similarly.

One of Dort’s favorite ways to draw illegal screens is by changing a coverage haphazardly. First, he notices a screener becoming too comfortable with a coverage. When the guy setting the picks figures Dort will head in the same direction he always does, that’s when Dort deviates. After venturing over picks time and time again, he’ll mix it up, darting under one just as the screener begins rolling to the basket. When the two collide, it’s an offensive foul.

The world’s best defenders are devious. But no one, not even Dort, baits opponents into mistakes quite like Anunoby does.

At times, Anunoby will pretend as if he’s not in a defensive stance, acting as if he’s glaring off into the distance just so a dribbler dares to approach him. Then, he pounces for the steal.

He’ll riff on Dort’s strategies, too.

During the second half of a comeback victory over the Miami Heat last month, Anunoby caught a hot streak. He defended a couple of All-Stars, center Bam Adebayo and guard Tyler Herro. Anunoby is one of the few who can man point guards through big men from the start of possessions. Wherever the ball was over those final two quarters, Anunoby showed up.

After a sequence of chasing Herro around screens, Anunoby chose to improvise.

With Adebayo in his way, Anunoby performed the calculations. He could’ve changed the coverage and head under the pick this time to convince Herro he had enough space to shoot. Of course, Herro did not. The 6-foot-8 demon, as teammate Josh Hart just dubbed Anunoby, stretched out in Herro’s direction and blocked the 3-pointer.

With teammate Mikal Bridges tagging smaller facilitators, Anunoby takes the brawnier ones. He’s one of the league’s scariest wings jumping into the lane as a helper, a necessity inside the defense of head coach Tom Thibodeau, who requires weakside defenders to dart into the paint at drivers and still recover to their men in time to contest jumpers.

Anunoby has made only one All-Defensive Team in his career, mostly because of scattered injuries. But this is his healthiest season ever. He’s blown away his career high in minutes, where he’s near the top of the league.

The Knicks are getting elite defensive production and lots of it.

Amen Thompson, forward, Rockets

Stuffed in the middle of an all-time run from an all-time player was a number that didn’t belong: three.

That’s how many points Stephen Curry scored against the Houston Rockets on April 6. He’d gone for 52, then 37, then 36 in his previous three games and had averaged peak-level production, magnanimous shooting splits that compared only to his unanimous MVP season, since the beginning of February.

Then, he met Thompson.

Curry had played the Rockets a couple of other times this season entering that match, but he’d never before seen this much of a 22-year-old who may, along with his twin, Ausar, have a Defensive Player of the Year in his future. The Rockets used Thompson on Curry for the first half of a December victory over the Golden State Warriors but not much of the second. When the two squads met again in February, Thompson didn’t handle Curry much until the final stretch of the fourth quarter.

But on this night, from the beginning, Thompson was a blanket on the greatest shooter ever, who finished the evening with 1-of-10 shooting from the field.

Thompson’s one job? Face guard Curry. The two-time MVP can drain jumpers from other zip codes. The only way to prevent him from scoring was to ensure he never touched the basketball at all.

The 6-7 high-flyer took that mission to the extreme, chasing Curry around screens, walling off the sharpshooter’s side of the court so he couldn’t open himself up. Look at how Thompson didn’t even let Curry receive an inbounds pass on this third-quarter possession, then followed him up the floor without any space.

Only two of Curry’s 10 field goal attempts that night came while Thompson was defending him. Both were hasty 3-pointers, rushed even by Curry’s standards. Neither went through the hoop.

Thompson is a menace guarding dribblers. He’s one of two players, along with Defensive Player of the Year candidate Jaren Jackson Jr., averaging at least 1.3 steals and 1.3 blocks. He’s versatile enough to man bigs. Houston will try him on anyone. But what’s a better way to remove a Hall of Famer from a game than never letting him near the ball in the first place?

Toumani Camara, wing, Trail Blazers

It was Wednesday night during the final week of the NBA season. One of the league’s biggest stars, Luka Dončić, was making a grand return to Dallas after a blockbuster trade that sent him west two months earlier. No basketball fans — not the diehards, not the sickos, probably not even Danny Ainge — were locked into a bout between the Utah Jazz and Portland Trail Blazers.

And yet, Camara still played as if a title were on the line.

In the middle of the second quarter, Camara attacked rookie center Kyle Filipowski, who swatted away a lefty scoop. Utah was off to the races, though these races more resembled a Wednesday afternoon at the track in Boca than the Indy 500. The Jazz fumbled the ball, then dished it to Collin Sexton, who rose for a two-handed dunk that should have been easy.

But six seconds after Camara received a block to the face, he issued payback, leaping off two feet (his specialty) to reject Sexton.

Camara does not stop. Less than two years after the Phoenix Suns selected him in the second round of the NBA Draft then traded him to Portland in the Damian Lillard deal, he has emerged as one of the league’s premier transition defenders. And that’s hardly all he contributes.

Camara assumes the same role for Portland that Daniels and Dort do in Atlanta and OKC. He’ll muscle with larger players. He was a big before entering the league, when he moved to the wing. He’ll stick to tinier ones, too.

Like Daniels, he’s a master at mirroring the basketball. If a ballhandler raises the rock above his head, Camara’s hand follows. If the ball dips down below the waist, so does Camara’s arm. And like Dort, he’s a pest drawing fouls. He’s taken more charges and drawn more illegal screens than any other player in the NBA, according to Second Spectrum.

Through the beginning portion of the season, he didn’t have much help behind him. With rookie giant Donovan Clingan, Portland’s sole rim protector, now in the first unit, the defense is formidable. The Blazers allow only 111.4 points per 100 possessions when Camara has Clingan behind him, according to Cleaning the Glass. For perspective, if that figure belonged to a team, it would rank fifth in the NBA.

Portland’s defense is in good hands, even when the games no longer matter.

(Photo of Dyson Daniels and OG Anunoby: Paras Griffin / Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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