Aren't all players less accurate in the post season and hence all 3pt snipers? You're playing the top half of the league, the defense is likely to be better so you should shoot worse than you average against 29 teams.
This was the dumbest idea of all time lol. KD is a bonifide b***h but he’s an asbolute beast of a basketball player. No defender in the history of ball would keep up with him and someone got the idea to put a project player whose max potential might be to become a 10-15 minute rotation guy on him???
You mean 4 all-stars right? They only got Boogie this season and no one knows if he is able to get back to all-star status after this season. Even before Durant, when they only had 3 all-stars, you still needed to play switch D to overcome their moving screens. In order to do that, you need bigs that can switch on the perimeter and cover. I disagree completely with your point about a normal team with 1-2 stars not needing you to switch. The Rockets only had 1-2 stars last year (you can make an argument for Ego, but he doesn't utilize the PnR as a handler) and we were absolutely a team that demanded switch defense. That's how Harden and Paul had so many bigs on an island to begin with. Whether or not a team demands switching on D depends on their offensive system and if they have the personnel to defend it. Now that more and more teams have seen the effectiveness of both sides, you can bet the rest of the league will start developing that way. Defensive effort is tighter and therefore shooters are less open. That said, that is NOT why the Spurs beat us. They Spurs beat us BECAUSE we only had one person that could run the offense and they schemed their entire D on containing him and taking away his options. You think the same thing would have happened last year with CP3?
No, it is Zhou Qi, despite being pronounced similar to Joe Chee. Intentionally spelling or pronouncing it differently than the man himself would (while in America ... I'm aware he wouldn't use Pinyin in China) is disrespectful ... and roughly as clever as Kevin McFail and the many other idiotic monikers that the frat boys and teenagers on here like to use.
You underestimate how good Gasol is on the perimeter, especially in his prime. When he played with ZBo he would always take the tougher assignment, even if it was a perimeter oriented superstar like Dirk. Gasol's defensive prowess is not just about his rim protection, but his ability to rotate, cover the PnR, and his strength advantage over post players. His career average is 1.5 blocks in 33mpg, he's not Mutombo. He's basically a 7 foot tall Al Horford. They are great positional defenders. Do you want him or Horford to be the primary assignment on Curry or Westbrook? Of course not, but they're not going to be abused on a switch. Duncan is the rare player who was elite at everything defensively: positional defense, rim protection, and post defense. I like Gobert a lot, but it's not just against GS where he struggles. We made his rim protection irrelevant. Despite his athleticism he's not comfortable stepping out. Someone like Draymond is much worse for us, even at center, because he can cover everyone on our team from CP3 to Capela. Utah tried clogging the paint against us and never held us under 100 points for a game. GS mirrored our switch everything defense and held us under 100 points five times. We scored 108ppg vs Utah vs 98ppg against GS. We don't have four all-stars either. Please explain to me how Utah's approach was better vs our PnR than GS' switching? Utah was 2nd in the league in defensive rating and we torched them.
But that's the point, why focus on getting guys who can chase people around the perimeter when everybody's shot suffers? Again GSW is an exception since they have 4 stars but against a normal team you want your best defenders honing in and locking up their best players. For example if we are against Cleveland last year you want PJ Tucker on Love and Ariza on Lebron, you don't want to switch and up with Cp3 against Lebron or Harden on Klove in the post. The Rox switched a lot because they had PJ Tucker, Ariza and Luc who can all defend 4 positions of the court. But that doesn't mean you want everybody to be able to defend perimeter players or they are useless. Like if we had Andrew Bogut instead of Capela you don't want him running and chasing Korver on the perimeter.
Utah's approach is better because they are 2nd in defensive rating, you said it yourself. That's the whole point of defensive rating isn't it? Please argue how the 2nd defensive rating team is worse than the 6th defensive rating team. The fact that the Rox torched them has no bearing because we are talking about the defense here not the offense, Utah doesn't have Cp3 and Harden for their offense they have Wicky Wubio and a rookie lol. Using GSW to judge everything is wrong because they are a special case with 4 perimeter oriented stars, since they don't have a dominant post scorer of course a switching defense would work better against them since their attack is 80% perimeter oriented with KD, Curry, Klay and even Draymond being lethal shooters. If you only fought GSW for 80+ games than ok you have a point but that is not really the case now, isn't it? Our defense is only 6th in the league if our offense wasn't so great Rox wouldn't be no 1 seed last year.
Everybody's shot suffers because they are being chased more. There are tactics - such as full court pressure - which don't come out till the playoffs because they're not sustainable over 100 games. It's worth it even if you get a fraction of a point out of it in the playoffs. You don't want to, but teams can force switches and they do. We forced the switch relentlessly in the playoffs. This is going to become more prominent. It's like advanced stats in the front office - this is not something that's going away or unique to a couple of teams. Our success in doing this despite not being a top 5 defensive team spoke volumes. That's why guys who are around 6'7 with long arms who can defend and not be liabilities on offense got snapped up. That quality is a huge commodity in the NBA right now, and it's trending up imo permanently. I feel like that's a strange way to look at this. You WANT everyone to be able to defend multiple positions, always. If you don't have that at every position, then you do what you can to band aid that. Sometimes it works (Capela) other times it doesn't (Ryno). If there's a player who can't do that, they are not necessarily useless, but they are simply less useful given we know what will happen to them against the Warriors - which you call an exception, but I call the only team that matters. Those players could have other uses, but they are going to have to do a lot to overcome this deficiency and you will try to replace them as soon as possible. What I'm getting at in general here is: you can still get some use out of players who can't switch, but that's becoming less likely by the day. The Spurs and Warriors showed us what happens to a guy like Ryno who can hit 40% of a high volume of 3's, but can't switch. True he can contribute against 20+ other teams, but we don't need him to win those games, and he is hurting us against the one team we didn't crush. Last season we had 3 wing defenders, I was hoping we could make that 4 this season. Unfortunately it didn't work out that way. But to say that these unswitchable players are useless is as fallacious as saying they can help you from the 2nd round onwards. The teams in this conference are too good. We are already extremely short on excellent defenders on the wing right now, and there is no point wasting time on a project that only works in regular season games. Just my opinion.
I'm not going to argue that Gobert isn't a defensive ace because he clearly is, Utah is an elite defensive team for a reason. But you said that Utah's clog the paint approach disrupts our PnR and that's just false. What that video of CP3 in the Utah series and you'll clearly see a trend. Sure, there are some isos where he just scores straight up over Mitchell or Exum, but the majority of plays are the PnR getting the mismatch over Gobert or Favors. Starting at 2:53, CP3 scores over Gobert in four straight highlights in various ways. Gobert settles back in the paint on the PnR and CP3 pops the midrange at will, which is his bread and butter. He can also drive right by Gobert in iso. Most the picks are being set by Capela so it's not like we have five three point shooters on the floor, it's a simple two man game. And these are just CP3's highlights, Harden also ran the PnR. In contrast, GS basically took our PnR away. Their approach is better. You're right that most teams don't have the talent or gameplan to attack the one thing Gobert isn't great at, but more and more teams are heading that way. And the best teams will always take advantage of it. And you're right that 2nd in defensive rating is better than 6th, but 1st is better than 2nd. Boston has the best defensive rating in the league and don't have a big man roaming the paint at all times. Horford isn't even in the same realm as Gobert when it comes to rim protection, but he can show against guards along the perimeter. Boston doesn't have a problem guarding GS or Houston as a result.
Zhou isn't gonna play against the Houston Rockets, he is a part of the Houston Rockets. Ok, so you proved if you have Cp3 and James Harden doing the PnR you will beat the paint defense of Gobert. So what? Do every team have 2 of the best pgs ever on their roster? From the stats, we can see Houston with its switch only defense is ranked 8th while Utah is ranked 2nd. That makes Utah better, how hard is that to understand? Boston FYI had the best defense, and they are anchored by Horford and Aaron Baynes. Baynes certainly doesn't chase people around the perimeter and while Horford is mobile for a big man he clearly isn't an athletic freak like Capela. How come they are the best defense while the Rox who you claim have the "effective switch defense" only ranked 8th? You can't argue that switching is better than traditonal "clog the paint" defense when Utah is ranked 2nd and Rox are only 8th. You have to have a basis for your statement, pointing out that the Rox can torch Utah isn't a valid argument since the NBA has 30 teams and not just 1 team. More teams are trending towards the Rox style? Ok name one then, which team is building to have 4 three point shooters and one De Andre Jordan style center? Lets look at all the young up and coming teams in the league, Lakers? OKC? Boston? Sixers? Minny? Lol no other team has a composition like Rox and GSW. They are the only teams in the league like this. And that's why a team with Gobert is ranked 2nd defensively while a tean like the Rix which is built to beat GSW is only ranked 8th. P.S. If paint defense can't stop the PnR how come Memphis had a winning record against the Rox in the regular season and how come the Rox lost to the Spurs in the playoffs prior to Cp3? Clearly rather than the actual strategy it is the overwhelming talent of the Rox specifically MVP Harden and top 3 PG Chris Paul that beats the paint defense. If paint defense and the PnR were at a similar level it would be a different story as we have seen against Memphis and against the Spurs.
Anderson is just a bad defender, it has nothing to do with him switching or not. Draymond Green's numbers jump up every time he matches up with Anderson, Anderson is taller than him so its not about the switching, its about the bad defense in general. Of course you want a guy to defend multiple positions, but what I'm saying is paint defense is also important in any scheme look at Gobert. He can't switch or chase guards but he anchored the Utah defense and made it 2nd best in the league. It is debatable 3nD wings are a commodity if they are so hot why did the Rox let Ariza and Luc go? In fact they are so many of them now after letting those 2 guys go we were able to replace them with similar players immediately. 15M for a champion and vet player like Ariza doesn't scream hot commodity to me, that is a fair price fir his services certainly he was ubderpaid at 7M a year. Luc didn't get an overpaid deal either, he got like 3M a year. If they are so hot the Rox wouldn't have let them go or they would have been vastly overpaid like what happened to Anderson.
