DimesandKnicks wrote:Teams target Embiid in the playoffs a lot too, for the same reason—putting him in tons of actions to tire him out. This is just smart basketball.
I just watched a 7 game series against the 76ers and this wasn’t a thing. Even on a surgically repaired knee the Knicks weren’t attacking Embiid in PNR and late in the game they would bring one of their guards to screen. Should also be mentioned that there’s a difference between running pnr to hunt the other teams worse defender ala Steph and having your big set a screen just to initiate the pnr action.
You might want to watch what happened in last year’s playoffs, where Embiid was mercilessly hunted. It happens a lot. If you can’t see that, then that’s on you. And by the way, it works. Do you think Jokic would have taken so many threes in Game 7 if the Timberwolves left him alone more when they were on offense? Of course not. They purposely wore him down.
Yep, Jokic’s shot defense isn’t good. But the vast majority of the rest of his defense is really good, and so the overall package is good. And you seem to be arguing with that premise. Or maybe you’re not? If your only position is that Jokic’s shot defense isn’t good but he’s still a good (but not elite) defender, then I don’t think we disagree.
How tf can you be a good defender and be bad at “shot defense” (and I’m not using this term anymore because it isn’t a term, it’s called defense). What is the rest of this defense? Him “being where he’s suppose to be”? Oh my big pat on the back for making your rotation (which is really a product of good coaching, everyone on that team makes good rotations) but when you get there you’re still can’t defend. Him having good hands and feet doesn’t make up for him being a **** rim protector, being a **** post defender, not being able to defend on an island.
You just have a hopelessly simplistic view of defense. If Jokic has a positive defensive impact (which he demonstrably does), then yes, his defensive positives do “make up for” his defensive negatives.
If your teams “defense” is scheming to protect your deficiencies, he isn’t a good defender. Jokic has major flaws in his game and it’s on the other side of the ball.
Umm, defenses scheme to protect everyone’s negatives. There’s always mismatches of some sort on the floor, even if you created a roster of the best defenders in NBA history. And you always scheme to protect your team against those. These are silly criticisms, that sound like things we’d hear from people babbling on ESPN.
I’m not going to go down a rabbit hole about Steph’s defense, because that’s a whole can of worms, but what I’ll say is that it certainly was an example of teams “hunting” Steph even though it demonstrably did not work very well for their offense. It doesn’t really matter if you think that it didn’t work because of Steph’s man defense or something else. The reality is that it wasn’t successful for the teams that did it. Why would they keep bashing their head against a wall on offense doing something that didn’t work well? It was clearly because the strategy was less about their offense and more about helping their defense, because their defense needed a tired Steph.
Speaking with so much authority on why the Lebron was hunting a 6’3 pg in the final minutes of the playoffs is just strange. Clearly ?! Stephen Curry isn’t some lumpy seven foot oof. He’s a lean 6”3 guard whose game evolves around running around on offense all game. This is just a stupid take.
I promise you that LeBron would say the same thing. This isn’t some random theory I’ve come up with. It’s just conventional wisdom. It’s just bizarre to try to fight this concept. And this is even more important in “the final minutes,” because those are the times where the guy is most likely to become fatigued and when reducing the guy’s offensive potential is most important.
So your position is that the 2007 Cavs were filled with “scrubs” because, even though they played historically elite defense such that it is clearly ridiculous to call them “scrubs,” they didn’t play as good of defense in 2006 and therefore they must’ve been “scrubs” in 2007? How does that make any sense whatsoever? The 2007 Cavs and 2006 Cavs were not the same team. Players play better or worse year to year. For instance, Varejao was by all accounts one of the best defenders in the NBA in 2007. But he was early in his career and didn’t play very much in 2006. He was a better player and played more in 2007. That was a big deal. Furthermore, supporting casts gel together more or less year to year—which is particularly important on defense, which is so dependent on how the team plays as a unit. Basketball is a team game, not a game where you just sum up the parts to get how good the whole is. The supporting cast as a whole gelled together a lot better defensively in 2007 than they did in 2006. How does that somehow mean that they were “scrubs” in 2007? It’s just totally non-sensical.
The bottom line is that LeBron had one of the best supporting casts in history defensively in 2007. Whether you think that they lacked “talent” by your definition and/or if you think their ability to play great defense was caused as much by Mike Brown as by their individual talent is essentially irrelevant. They played historically elite defense. And a set of players that plays historically elite defense is essentially definitionally not a supporting cast of “scrubs.” Scrubs are players that do not play well. And that is simply not an accurate way of describing the 2007 Cavs.
If you have some different definition of the word “scrub” that somehow doesn’t preclude it from including supporting casts that play well, then I guess you can call the 2007 Cavs supporting cast “scrubs,” but at that point you’ve defined the term in a way that makes your conclusion meaningless.
I’m aware that someone can be a talented defender. Where were the talented defenders in this team? Pre-retired Eric Snow? The overrated Larry Hughes who gambled on passing lanes during a contract year to boost his stats resulting in the only year here ever got all Defensive consideration while not elevating his teams actual defense? Not to mention he was so bad of an offensive player that fans made a website for him begging him not to shoot. And regardless. If the word scrubs bothers you than he carried a group of role players to the finals. And the year prior he took last years Easter champions to seven games with the same roster.
Replace Lebron with Paul Piece/vice versa and the Celtics are getting to the second round of playoffs while the Celtics are making it to the lottery.
Who were the talented defenders on this team, you ask? Well, how about essentially all the guys on the court making the team a historically elite defense? If you play historically elite defense, then you are a talented defender, unless you’re just defining “talent” so narrowly that it becomes a meaningless concept (which I think is what you’re doing—just like you define “defense” so narrowly as to make it not include Jokic’s strengths).
If you want to call them role players instead, then that’s fine. Scrubs and role players are two very different things. These were role players who played their role quite well. Of course, I still would say LeBron did not “carry” them, since, as I’ve pointed out, they got to the Finals on the back of their greatness on a side of the ball that LeBron was just a cog in rather than the driving force (while they did badly in the playoffs on the side of the ball LeBron was the driving force behind). That said, do I think they’d have made the Finals without LeBron? No. So, if you define being a but-for cause of a team’s advancement as “carrying” the team, then sure. But essentially every finalist in NBA history wouldn’t have made the Finals without their biggest star, so that’s just defining “carry” in a meaninglessly broad way.
As for Paul Pierce, I wouldn’t be so sure about that. They probably could’ve played essentially just as good of defense with Pierce. Meanwhile, there’s little reason to believe Paul Pierce was an inferior offensive player that year. Indeed, while the Celtics had an awful offense overall, the Celtics with Pierce on the floor that season scored more efficiently than the Cavaliers with LeBron on the floor! Which is perhaps why Paul Pierce that year had a better ORAPM than LeBron, similar O-EPM, etc. And Pierce wouldn’t even have had to make their offense good to make the Finals, since those Cavs made the Finals with a bad defense as it was. And they did so fairly easily, so they could’ve made the Finals with a decently worse defense. The only real question IMO is just if Pierce would’ve integrated as well into their defense, but of course we know he integrated very well into an all-time offense the next year, so I think he would’ve. But maybe carrying the load on offense would’ve limited him defensively. I tend to think those Cavs could’ve made the Finals with Paul Pierce though. And that really shouldn’t seem ridiculous to you, because the 2007 Cavs defense was simply that good, combined with the East being that weak.
