Richard Jefferson: Utah's Gimmick Defense Won't Work

He's absolutely right. Utah would be better by simply being in front of James and fighting through screens. All James saw was a clear path to the basket. Had his floaters fallen or the refs called the blatant fouls on Gobert, he would have had 40 points.

Rubio just let him blow by. Coach Quinn didn't adjust at all, even though the Rockets kept scoring within 3 feet of the basket. Even Gobert was angry with the coach and his team for not helping out. He couldn't decide to stay with Clint or challenge James' shot. He can blame that on coach.

(*Edited for anger)

Still, I see the Rockets winning in 5 AND I see the Rockets winning in 6 against GS. This is CP3's redemption of his career.

 

of course not...they were conceding wide open corner threes, Harden floaters, or lobs to Capela in order to try and stifle the stepback three which they couldn’t manage to stop anyways

that defense was laughable...Milwaukee had a little bit of success and now teams think it’s a potential blueprint...lmao

we were getting wide open threes, floaters, and lobs against Milwaukee too...the only difference is that EG went scoreless and those wide open threes Thicc was hitting last night were wide open air balls...if the Rockets had shot their average percentage or even just slightly lower then that Milwaukee game is completely different

 

utah completely abandoned what they do as a physical defense and went with something they don't do like at all. That's exactly what a team with no identity does.

P.S. Thanks Beverley. You're the real mvp

 

Ummm did you just insinuate KD was a possibility?

 

c'mon @Codman lol you can't just slide in stuff like this without giving us more juice.

 

Seriously, this is just absolutely bananas. Bonkers. Idiotic. Choose your adjective.

**** like this is why I laugh whenever someone tries to tell me Quin Snyder is a brilliant coach or that Ricky Rubio is a great defender.

 

Yep that "defensive scheme" is absolutely pathetic. Harden is extremely good...but damn you have to at least try to stop him.

 

hope you're well bro, sending POSITIVE VIBES

and agree on rox in 5 here. but i just don't see the league office allowing GS to go out so quickly, they would be leaving a lot of tv money on the table for rounds 3 & 4. i also feel like we're at an even larger disadvantage offciating-wise with meeting GS in the 2nd round as opposed to WCF. because the 2nd round has such a smaller spotlight and is less scrutinized. no one is going to witness or notice the rig. this actually happened to NOP last year in game 2 vs GS with a FT disparity of 27-9. NOP absolutely should have won that game if not for a shamelessly blatant rig job, which was actually on par with our games 6 & 7. but because it was in the 2nd round, there was barely a whimper about it (unlike all the tweets from players/media the last 2 games of our series).

 

Someone posted on social media that this is pretty much what Utah was thinking for their defense. "You can't use your stepback if I'm already behind you"

 

Ah I see Codman is starting his “insider” nonsense again lmao. And people still fall for it every time. It’s amazing.

 

I want to thank OP for the vid (don't listen to tinny). Honestly I was kind of half asleep during the game last night--and the blowout didn't help that condition. I kept seeing folks in the game thread refer to the gimmick defense and wasn't awake enough to pick up on it. The video helped. Whereas last night I just thought the Jazz defense sucked, now I know it was intentional.

 

Gimmick? Richard is such a Harden hater. This has proven to work for multiple teams but no credit is given to Harden breaking them down and evolving.

 

Richard Jefferson, bruh, it already DIDN'T work. You're proposing a hypothesis after the experiment already confirmed the results.

 

Talk about fearing a player. Never in my 28 years of involvement in the game have I seen a professional team completely sell out for one player.

 

Did you watch early MJ games? Not quite this silly but closest I've seen.

 

Letting us play 5 on 4 is girls middle school basketball stuff... it's what you'd do if you were trying to ensure a high lotto finish.

 

Yeah, I got to watch MJ and this is the closest I've seen a team completely sell out to stop one player. Pretty crazy.