I liked Beverley's emergence during the playoffs as a high energy player who came up with some nice steals and blocks against OKC. However, I've argued that he is anything but a good defender but the majority of Rockets fans think that Beverley plays great defense. During the series, Bevereley let his man roam free time and time again and gave his man open looks repeatedly. To support my point, one must only look as far as Reggie Jackson's stats. Against the Rockets, Jackson looked like a star in the making, especially in Games 4-6, where he jacked up 15-18 shots a game and 6-7 3 point attempts. Compare that to the Memphis series and Jackson is only taking 8 shots a game and has yet to hit a 3 in the series (0-1 and 0-3 respectively). Clearly, it's possible to double Durant and still get a hand up in the face of Jackson so no excuses on why Beverley wasn't able to at least try to get back on his man. Once again, Beverley exceeded all expectations during the series and showed he is fearless and brings energy to the team but all the folks saying that he is a great defender need to rewatch the OKC series.
Bev is a good on-ball pressure defender but like the rest of the team, an average-to-poor team defender.
He's like Ibaka. Gets highlight blocks but is in fact an average team defender... he is definitely overrated on this board defensively.
Great man to man defender. Pretty mediocre on help defense. Sort of like Avery Bradley in that regard who is also a tad overrated on D since his help defense isn't that good. The truly elite defenders like Tony Allen, Paul George and Lebron(when trying) are good at both. I don't see how its a myth that Bev is a good defender though. He isn't elite but he certainly is good.
I totally agree here. Morey's found another jewel in the rough. But when you see all the threads on here saying why Beverley is so great, defense is consistently one of the main reasons he is praised and I just want to set the record straight.
I personally don't know how much clutchfans think about Beverley's defense, nor do I know what your definition of "great" is. But seriously? A 3 game sample size where the Rockets purposely designed their defense to make Jackson beat them? There was also a 5 game sample size where James Harden looked like crap in last year's playoffs. Was Harden overrated as the 6th man of the year last year?
I would point out the number of times Beverley's man had open looks and whether he was on Jackson, Fisher or even K-mart at times, he gave them all wide open jumpers all day long. It was frustrating to watch and in my mind it isn't good defense.
I noticed Beverly letting his man roam free a couple times in the last couple playoff games but I don't think he was that bad with it. Besides it's fairly hard not to when you know the only other players on the Rockets who really play defense are Asik and Parsons. You can't really compare the Grizzlies' situation to Beverly's. The Grizzlies are an extremely good defensive team as a whole. Beverly has far less to rely on playing on one of the worst defensive teams in the NBA when you exclude Asik. Overall he played pretty well for us defensively this year.
I thought the Reggie Jackson was the guy who we wanted to take the shots, albeit not open ones. To get the ball out of Durant's hands, you really needed to sag off of Jackson big time. I thought he did well considering the game plan, and also I don't think Jackson is going to just stay in one spot while his defender goes over to Durant.
Ok so let me get this straight, Beverley who has not even played a full season with the Rockets can already be evaluated as a good/bad defender?? I think its a little premature for anyone to start to make such claims since he has not been with the team very long. The reason why Beverley is labeled as a good defender is because he actually tries to well.... Defend.... He is a high energy guy that just simply out hustles his man causing those turnovers/steals for the Rockets.... Lets atleast give the guy a full season before we actually start calling him good or bad.......
All you need to do is check out any Beverley thread and you can see how everyone praises Beverley's defense. I'm totally fine with letting Jackson beat us and many people have said that that was the reason why Beverley's man was always roaming free. We were able to limit Durant's shots. But once again, looking at the Memphis series, the Grizzlies are holding Durant to even less shots overall than the Rockets did and still play D on Jackson.
That's how our defense was supposed to be during the playoffs. Guard Durant and make someone else beat us. Durant would've scored 60 every game if we didn't double team him. And yes, double team means someone is left open if you're the youngerstteam in the league that was just assembled this season without even being together for training camp. Defenses in general tend to be down under those circumstances. Doesn't mean Beverley is a bad defender if everyone isn't rotating right.
Lin is actually a good team defender, which most people don't understand... he's just a poor man defender against faster PG's. Beverley is the opposite, poor team defender but good man defender.
Also, the Rockets played a lot of 2-3 zone which basically leaves shooters open. It worked when KMart went 1-10 but when his shots dropped, he scored 28 on that same defense. It doesn't matter how good a defender you are, the zone is supposed to stop penetration, not shooters.
Speaking about myths and Bev, people here overrate Beverly far too much. I think the expectations were very low and his contract is so cheap, that now that he has shown to be NBA-caliber, fans on this site think he's the solution to our PG spot. On the flip side, Lin came in with so much hype that anything short of 18/8 is a failure. I don't now what the answer is. I think both have upside and weaknesses. But the only thing I do know is that this board is way too bi-polar. Let's stop overrating players and then tearing them down when they don't meet our ridiculously high expectations.
Beverley's advanced stat ratings Season DRtg = 95 (Slight positive contribution on the defensive end to the tune of 5 points per 100 possessions) Playoffs DRtg = 119 (team is worse off to the tune of 19 points per 100 possessions - terrible!) My eye test tells me... 1) He shows great hustle and energy man to man, jumping around and getting in the players face. He has to watch out for picking up too many silly fouls and getting into foul trouble. 2) Great defensive rebounder. Athletic. Great hops for blocks. Average on steals. 3) Got absolutely burned by Reggie Jackson in the playoffs. Questionable if he can shut down top flight point guards. Basically Beverley has shown some flashes of brilliance and potential but is largely unproven as a good or great defender. He is just average at the moment. But the best thing about him is his energy and hustle... that you gotta love.
I agree. I don't think that he's done anything to have us anoint him as a good defender yet and that's why it's a myth at this point.
