Hope everyone is staying safe/healthy through all this. Since there isn't much to discuss, wanted to pose a fun question -- who has been the best defensive wing duo that the Rockets have had? I've only been a fan since 2004 so feel free to nominate other duos that I've missed from the 90s. Here are some thoughts on each duo I nominated: Battier/Artest: Great way to give scorers different looks because they're such different defenders. Battier is the quintessential cerebral defender whereas Artest was a physical/tough defender. Ariza/Luc: Probably our lankiest/most athletic pair of defenders. Great at jumping passing lanes and both were smart help defenders. PJ/Covington: KD has called PJ the toughest defender in the league and Covington is one of the best help defenders I've ever seen. Great length and timing to be a wing rim protector but somewhat underwhelming as a 1v1 isolation defender.
Tucker and Covington. Rebounding is more needed than defense now. If MDA can’t find a way to beat those Harrell and Howard on rebounds, he won’t meet expectation.
Nice topic OP But I’d also like to consider depth ... because PJ is left off the Luc / Ariza list but is considered a wing defender in the Covington lineup . PJ is definitely a capable wing fender but he’s our 5 most of the time . The best question IMo is between trio’s battier / artest / tmac (or maybe Hayes ?) luc / trev / pj if you were gonna use tmac you could compare PJ/ cov / harden ( like tmac is underrated defensively , both are effective when engaged though they heave different strengths )
I do think Tucker and Cov are the most versatile and underrated.. Battier and Artest were the most physical and had the perfect mix of cerebral and insane.. Ariza and Luc were the longest and the most successful (win%). It's insane to consider that we could've fielded a lineup of Capela-Tucker-Ariza-Luc-Paul in 17-18. It's no wonder we could trade punches with the Warriors, defensively, and then add a GOAT shooting guard in there too. That 2009 team was fantastic too. I say this everywhere but I don't think it can be said enough; I think the Rockets had championship caliber teams in 09 and 18 and the results pretty much show it too.
That’s not even our best pair on that team — Ariza and Tucker were. They also played more minutes together. Luc was filler when one of them took a rest. did you say Ariza/Luc just because you didn’t want PJ on two poll options?
Considering Tucker's versatility of guarding bigs and wings, probably Tucker and Covington. But they certainly have translated to the least amount of team defensive success so far.
Yeah that's because we have no centers. Ariza and Luc also had Tucker, CP3 and Capela Rim protection. Artest and Battier had Yao Ming anchoring the middle.
