It's not trolling you just missed it. Multiple posters here have claimed repeatedly over the course of many months ,esp in this thread that DMO is an elite defender. Here is an example :
NO way. Both are already in this list. If Minny wanted to trade Kat for DMO I would trade him in about 1 mili nano second. Kat is already a great defender who can shoot. He's just absolutely amazing, a superstar being born right before our eyes. Porzingis is tired but before he already loooked like the birth of a clear cut star. High bball iq shooting, shot blocking...just amazing. he's not great either. And I didn't create a strawman. Too bad I'm not contributing member to search for "elite defense" in this thread. Oh he's great defender? Show me proof.
I was looking at the list of the guy who just had Jabari on it. I agree that I'd hands down trade DMo for either of them.
Yeah. Like I said. Par for the course when it comes to that poster. I want to see evidence of the "multiple posters" who called D-Mo an elite defender. I'm sure open layup or whatever may have. But he's half trolling I think.
par the course when it comes to you you demand someone to do the homework for you. Why not search it for yourself. Lazy? And he's a great defender? Why so? Gasol is a great defender. Cousins is a great defender. Dmo is not a great defender. He's only above average. Elite>Great>Good>above average>average>bellow average>bad>horrible Funny how all your posts here are completely devoid of any semblance of substance and only are personal attacks.
Not a good rebounder, above average defender last season, elite positional defender, elite stretch 4, elite post up player. Don't think I called him elite defender, because he's far from it and never will be, because of physical limitations. But for a big part of last season he showed unbelievable awareness, his double teams on the sideline created so so so many steals. Towards the end of the season they got less effective, not sure if other teams scouted it out, since this year I heard rival broadcasters mentioning that Rockets like to trap on the side, or was it just the minutes toll of playing hard and out of position adding up that slowed him.
Dmo and elite doesn't even go together right now. Wait until at least 3 full season of him playing before attempting to call him elite.
Of course, DMo is way better on offense and as a great defender he is better there too and he is not a declining smallish big man. DD
DMo slowly starting to get into the groove defensively. While Jones was dunking and flexing and looking all "tough", DMo was the quiet hero on defense against Charlotte. He defended 12 FG attemps. Out of those 12, opponents hit 1, shooting at 8.3% FG percentage.
Not quite yet. Shane Battier was a plus/minus beast. D Mo hasn't gotten there. There needs to be some objective measure of improvement when he's on the court which we saw in flashes there. I think he needs time but he could be what you describe. He's still way out of game shape and making a lot of mental mistakes with bad turnovers. He needs to get his rhythm back. Last year he showed flashes of being a dirty work kind of guy who does the little things. But to compare D Mo to Shane is really underselling Shane. He was huge for us. D Mo has yet to hit his stride, perhaps we will see his second half splits and see if he's on the right track. He certainly has the potential and the tool set.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/m/motiedo01/on-off/2016/ Some hope that what DD is promising may come true - even in this shabby state he has improved the Rockets' D by 8 points/100 possessions.
And this without being in game shape. He has a good sense of where to be defensively even if he's a step slow.
D-Mo is much more offensively gifted. Battier was a much smarter defender and D-Mo is not near that level yet, although good in his own right. Battier was just one of the best of all time. They both have a lot of "intangibles" and "glue"