I notice what a lot of people are not mentioning is once Asik improves as a rim defender everyone's defense will get better. People bring up Kobe's defense. Well when his defense was good he had Shaq in the paint (or Bynum & Gasol). When you have big guys in the paint who can block and or alter shots it keeps players on the opposing teams from driving to the basket as much and force them to take outside shots. Look at the top defensive teams and they all have rim defenders. And Kobe also had Fisher in the backcourt with him. How good was Kobe's defense when Shaq and Phil left and it was just the Kobe Show and he lead the team straight to the lottery. Yes Harden is going to have to get better on defense, but until he does his teammates are going to have to pick up the slack on defense just like he does for them on offense.
Cuz Asik is already an extremely good interior defender already. He has outplayed the centers on the Bulls, Nets, Knicks, etc. Shaq is a freak of nature so can't compare. Asik is better than Gasol and Bynum who knows he's always injured.
Great data. Thanks. I wonder why Beverley's number is so low when most people's eye tests here seem to say the opposite.
With proper coaching, I think Parsons would be the one who makes the most improvement over time, and his assignments to guard these superstars would help him learn faster.
What if we lose by let's say five points, would better effort on Harden's part help prevent the loss?
Operative word is "eye" test or as I like to call it Steven A Smith analysis. Lin has always been one of the better defenders on the team, even during his Knicks days and all this Lin is a bad defender just because he gets beat off the dribble by elite PGs are SAS type reporters BS way of delegitimizing (?) Lin as a player. Here is a news flash, EVERYONE gets beat off the dribble by top PGS, heck Lin even beats most PGs off the dribble too and he is not even elite.
Coaches and team should do a better job of hiding him on defense. Don't let him guard the best perimeter shooter on the opposing team, for pete's sake. Even we fans know that.
For someone who is so terrible on defense it is strange that he had the task to guard Kobe and Lebron in the playoffs. Someone needs to put some fire back in his focus on defense.
Harden is a super efficient scorer, but . . . Defense is half the game. Defense wins championships. Pretty sure Harden knows this and he will work on his D someday.
This is a horrible response. The thought process here is as bad as tje porous d being played. So in other words you saying Harden is lazy, and just chooses when to play d? He needs to play d all the time. Not only when he feels like it.
only two things i wanna see from him. Find his man in transition and stop ball-watching defense. latter goes for pretty much everybody.
People got really mad in the past, when I said Asik and Lin were the best defensive players in the team, now there are stats to prove it.
They repeatedly do that... Until recently, where they have had to hide Dmo with Chandler and Omer, they were doing that exact thing with James and Chandler. The problem is that when these guys cross-match on defense, they rarely, if ever, actually get back and find their man on defense. We have the worst team in the league at losing a cross-match. From my experience, guys are either good or bad at realizing they are cross-matched and properly relocating on defense and finding their new man. I've heard coach interviews talking about this exact thing and how much they work on it. I don't expect any of these guys to be good at it through any point of their career (with the possible exceptions of Chandler, Jeremy, Bev, and Omer). James and Dmo are constantly competing to see who is the worst ever at finding their cross-match, mainly because they are so bad defensively in the first place, that you have to cross-match them. So the question is this: Do you want to hide them defensively by cross-matching them and having them give up points because they don't find their man? Or do you want to let them just guard their man and give up points because they are terrible defenders? One last thing: Cross-matching 2 guys with 2 of your other starters (for example Dmo and Omer switch and James and Chandler switch) is absolute disaster. You never, ever, on a team cross-match 4 guys because it is chaos and lay-ups all over the place on anything beside a made basket.
they're superstar struck. superstars get a pass because they're elite scorers. but what happens when the shot's aren't falling? they become a liability on both ends of the court and there's no chance in hell the team wins that game. defense is everybody's responsibility. at least cover your own man damnit. and if you're fast enough, then help out a bit. to truly be a superstar you have to play both ends of the court like Kobe, Jordan, and Labron
Don't need him to lock down anyone but asking him to be average and stop giving season high to the man he guards is asking too much?
