I was court side last night and on 5 different occasions someone yelled at Jones for missing a defensive assignment. And this was from 2 minutes left in first quarter, cause I missed most of the first quarter coming from my son football game. I really like Jones so this is not a slight against him, but against good teams it will cost us. It is also amazing the things you here and see when you are that close.
We are watching different games. When Jones gets push so deep that his man is right in front of the basket after a miss, that's bad defense. If you'd paid close attention, you'd have noticed McHale switched Howard onto Sullinger after those two plays. Boston responded by going to Zeller against Jones for 2 free throws in the post, at which point McHale put in Dmo. If I just looked at the box score, I'd think Jones played good defense, since it took Sullinger 15 shots and 3ft to get 14 points.
And to think there were a good amount of morons who were actually in favor of keeping DMo's sorry ass over Terrence Jones'. DMO hasn't shown jack **** since he's been here. Tjones has
Jones' performance last night was fantastic. I'm a TJones "hater", as in I think we'll need to upgrade the position long-term, but that was probably the most encouraging game I've seen from him. He was confident with the ball, attacked the Celtic bigs with the dribble and posting up, and was active throughout the game. He used spin moves, pump fakes, and finished that nice alley oop pass from Papa easily. I like Boston's young bigs and they just had no answer for him. As a bonus, he even hit two threes, although one was banked in. The only drawback was that Sullinger abused him for a few possessions in a row in the third, but I like Sullinger and he does that to a lot of defenders. If Jones can keep up this kind of effort and skill we can be a lot more dangerous this year. I don't know about you fellow "haters", but I actually like to be proven wrong.
He looks small compared to most elite PF. Lebron James, Kevin durant, tracy mcgrady, Paul goerge are all nearly his size a season ago with jones being barley bigger. To me jones is like a hybrid. He's shows highlights of dribbling and etc. I just don't know if he's big enough to take out the bigger elite players. Rember in the blazer series they had to out asik and Howard out because jones couldn't contain lma given lma is going to do good no matter what Dwight and asik slowed him down from his 40 point games jones was letting him get.
The only things Jones needs is a quicker release and a little more strength. He will never be a defensive juggernaut but I think his offense could enough of a mismatch to break even with most PF's.
Please provide specifics. How can he become 7 yrs older and gain more than 3 yrs experience in one year since you agree that those are his disadvantages.
Realistically, I think he will improve on his strength i.e. shotblocking and getting some steals. McHale made an interesting comment about TJ's perimeter defense as being good. I admit I haven't observed that to be a strong point on his part. To expect him to hold on his own on the low block against stronger and bigger PF's, is unrealistic. His rebounding may get better this year.
Jones like alot of young players, drift mentally when he is not involved in the play. What he needs to learn is to compete for position even when his man isnt the primary. Hes big and strong enough to beat guys to the spot and hold it. If he doesnt, then it makes it very difficult to compete forn that position.
Three guys on this team right now with a PER over 20. Jones is one of them. Three guys on the team last year with a PER over 19. Jones was one of them. Shouldn't be hard to figure out who the other two guys are. I know that PER is not the be all end all in regards to statistical analysis, but people who seem to repeatedly take the stance that Jones is a complete negative baffle me. He is inconsistent, but most role players are. That's part of what makes them complimentary pieces instead of franchise cornerstones. He is young and has his deficiencies as do most players in the NBA that are role players. He can get better. We just need him better right now admittedly. Oddly enough, many of these same people would like to hang their hat on D. Mo who hasn't had a fraction of the success Jones has had.
I think if he gets better he will probably be an average individual defender, but might provide some rim protection which is great from the PF position.
Jones has been worse defensively than he has been good offensively prior to this year. DMo while not close to as good offensively, has not been nearly as bad defensively either. I'd love it if Jones learned to play defense. Jones and DMo are both most suited as a backup, IMO. DMo played some really good defense for about 30 games in the middle of last year before falling apart. Very frustrating that neither has been consistent.
I respect your opinion, but I respectfully disagree. This team really took off as a whole when Jones was inserted into the starting lineup last year. There were several national articles written about his play and his impact on the team. D. Mo had a few good defensive showings sprinkled in between his fall on the ground, off balance, foul fests, but as a whole, D. Mo has been a net negative on the court more often than not. In all honesty, his good defense really stood out in those games because it shocked the hell out of everybody.
Jones got off to a good start last year. McHale even admitted that Jones was on the verge of losing his job to DMo in the middle of the season so it was more than a sprinkling. Granted, DMo feel apart to make this mute concerning right now, but DMo's middle of the season last year is the best defense by far played for that period of time between Jones and DMo. Jones has made a concerted effort this year to stay near the basket defensively....just wish he wasn't leading the NBA in opponents FGM at the rim so far this season.
I don't remember McHale saying that. Link please. I don't mean to come off as anti D. Mo. I was pulling for one of them to be decent all along and it never mattered to me which one. I think I've just grown frustrated with him. He seems to have an enticing skill set to go with his height, but he is so disappointing. I wish we had signed Ed Davis. Anyways, I remember a few games where he outplayed Jones, but never a time when he was consistent enough to actually threaten to supplant him in the starting lineup. Even looking through the boxscores, D. Mo's stretches of good games seem to usually stop at 2. http://espn.go.com/nba/player/gamelog/_/id/6597/year/2014/terrence-jones http://espn.go.com/nba/player/gamelog/_/id/6464/year/2014/donatas-motiejunas
Terrence is undersized, for the 4, he plays it as well as he can, the defense at the 4 is an issue but I am a big fan of his game.
Terrence Jones is 6'9" and 250 pounds. There is no reason he can't play decent post defense. Saying he is undersized is nothing but an excuse.
It was a long time ago that McHale said it so I'm not going to spend time finding it. DMo had a substantial impact on defense that would not appear in game logs. XRAPM, RPM show DMo having a significant edge defensively. Use stats.nba.com to look up DMo's defensive rating for February, March last year. You will see opposing teams ability to score with DMo in the lineup drastically reduced to 90 and 96 per 100 possessions. Basically, when DMo was on the floor for 2 months, the Rockets had a devastating defense. I don't want to attribute this to DMo being great defensive stud, but more that Jones wasn't on the floor. Jones has never had a defensive rating less than 100 for a full month despite playing a ton of minutes with Dwight. Granted when DMo had to play center when Dwight was hurt, his defense fell apart. Even when playing PF since, his defense wasn't back to what he did in February and March. DMo is a very frustrating player. He had about 30 games of playing good positional defense when coupled with playing with Dwight or Asik lead to a devastating defense. I don't know if DMo can get his confidence back or whatever he needs to play like that again. I don't think DMo is a long term PF option at this point as his skills on offense don't mesh with Rockets' needs. At this point, Jones remains better offensive player, but DMo probably is still the less worse defensive player.
