Yes, our team is different it will need to find it's new chemistry. We won't be a defensive stalwart like last year, but we might get close. DD
Here’s tension between the balance of offense and defense on this roster. That why the production of Tari and Jabari is so important
I'll take a higher shooting % over superior rebounding, especially since we're still a good rebounding team. We definitely lost our defensive mojo tho and it's probably because we are missing Brooks and his feisty energy. We're supposed to have DFS who is also an energetic player on defense but he's just been injured for who knows how long. A great pick up is Josh Okogie.. I've never seen him play this well before on other teams. I think he just loves playing for Ime because he lets him go out there and wreck havoc on defense. Okogie being able to hit open 3s is huge for us. As long as Tari continues to play like he did last night, he's also a menace on defense along with Amen and Okogie.
Rockets out-rebounded OKC. Defense is 16th, not 22nd. The Rockets have been weaker on the defensive glass, but the biggest thing with the rebounding is the defense. The Rockets force more missses and their rebounding will go up. Overall, the defense and rebounding has been great when Reed hasn't been in the game. Reed has basically been an even worse version of Jalen Green this year on the defensive side of the ball though Reed's problem is mostly on-ball and Jalen Green's problem was off-ball (i.e., Green could defend his man, but off ball he just did not have good instincts/feel for how to handle multiple responsibilities). Any lineup with Reed just has trouble covering for him. At least with Green, he had some lineups with Brooks and JSJ that worked defensively. Durant + X just has not been as good at covering for Reed. Okogie playing more may help here.
Wait, the smaller lineup has both offense AND defense. I think playing faster benefits our strengths as a team
Sample size too small but less rebounds is expected. We didn’t have a guy like Reed who is too small and not boxing out. Kd also is old and doesn’t spend his energy in this area. Sengun’s offensive role expanded, he is kind of overloaded. And it will take time to adjust to new system.
Zones screw defensive rebounding. The defensive rebounding will improve as we play less zone and more trapping man defense with Okogie in the lineup and less 2 bigs. We will lose some offensive rebounding as Adam’s minutes decline, but the spacing and the subsequent efficiency will make up for it.
FVV and Brooks were quite important to our defensive philosophy. Even losing Green has an impact because he was quite familiar with imes schemes. You remove all 3 at the same time it's going to take time for other players to gel
This is correct on both sides of the ball. We have terrific personnel that hasn’t been playing together for long. It will get ironed out on both sides of the ball, although I think we regress slightly on defense, but improve enormously on offense.
Yeah, we knew losing Brooks would hurt our defensive mentality. Then we also lost Fred, the other guy with that mentality. Plus we're still waiting for DFS. The whole combination has been terrible for our team culture. On way too many possessions, we're standing and waving people through. I don't miss Jalen's defense, but I underestimated KD's corrosive effect on that side of the ball. His laid-back style sets a calming tone on offense but a slack tone on defense. And objectively, he's doing a lot of Hardenesque standing around waiting for somebody else to make the defensive play. It's not like Jalen was much more effective there, but because the other guys look up to KD, I think he has added to the softening of our team culture.
