Our combination of defensive talent means that there is no one player that we cannot put a shutdown defender on. Chuck Hayes - Back to the the basket postup players, e.g. Al Jefferson, Bynum Jared Jeffries - Face up 5s and 4s - e.g. Bosh, Tmac, Dirk Trevor Ariza - Wings who move off the ball a lot and live on jumpshots e.g. Rip Hamilton, Granger Shane Battier - Wings who play on the ball and like to drive, Kobe, Lebron, Carmelo, Kyle Lowry - PGs
The problem I think that JJ has is that, unlike Hayes, he does not know his role yet. And sometimes he tries to do things that are out of his reach.
lol @ mentioning jared jeffries.... hes a scrub and will never see major minutes on this team battier is old and gets roasted by top scorers all the time ariza never locks anyone down
just like he shut down melo for about 45 the other night, and how they made Danny granger look like jordan
I have never seen Trevor Ariza shut anyone down. Lowry is a good defender, but he does not "shut down" people like Shane or Chuck has
No we don't..I've seen shane and ariza get burned multiple times by wing players this year. Same with chuck
Sadly, he got around Budinger like Budinger was a fencepost on one drive and blocked his shot on at least one other. That was kind of sad to watch.
You can't stop the likes of Lebron,Kobe,Wade,Melo unless they just flat have a bad game, you might be able to limit them to 20 or 30 but your never gonna be able to shut down the best wings
but you can make them hurt their teams. like: http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=290226010 (worst game of lebron's career) http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=280316010 (last game of the streak...got battier on the front page)
I think you overrate our defense. Especially recently. With a Brooks/Martin backcourt, you need more than Chuck Hayes backing them up in the paint. I also don't think you stop a Kobe, Wade, James, or Anthony - you just hope they have a bad game. If you stop them, it's probably taking double-teams and you're praying whoever you're leaving open doesn't kill you. On good teams, whoever is open will kill you. I don't know what happened to this team's defense, but they better get it back if they hope to challenge the best teams in the league in a playoff series. Yao could be the first step to that, but whether or not he's the answer will be interesting to watch next season.
Combined with the stupid officials, it's even harder to stop Lebron, Melo like players.... Lately I have been keeping my eye on travelling violations by those stars when they crosses over people, and I found Lebron and Melo do travel a lot when they do cross-overs and they are rarely called.....
