glen rice moochie norris stromile swift cuttino mobley charles oakley derek anderson joey dorsey jim jackson steve francis v-span / clutch the bear
1. Chuck Hayes - most of us laughed at heypartner a few years ago when he proclaimed that Chuck was one of the best defenders in basketball and that he could shut down Tim Duncan. turns out he was right. i would say chuck hayes is the best defender in all of basketball, but i am pretty sure i am overlooking someone i haven't watched enough of. i'll just say he's one of the 5 best defenders in the league and leave it there. the win at boston is probably what i would point to in substantiating this claim. forget about the successive plays where he made kevin garnett look like a rag doll. you missed out if you didn't see this 6'6 tank with the vertical of a paper weight shut off all penetration into the paint. its just a thing of beauty watching chuck hayes move his feet and stay in front of penetrating point guards. i hope this guy retires as a rocket because i want to remember him the way we remember mario elie. 2. shane battier - the accolades have given way to much hyperbole. he is starting to get a bit overrated especially considering that his individual defense doesn't quite match up to the reputation that has been built up. still, this guy is damn good and probably the second best team defender in basketball (after garnett). shane is textbook. i have never seen him get lost on a screen. in fact, surprisingly for a guy as slow as he is, i don't think i have ever seen him get crossed over. my analysis of shane will come as counter-intuitive. let me explain. he simply does everything perfectly. he never gambles, he always forces you into the planned spots, he shuts down almost all of the opposition's transition offense, he forces jumpshots. my criticism is that the physical/instinctual aspect doesn't quite correlate with the reputational plaudits. he is a great defender because of the above. but i can't support the claim that he is the second greatest defender of his generation when the physical/instinctual side isn't there. he deserves credit, but i can't consider a guy one of the few greatest ever (which is what this amounts to) if you can't just simply handcuff people. there is a quite distinct difference between making things difficult for your opponent by forcing jumpshots and just simply clamping them completely ala vernon maxwell on dan majerele/michael jordan. there's no shame in the former but the latter quality is necessary for some of these claims being thrown out about shane. 3. yao ming - this one was tough because yao is a case of two extremes. on the one hand, he is probably hands down the best post defender in basketball. you don't score on yao ming in the post. as of last year, you also don't score on him in the paint. he shuts everything down. conversely, he's such a liability against quicker opponents that it offsets some of his magnificence in the traditional role. but make no mistake about it, yao ming's improvement defensively from year 1 to year 7 has been substantially more incredible than any other gains he has made. 4. david wesley - this guy was an absolute rock for this team. unfortunately he got tortured by jerry stackhouse so we forget much of what he contributed that year. 5. cuttino mobley - cuttino was elite defensively in my opinion. his head to head numbers against kobe were impressive if i recall. 6. dikembe - we don't have consecutive 50 win seasons without deke. 7. jim jackson - rock solid. i will end the list there. kyle lowry hasn't been here long enough, and shandon anderson and james posey vastly underachieved. ron artest was mediocre at best last year. all you can say about ron is that he's just dumb. while i say shane doesn't have much physical/instinctual merit, ron solely relies on it. its funny because i remember after the game at miami, after ron frustrated dwayne wade into a poor shooting night, he remarked that he kept having to remind himself during the game to follow the gameplan and stay back off wade and force him to shoot. if he would just do this every game, he wouldn't have gotten as routinely embarrassed as he was last year (i think oj mayo still has ron's jockstrap as a souvenir.) ron is just too big now and can't rely on his hands and instincts like he did in his indiana days when his defense was on a historical level. strangely, he did as good a job on lebron last year as anyone i saw in the entire NBA. shane got abused in the first meeting while ron contained him and ron did the majority of the heavy lifting in the win at home. (whoever said earlier in this thread that it was shane who shut down lebron is dead wrong.) he also made lamar odom go back into his shell. ron's the best in the league against the BIG wings but unfortunately for him, i pretty much named both of them. i would highly recommend that he either lost about 25 lbs. or learn some tactical strategy (ala shane) heading into next year if he wants to contain some of these quicker wings.
It's almost as if Battier supporters feel they have to go waaay overboard to make up for him being underrated for so long. His consistency is impressive but he has never been a lock down stopper. Ron Artest in Indiana was far better. Shane shuffles his feet well and doesn't foul. Ron anticipated movement and beat the offensive player to the spot. Shane reaches and gets a hand in a players face before jumpers. Ron crowded his man so that they were incapable of shooting. Shane funnels his man into Yao. Ron prevented his man from penetrating. The defense you guys saw from Artest these past couple seasons is nothing like his previous years.
Top 10 Rockets Defenders of the Past Decade: 1. Shane Battier 2. Chuck Hayes 3. David Wesley 4. Ron Artest 5. Dikembe Mutombo 6. Jim Jackson 7. Yao Ming 8. Shandon Anderson 9. Cuttino Mobley 10. James Posey
HAHAHA Your so full of ****. I know that was a shot at me.. Quentin Jammer is the most underrated Corner in the NFL, he completely own Moss when he plays him. 1. 1 touchdown he allowed last year for a starting cb. Only cb that didn't allow any is Asoumugha. Do you really want to get owned?
Ooook. First of all Dream didnt do squat this decade. 2nd, Dream was NEVER EVER underrated as a defender. Ever...
Ok, this name thing we got going here is really confiusing the hell out of me. I keep seeing you name and was like "I never posted that" only to finally see the difference.
that is why he will not be traded, he plays defense. none of that me me crap, i need the ball in my hands to be more effective, i need more money, i need to know what moves are being made bull**** statments all the diva's say or do! go shane u r the man, if my wife leaves me and its for you, thats cool, no hard feelings. just play d and and keep doin what ur doin, you are great player and a better human being.
For sure. Payton's defense and overall play was key to Miami's championship run. A lot of people like to give Payton crap because he couldn't do it on his own but you could honestly argue Miami doesn't win the championship without Payon. That's gotta count for something.
Yeah I did not know you had that screenname when I first signed up. If they let me change it would be down for BleedingRocketsRed or something along those lines.
I agree with your assessment of what shane does well on a night to night basis. it is fairly amazing like you say that he doesn't get beat off the dribble like ever. he gets credit for putting effort and concentrating on defense and not taking gambles. its a lost art. so many player depend on their natural abilities, and trying to get steals or getting weak side blocks. it amazes me how many players don't follow the simple rule of watching a players belly button while defending, he can't go anywhere without it. the fundamentals would approve across the league if players just did that, and its something battier has mastered. this is essentially my issue with the praise, he's in the bottom ten percent in offense among starters. he's not a rebounder, so he better do something well.
If duncan is not 1 or 2 on this list, there is something wrong with the list. He anchored the best D over the last decade. Battier is ok, but he is not 2. I would take artest an bowen in their prime over battier too.
http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-game-highlights/09000d5d8026e902/Tom-Brady-Highlight-WK-2-vs-Chargers-2007
Just because they appear in Tinman threads in the 2000's, they never played games for the Rockets this decade.
I think Battier has more natural talent than peole give him credit for. His defensive prowess isn't just a matter of him mastering the fundamentals and working hard while other guys are hanging out at strip clubs. With all the millioins of dollars at stake, and almost every player training intensely leading up to the draft and every offseason with guys like Tim Grover, David Thorpe, etc, if what Battier does on defense can be so easily learned, you'd think a good number of guys would have done it already. Battier seems to have elite level "defenisve court vision"-- the ability to read all 9 other guys on the floor and quickly react to whatever is going on. It's similar to "court vision" on offense, the ability to read what's going on, find open teammates, etc. It can be improved upon, but not that easily. It's one thing to know what should be going on in principal, it's quite another to actually react quick enough to Manu Ginobili barrelling into the paint. He is also better endowed physically than people give him credit for. Too often, people concentrate on the veritcal leap to measure a guy's atheleticism, and ignore the "horizontals." Battier has very good "horizontals"-- quick feet, particularly for a someone who is 6'9'' in shoes. His combination of quick feet and size is what allows him to rarely get beat. _____________________________________________________ I would also dispute that Battier is in the "bottom 10% offensively." He doesn't take many shots, but he absolutely is an asset offensively. He runs the offense and makes the right decisions, is a good spot-up shooter and is also probably the best post entry passer on the team next to McGrady. __________________________________________________________ His rebounding is actually not bad for a guy who spends his days chasing perimeter players. For example, when Kenyon Martin was asked to defend the perimeter a lot one year in NJ, he averaged something like 6 rebounds a game. He wasn't a worse rebounder than he was in other years, it just wasn't his job. Battier also does a good job on the offensive boards when aske to. There are some years when he got 1.5-2 offensive rebs per game-- again, not bad for a perimeter guy. Battier is no Luis Scola or even Chuck Hayes, but he isn't a non-rebounder, either.
