I don’t know that he’s damaged goods but he has not looked like he’s playing pain free the last two weeks. I noticed a couple of times on rebound or dunk attempts during the winning streak and he looks like he’s on a blown tire. His horizontal quickness has seemed a little slower as well. Hopefully a couple of days off before the playoffs will help him heal up a bit.
Yea, If the majority of the guys on the court are bad defenders (KD/Sengun/Reed), you will have a bad defense. It's as simple as that. In the ideal world, each of them needs to be the worst defender on the court so others can cover for them.
I don’t think our defense is trash. Ime just has to start Reed and defensively we will be fine. The real problem is that we don’t score well at the end of games when Amen and Josh/Tari is out there. It’s more of a balanced attack when Reed starts. Then Amen can be the great slasher that he is. KD and Sengun can get more 1 on 1 matchups. It makes the opposing team play two way ball. Teams don’t get as tired when Amen is the lead guard.
I think people on the board are oblivious about the significance of two players having a particular quality. 2 players is 40% of your team. 2 non-shooters means your drives to the basket are screwed, teams can double team you easily and your passing is clogged to a debilitating level. 2 negative defenders means your defense won’t be good. You can’t fix this by making the other 3 players extra good at these things.
Which is really funny when you think about it. Isn't Udoka a great defensive coach? (That was a rhetorical question. No one trotting out the schemes Ime does can say with a straight race they're a defensive coach, let alone a great one)
Its a Sengun problem. He is a styoform anchor. Traffic Cone. Coached by an idiot. They both need to go.
Good offense will always beat good defense. You might need to make a couple key stops but in general, you gotta score to win.
Problem is, defensively with Reed, Sengun and KD there are 3 poor defenders on the floor. I might tinker with the lineup a bit, maybe try bringing KD off the bench instead of Reed, plug in Jabari at the 4, Amen at the 3 and Okogie as the 2 guard with Reed and Sengun.
I leave KD out because in a semi-decent setting, he can be a neutral or slight net positive. If he’s allowed to roam and use his length to help with steals and blocks (Jabari’s role), he’s passable. He also tends to do a lot better in the playoffs. Just needs an average rim protector which he’s not had for 2 years. Sengun and Reed though, it’s different. There’s only one “solution” for Sengun which is to surround him with 4 neutral or plus defenders so that the overall volume of opponent drives to the basket goes down - that’s the pitbull-like role FVV and Brooks were filling, deterring drives at any cost. With Reed it can work only if you surround him with 4 good defenders one of which is an elite rim protector. Neither will improve in the playoffs - in fact it’s likely to get worse.
I agree with this. I think this is why we're seeing a huge impact in FVV and Brooks no longer being on the court. Ime took a lot of their credit last season, and we genuinely do not have people who have stepped in to those roles and it's clear how much worse we are on defense because of it.
