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Shaking my head at people saying Love is a slightly below average defender. His defense is not decent. It's not a slight negative. It's absolutely atrocious. He is downright bad in most defensive plays he is involved in.
It sounds like hate but I invite you to watch a full game of the wolves and actually pay attention on every possession to what Love does on defense. Pick any game.I did that. I was wondering how someone with those stats could even lose so I picked random Wolves games on my league pass and actually watched. After that I was astonished that he doesn't get called out a lot more. It was eye opening. It's not even inconsistency, it's just intolerable defense for a big man.
Not saying that he should not get his money or that he will never win. He will still get his max and he might still be succesful with the right pieces in the future but you better stop believing that his defense is passable. It's not.
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United States22883 Posts
On June 03 2014 11:40 VayneAuthority wrote:
love being worth max contract just shows why nobody even bothers learning how to play/plays D these days.
Plus it's not really a "these days" thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Greatest_Players_in_NBA_History
There's plenty of guys on that list who were below average defenders.
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I remember Parker shutting down CP3 in some games.
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On June 03 2014 14:40 AntiGrav1ty wrote:
Shaking my head at people saying Love is a slightly below average defender. His defense is not decent. It's not a slight negative. It's absolutely atrocious. He is downright bad in most defensive plays he is involved in.
It sounds like hate but I invite you to watch a full game of the wolves and actually pay attention on every possession to what Love does on defense. Pick any game.I did that. I was wondering how someone with those stats could even lose so I picked random Wolves games on my league pass and actually watched. After that I was astonished that he doesn't get called out a lot more. It was eye opening. It's not even inconsistency, it's just intolerable defense for a big man.
Not saying that he should not get his money or that he will never win. He will still get his max and he might still be succesful with the right pieces in the future but you better stop believing that his defense is passable. It's not.
He's not that bad. I'm not going to stick up for his defence but he is passable. See:
His Synergy stats are nothing troubling either: 0.88 points per play allowed, with 0.74 on isolation plays (ranked 73rd overall) and 0.73 in the post (ranked 42nd.) For reference, league average offenses like the Knicks score 0.93 points per play overall, and the numbers of iso and post players are generally above 0.8
His defence is passable with the right system and his offence more than makes up for his mediocre D.
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On June 03 2014 09:58 Jerubaal wrote:
I wonder if San Antonio takes a lesson from the OKC series and puts Green on Lebron and Leonard on Wade.
I feel like Leonard should still be considered the #1 defensive wing on the starting lineup. But intuitively (didn't look at the stats) Green is better when it comes to closing out and denying/contesting the jumper and restraining airspace.
So since Durant relies heavily on this part of his game and doesn't actually post up a lot/at all, the spurs could actually afford to swap green on him without getting punished physically in the post. Then you have Leonard on WB/Jackson(?) and it's a win/win situation.
Miami is a whole other ballgame though. If you put Green on James, he's gonna get posted up, backed up and physically abused in general to no end. Maybe you could try that to throw him off or when he's beginning to tire at the end of games or in games 5-7?
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
i'm not up to date on basketball stats stuff but it would be interesting to see what the spread is on defensive ability. basic question is this: how bad is the worst case possible defense compared to the median, and does this differ significantly across positions. sometimes distance between the worst and a median player is way bigger than the distance between best and median, and this differs across playing positions.
it is quite possible that people underestimate the spread and particularly how damaging the worst kind of defense can be, given the ordinarily very high level of play in the NBA.
similar story in baseball, the numbers show that the spread between the worst and best spread of catcher defense is really huge, enough to justify fielding players that have absolutely no offensive value. because of the extraordinarily high standard of play in the big leagues, people sometimes ignore the fact that incompetent defenders, because they are so bad relative to the big league standard, never make it into the league in the first place, so they might underestimate importance of defense at certain positions because they take big league defense for granted, when it might be a rare skill.
given the kind of lineups run out there by some teams, i suspect the frontcourt positions play a heavier defensive load.
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On June 03 2014 10:26 DystopiaX wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2014 09:23 Doraemon wrote:
hibbert second team all-d really? i honestly thought dwight should be there, no homer. but it's hilarious to see someone voted harden ahaha It's a regular season award and Hibbert was the defensive centerpiece of the best defensive team in the league. He slumped offensively towards the end of the season and the playoffs but that has nothing to do with the award. You can make an argument for Dwight but Hibbert/Noah as your selections aren't unreasonable either.
http://espn.go.com/nba/player/splits/_/id/3436/roy-hibbert
8.9/4.7/1.8blocks post all stars....
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points have nothing to do with defense and Hibbert's known more for his shot-altering anyway. Pretty sure he had among the lowest if not the lowest opponent FG% in the paint when he was on the floor. And like I said, the Pacers had one of the best defenses in the league.
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Hibbert was ranked #2 for opp FG% at the rim (keeping it low that is). Brook Lopez was surprisingly first (although he only logged 17 games).
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On June 03 2014 19:20 DystopiaX wrote:
points have nothing to do with defense and Hibbert's known more for his shot-altering anyway. Pretty sure he had among the lowest if not the lowest opponent FG% in the paint when he was on the floor. And like I said, the Pacers had one of the best defenses in the league.
he never scored much..but you'd want more than 4 rebounds from your starting centre...oh well. see how he goes next year
oh. rumour hibbert wouldn't mind leaving. rats off the ship i guess
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On June 04 2014 00:05 Doraemon wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2014 19:20 DystopiaX wrote:
points have nothing to do with defense and Hibbert's known more for his shot-altering anyway. Pretty sure he had among the lowest if not the lowest opponent FG% in the paint when he was on the floor. And like I said, the Pacers had one of the best defenses in the league. he never scored much..but you'd want more than 4 rebounds from your starting centre...oh well. see how he goes next year oh. rumour hibbert wouldn't mind leaving. rats off the ship i guess
You do, that's why he averaged 6.6 per game. It's fine to rebound "poorly" if you're consuming bodies and the Pacers rebounded much, much better with Hibbert on the floor than without him.
http://stats.nba.com/teamLineups.html?TeamID=1610612754&pageNo=1&rowsPerPage=25&sortField=REB&sortOrder=DES
On June 04 2014 08:21 XaI)CyRiC wrote:
I think a pretty good argument for Hibbert as an all-defense center is that he manned the middle for a team that led the league in defense and was top 3 in rebound rate and defensive rebound rate over the regular season. People can point to Hibbert's individual numbers for rebounds and blocks, but the bottom line is that he anchored a team that was amazing on defense and rebounding for the year. I don't think it's a stretch to say that the center position plays a huge part in both defense and rebounding, so Hibbert should get a lot of credit for those team accomplishments.
This is what I was attempting to point out, just much, much less eloquently.
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United States4471 Posts
I think a pretty good argument for Hibbert as an all-defense center is that he manned the middle for a team that led the league in defense and was top 3 in rebound rate and defensive rebound rate over the regular season. People can point to Hibbert's individual numbers for rebounds and blocks, but the bottom line is that he anchored a team that was amazing on defense and rebounding for the year. I don't think it's a stretch to say that the center position plays a huge part in both defense and rebounding, so Hibbert should get a lot of credit for those team accomplishments.
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I had Hibbert winning DPOY if it had to go to a big. He was just dominant for most of the season, far better than Noah this year.
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As a Bulls fan I totally agree but I think at the time they cast the voting no one felt good about giving DPOY to the team that was collapsing. I don't think Noah is a terrible pick but if I were a voter I might pick Hibbert over him 1/2.
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That raises an interesting question: how much do you penalize a team for collapsing when his squad was good defensively for (by all accounts) for the whole year? Perhaps I'm wrong, but I thought it was the offense that failed them late. I know the Bulls were good defensively, but were they as good as Indiana?
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Well, the Bulls were perceived to have less talent around Noah. Dj F-ing Augustine was like half their guard play.
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Give it to my man Bogues 
He never gets any love.
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That's a good point. Being the anchor on a top five defense while having to back Curry and Lee can't be easy.
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Not at all. Him and Iggy carried that defense as best they could. Iggy was even more valuable (tops in the league iirc) by RPM.
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United States22883 Posts
Rockets decline to pick up Parsons' option.
Pistons go for it?
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EPT
