There has been a lot of talk all year about the poor defense played by this team and especially lately so I thought it would be a good time to finally write this thread I have been thinking about for awhile. While it is fair to complain about this team's poor defense and perhaps lack of effort on the defensive end, I also think it needs to be considered that it may not be possible for this team as currently constructed to be any better than it is no matter what Malone does. From a defensive standpoint this is one of the most poorly constructed rosters you can have, there are many different types of team defenses that can be built depending on what players you have, however none of those types can be built with this team. Let's take a look at the main types of individual defense and how these players stack up.
1. One on one defense: Staying in front of your man, denying the ball, pressuring the ball, and post defense.
2. Screen defense: Knowing when to go through screens and when to go around screens, knowing when to switch and when not to, understanding angles to take when going around screens to stay in front of your man, and playing the pick and roll.
3. Team defense: Help defense, rotations, and how to play "half zones" (playing an area of the court without getting called for illegal defense).
The first two of these are obviously more important to backcourt players while the third is for frontcourt players, although there is some overlap. So let's look at how the perimeter players do here.
Thomas: One of the worst players I've seen at all of these, can't stay in front of his man hardly at all, plays almost every screen wrong, and when screened is taken out of the play instead of readjusting.
Thornton: Is again horrible at the first two which means players are always penetrating, his help defense can be fine when he chooses to try, but it is still below average.
Jimmer: Horrible one on one defense, but has actually improved a lot in his screen defense, but not enough to make up the difference in his one on one defense meaning players won't even use screens on him as much. Watch the games and see how Thomas gets screened on most plays while with Jimmer they will play more straight up.
McLemore: Currently is awful at all of these, with his athleticism and quickness he has the physical tools to actually be a very good perimeter defense, but right now none of those tools seem to be working.
Bottom Line: Every perimeter player we have is not only below average, but truly poor at all aspects of perimeter defense which means we should always expect penetration either with a screen or without, with these players I see no way to fix these weaknesses.
Now the frontcourt players.
Gay: Is actually one of the better defenders on the team, he plays screens correctly and his help defense is very good. Watch some games of his days in Memphis where he played with better defensive players, he was very good there. If he has some better help defenders on this team he would be even better.
Thompson: His one on one post defense is good, unfortunately, teams don't post on him because they don't need to, they just drive past our poor perimeter defenders which brings in his major weaknesses, he might be the worst on the team in playing off of screens, almost always makes the wrong decision, and his help defense is slow to nonexistent.
Cousins: He also is a decent post defender, but it's the same issue, his help defense is better than Thompson's, but is still extremely slow and he can't usually make up for it with his lack of shotblocking skills.
Williams: Just inconsistent, sometimes plays good one on one defense, sometimes doesn't, sometimes the help defense is perfect, other times not there at all, he is a liability right now overall, but with better defensive players around him I believe he actually can be very good.
Landry: Same as Thompson and Cousins, but undersized.
Acy: High energy guy, works hard, actually not a good defender at all though. Horrible off of screens and never seems to be in the right place when he has to rotate.
Bottom Line: There is some good post defense here, but with this team it doesn't matter, teams drive right past the weak perimeter defenders right into denchers of our weak team defense players.
To finish this long thread I would just say that this all shows a roster set up to fail defensively, a team whose weaknesses complement each other. So this won't be fixed this year, but it can be fixed eventually, we just have to choose a direction, we must choose which players are going to stay and get new players who compliment the few defensive strengths these players have and more likely cover up the weaknesses of these players. As nice as it would be to grab a couple of lock down perimeter defenders and a couple of big, team defense oriented, and shotblocking players, it isn't all needed to make things work.
If you choose to keep Thomas and McLemore, obviously Cousins stays too, then you need to get two great team defense guys at the SF and PF and probably both of those guys will need to be good shotblockers. The goal of this defense is not to stop penetration, it is to force the driving player into our big men and stop them there.
If you keep Thompson and Cousins then it is essential to get two high quality perimeter defenders because the screen defense and team defense from these guys is so below average that you can't allow penetration.
These are just a couple of many examples. So my question then is what moves would you make and what defensive system would you put in place?
