07-25-2024, 07:48 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-25-2024, 07:59 PM by KillerLeft.)
Marshall is going to convince everyone that he's a GREAT defender. I'm not worried about that. But, he's a different KIND of defender than DJJ.
Grimes is a better defender than Green. Significantly, I think. The team will miss Green in some ways, but his overrated defense won't be one of those ways, in my opinion.
Thompson...I think there was a slight overreaction to his defensive decline at first by those among us who were taken off guard by the idea of bringing in a 34-year old FA. BUT, since then, I think the "hey, the Mavs got a free agent" shades have made the pendulum swing back a little too far in the other direction. He HAS declined, and the decline is MOST visible when he's on defense. It's tough to tell how he'll look here. I kind of feel like he'll be slightly higher than Luka and Kyrie on the "useful on the defensive end" scale but nowhere close to as good as Grimes, PJW, Marshall, Lively or Exum on that end.
In the aggregate, I believe they might have improved, defensively, as in if you were to quantify everyone on the roster's defensive skills with a number and then add those numbers up, that total number might be higher than it was last year, even at the end.
BUT, honestly, what is that worth? Not much, unless they can make the ROTATION work, and it must work on BOTH ends. The people worried about the defense aren't worried about Thompson so much as they're worried about him taking the role of the guy tasked to make up for Luka/Kyrie's shortcomings on the defensive end. However, we were recently reminded that DJJ didn't actually play as much as it felt like he did, AND, we might be making too many assumptions about the exact nature of Thompson's role. Then, you have Grimes and Marshall to factor in. I think BOTH are likely to have bigger roles here than most people seem to believe (but none of us know for sure, obviously). Mix in another summer and another regular season's worth of development for Lively, and this might look like a silly argument in hindsight.
The point is, it doesn't matter how much defense is on the roster, it's how much defense is in your top 7-8 players. But, and this part is key, if your offense sucks, there's no point in even showing up to the game, so REALLY, it's about being good on both ends with your top 7-8 players. I THINK I see ways this can be accomplished, Thompson decline or no, but given that there's far more of a gap in some of our predictions of how these guys will be used than I'd have ever anticipated, I think I've reached a point where I don't know what to expect.
Grimes is a better defender than Green. Significantly, I think. The team will miss Green in some ways, but his overrated defense won't be one of those ways, in my opinion.
Thompson...I think there was a slight overreaction to his defensive decline at first by those among us who were taken off guard by the idea of bringing in a 34-year old FA. BUT, since then, I think the "hey, the Mavs got a free agent" shades have made the pendulum swing back a little too far in the other direction. He HAS declined, and the decline is MOST visible when he's on defense. It's tough to tell how he'll look here. I kind of feel like he'll be slightly higher than Luka and Kyrie on the "useful on the defensive end" scale but nowhere close to as good as Grimes, PJW, Marshall, Lively or Exum on that end.
In the aggregate, I believe they might have improved, defensively, as in if you were to quantify everyone on the roster's defensive skills with a number and then add those numbers up, that total number might be higher than it was last year, even at the end.
BUT, honestly, what is that worth? Not much, unless they can make the ROTATION work, and it must work on BOTH ends. The people worried about the defense aren't worried about Thompson so much as they're worried about him taking the role of the guy tasked to make up for Luka/Kyrie's shortcomings on the defensive end. However, we were recently reminded that DJJ didn't actually play as much as it felt like he did, AND, we might be making too many assumptions about the exact nature of Thompson's role. Then, you have Grimes and Marshall to factor in. I think BOTH are likely to have bigger roles here than most people seem to believe (but none of us know for sure, obviously). Mix in another summer and another regular season's worth of development for Lively, and this might look like a silly argument in hindsight.
The point is, it doesn't matter how much defense is on the roster, it's how much defense is in your top 7-8 players. But, and this part is key, if your offense sucks, there's no point in even showing up to the game, so REALLY, it's about being good on both ends with your top 7-8 players. I THINK I see ways this can be accomplished, Thompson decline or no, but given that there's far more of a gap in some of our predictions of how these guys will be used than I'd have ever anticipated, I think I've reached a point where I don't know what to expect.
![[-]](https://www.mavsboard.com/images/collapse.png)