(06-07-2021, 06:59 PM)Mavs2021 Wrote: ...and that is on the coaching staff, too. Carlisle said Noel was not disciplined enough to play defense. Randle had a reputation for being an awful defender. Yet the Knicks had the best team defense during the regular season, because of their coach. All we have is a defensive championship belt. Guess it makes some sense to hand out a wrestling belt, cause our defense is as real as pro wrestling.
A large part of that defensive problem is also that as usual our roster has the IQ and athleticism of Einstein. They all know how to hypothetically play perfect defense, but none of them have the athletic ability to make the correct plays consistently during a game at all, because they don´t have the footspeed or energy to do it.
One concerned I raised was the game possibly passing by Carlisle´s ideas from 2010 and the lack of athletic ability/fitness could be a huge factor. Josh Green (much like Justin Anderson) has proven that even as "worthless" offensive players they can raise the ceiling of the five players on the floor, just because they play so much harder than the other guys.
We simply ignore the fact that TRYING is the 1st thing of defense. When Richardson ball-watched SGA miss a lay-up, fall out of bounds, re-establish possession, grab his own offensive rebound and make the lay-up, I would have benched him for good. That one play summed up Richardson as a Maverick.
Wish it was Casey, who got fired, not Stotts. We need him a lot more than an offensive mastermind.
Not sure Thibs is a guy you should be using as your model. He has a history of beating his teams into the ground, over achieving during the regular season only to disappoint in the playoffs.
Green has a long way to go before he "proves" anything on the court. And the few sparks he has shown that got folks a little excited were offensive in nature (his court vision and ability to execute a pass) as its been shown time and again that it does not matter how good your defense is if you crater the team offensively.
The reality is we only have a few good defenders and no elite ones. Coaching and "trying" can improve a defense, but you have to have something to work with. We need somebody to take some pressure off of Luka offensively, but as shown in the post you responded to, the offense was not really the problem. The real issue was the defense, and more than anything we need a couple of guys who can play good defense without mucking up the offense.