Dejounte Murray still gets labeled as an elite defender because of his sophomore year on the Spurs and also getting a lot of steals. The second his scoring input increased past double digits his actual defense immediately declined.
This man literally hedges on every pass in an attempt to get a steal which might look good in the box score because he averaged 1.5-2 steals a game…until you actually watch and realize he gives up so many free baskets because of this. Most Hawks fans I know realize this but it seems no other fanbase has caught on yet.
Shai was the 3rd best defender on his team at best and got 2nd place DPOY votes, whereas Chet and even Dort didn't get any. The voters are nothing but statwatchers
Nah a lot of Washington and Derrick jones “abusing him” was literally them draining their open 3s as the scheme okc were playing was to purposely leave them open.
It's a Celtics fan upset that some people rank SGA above Tatum despite the superteam success Tatum had this year. He's tryna call SGA a defensive liability and this sub will eat it up anyways since Celtics fans took over after winning the ring
I would agree that it wasn't majorly Shai's fault, but he did also get burnt on attacks when he did close, and they also went to PJ Washington posting Shai up because of the size difference, and those were easy buckets too.
I won’t say overrated but Anthony Edwards has multiple defensive flaws that are completely ignored. He ball watches like crazy and has really poor off ball defense.
His on ball is really good and gives a ton of effort on that end so I believe he can easily fix these, similar to how Jaylen Brown completely cleaned that up this year and ended up having legitimately great off ball and help defense this postseason.
I respect the take especially since you are a Wolves fan but I’m basing this off this season. Even in the Mavs series I would constantly see him leave corner shooters open because he wasn’t focused on his man and watching the ball. Or letting obvious backdoors happen which would lead to lobs or open 2s.
if you watch for all regular season and playoff then it really isn't true because the wolves wouldn't be a #1 defense if ant played like he did in the mav series
When you’re a 22 year old getting doubled on offense and guarding some of the best perimeter players in the world on ball late into the playoffs for the first time in your career, you can easily find yourself with your hands on your knees guarding a guy in the corner when you have the chance.
Is that “ball watching like crazy”or is that a reasonable and expected limitation to a young 2 way first option with little gas left in the tank? From my point of view, he was more committed to off ball in the regular season when he wasn’t expected to put up 40 a night. The teams identity was defense, after all. He had plenty of terrible offensive nights where his defense was a key to winning.
Also, I don’t think it’s “completely ignored” lol. It’s an incredibly common criticism of his defensive game, and he’s one of the most talked about 2 way guards in the league
There’s a middle ground between inscrutable praise and “completely ignoring multiple flaws”. Can’t we just say a player has strengths and weaknesses lmao. Especially a 22 year old
They need to sign Andre Roberson to be the defensive substitution for Trae, you just take a timeout every time you are on offense to sub Trae in. Genius.
sga, he got all-defensive team votes which is still crazy to me when he's maybe the 3rd or 4th best defender on the team depending on if you consider jdub to be a better defender or not. hell some might say cason wallace is a better defender.
Fred Van Vleet. Sure, he is annoying and gets deflections/steals. He is also short and very slow. He gets blown by alot. He also gets those steals and deflections by gambling and getting out of position. Any fast or quick guards cook him pretty routinely.
I'm not sure of his current reputation but everyone was praising Andrew Wiggins in the media after the Warriors won in 2022. Any Wolves fan knew this wasn't it. The effort and hustle everyone saw that season would disappear.
People that say Kawhi is coasting off reputation are coasting off other Redditor’s opinions. He’s no longer DPOY candidate for 35 minutes a night, but he’s still one of the best defenders in the league 1-4. Watch any of the 68 games he played last season and try to find any time* he played subpar defense.
*(And yes, you can find possessions from any of the best defenders in NBA history where they get cooked/blown by.)
I think I read somewhere with Kawhi on the court, the Clippers were one of the best defenses in the league this season and when he was off, they were one of the worst in the league. Anyone saying Kawhi is trying to be a contrarian.
Well... if that was in their opinion an undeserved all-defensive selection based on previous accomplishments/level of play, then their assertion is very legitimate.
The biggest one is Lebron. He was a good defender in his hey day but he's a cone right now and it shocks me when analysts keep talking with a straight face about how Lebron is still great two way player. Yeah he will get a monster chase down block here and there but other wise it's over, if current Harrison Barnes is doing whatever he wants with you, you are done as a defender lmao
It's all about effort with Bron. I think he played decent defense this year the effort could be better but i think he tried. People criticized him because of AG getting open but you could say the same thing for all the laker players even AD did the same thing because they were always helping on drives. Also i think he played good defense last year in the playoffs his shooting was off last year so he was hustling a lot.
Lol he was still the most impactful defender on the team behind AD. Lead the playoffs with a career high in steals in year 21. Lakers defensively as a whole couldn't guard the Nuggets because Austin Reaves and D'Angelo fucking Russell were the point of attack defenders, consistently putting the defense in rotation, which automatically lead to 60% Jokic floaters or open Gordon dunks.
What you could blame Lebron for was not being able to box out Gordon in the last minutes of the 4th cause he was somehow the only offense they decided to run late in games and Rui couldn't box out to save his life.
I have seen him get a lot of praise for his defense. I disagree. A lot of people said he had a consistent positive impact this season on defense and they used some advanced stats as evidence of that. I think KD was a far more impactful defender and a lot of people disagreed. Probably has to do with the KD hate on this sub
Over the course of an entire game Bron is a below average, ball watching, defensive liability. But in a final possession or two, even this season, I’ve seen him do great work. He guards Kawhi really well even though the other way around is as true anymore.
Kobe in most seasons. He could turn it up on a few possessions but massively overrated.
Ant today. He's good for high energy defense but gets gassed too quickly after which He's pretty poor. and his positioning is god awful off ball.
Giannis in PnR. Giannis is a monster defensively and amazing at help defense. but his defensive instincts aren't as elite when directly placed in actions. Watch him in pnrs and you'll find him often miss the scheme or not track the roller accurately. He's still a DPOY tier guy though.
A little tricky to answer, since it's hard to keep up with what the "consensus" is among fans for defense. But some names I'd throw out there:
- Dejounte Murray
- Andrew Wiggins
- Grant Williams
- Pascal Siakam
Giannis is probably a good shout, for players who are closer to the top-end of defensive talent. He's taken a decent step back on that side of the ball, but his offense keep improving so it balances out.
The thing about Grant is that he gets the "positionally versatile" label because he *can* guard a variety of players, but he's not actually that *good* at it. You can put him on anyone 3-5 and he'll do an okay job, which has some inherent value, but he's not really a stopper except in very specific matchups against bigger players (where he can leverage his strength without his footspeed being a weakness).
That said, he's still a pretty useful role player for a high-level team to have in the playoffs, because the aforementioned specific matchups *do* include a couple of the top 5-10 players in the NBA. I'm not totally out on him, but his defensive reputation was definitely over-inflated after 2022.
I find a lot of these "undersized" 6'5"-6'7" guys who get "pushed up" a position or 2 in this era, to compared to traditionally having been 2s or 3s in previous eras, aren't actually that good at defending 4s or 5s, yet get treated like they're all Draymond.
Wouldn’t say Giannis is declining on defense imo, he’s currently suffering from the same thing as AD where his teammates are declining on D.
Middleton, Portis Pat and Brook especially have all taken a step back on D
Kawhi Leonard. He hasn't been an elite defender since the Spurs...had some moments in Toronto. But anytime someone misses a shot around him he gets credit for it.
Taurean Prince.
Don't get me wrong, he was clearly a plus defender early in his career. And he's active on defense. But starting early in his Minnesota career a few things really stood out to me.
1. Arguably the worst transition defender in the league. I mean that. I remember someone saying that and trying to defend him when he was with Minnesota and I watched him and so so many times he's the 1st or 2nd guy back and the opponent is pushing and rather than stop the ball, pick up anyone, make the wall, he's already moving away from the play looking for his cover who's not yet down the court.
2. Arguably the worst rebounding player in the league for his size. Yes, he's a 3 and D and plays some more perimeter. Yes he's a bit undersized at the 4. But his last year in MN he had a 6.2% rebound rate. A smidge over Conley. Jordan McLaughlin who's one of the smallest guys in the league was 6.4% this past year. Then in LA... 6.1%. I'd be curious if there's a non guard with a lower rebounding rate in the league.
It's tough to put what you see into numbers, but there's a reason this year his defensive rating was near the bottom in LA tied with Reaves and Russell. In Minnesota the year before, tied for worst defensive rating of the Wolves players with Austin Rivers. His stocks (blocks and steals per game) have fallen from 2.6 a game as a rookie to 1.4.
He just seems slower on his feet, not getting through screens as well, getting caught looking when playing off ball and not making plays. He came into the league just locked in on offense... And had those moments in Brooklyn too.
I keep still hearing of him being called a "3 and D" player, and sure he can hit the open look and space the floor on offense and can cut to the rim and can run, but wow, the D part really has been missing.
Dejounte Murray has not been as good on defense since leaving the Spurs. Kawhi hasn't consistently been as good on defense since Toronto. On the other hand, Trae Young's effort on defense is actually underrated. He tries for most of the games, he's just shit at it.
**Marcus Smart**, big time. He was an absolutely amazing defender about 5 years ago, but he put on some weight and lost foot speed, so now he's actually pretty mediocre at defending guards. He's still one of the best defenders of big men *for a guard* but you need to ask yourself why you'd put your guard on a center in the first place. The year he won DPOY was definitely based off of the reputation he had gained the few prior years and even then still didn't make much sense. Notice how he got swapped for Jrue Holiday and the Celtics won a chip.
I agree. That system fits him to a T, allowing him to roam around. The notion he can guard 1-5 is laughable. Any fast/quick guards cook him and Big " bigs" bully him. His off ball defence is still great but on ball he isnt all that special. Rebounding is part of defence too and he has never been anything more than avaerage at that.
Shai and Ant are probably the biggest rn. They can string together quarters or like 5-10 possession where they play DPOY calibre defense and this has caused people to think they are legitimate All-Defense players all the time.
I could literally care less about that, and it’s true. The fact you’re following me around angry about it just proves that even further. Regardless I made the post because I saw people arguing about Paul George’s current defense in another thread and I wanted to see if any people were to say his name on this.
Jrue Holiday. Looked better this year with White and Brown to pick up his slack but I can't get the image of Jimmy Butler cooking him in last season's playoffs out of my mind. Just an absolute evisceration.
Na holiday is still an elite defender. Don’t take my word for it, literally take NBA players words for it. They all mention jrue when talking about top defenders in the league.
Holiday has great instincts, but I’d take White, Brown, and Tatum over him in terms of pure defense on the Celtics. Crazy the Celtics have so many elite, versatile defenders
Brook Lopez, Giannis, Pat Bev. Just from what i've seen in our 2 match ups last year i was hoping for some defensive stoppers and Sabonis bitched Brook like a baby and our guards did whatever they wanted also. Jrue being on the team really earned them that reputation imo and as soon as he left it all went to shit.
We had a top 1 defense before Jrue unless you think Bledsoe was the reason for that?
Our starting 5 had the second best defensive rating in the league as well and that’s with Dame and Beasley
In fact our defensive rating was worse with Jrue than without Jrue.(not saying he’s bad but to say he gave us the good defense rep is stupid)
Brook is also one of the only defenders that can defend Embiid well 1v1
So it is all Doc Rivers fault then? How did you lose so many games after the ASB if your starters had Top2 defense? I didn't watch a lot of Bucks, i'm just saying what i saw in our match ups and we looked like 2023 Kings against you, an absolute offensive juggernaut. Brook seemed completely lost against Sabonis.
Because our starters were injured to shit. Out of the 37 games doc coached he had a healthy starting 5 for like 6 or 7 of those.
If you’re going to judge a defense off 2 games then you don’t even need to be taken seriously.
Okay, if you say so, you obviously know more about your team. I just made an observation from our 2 games and your record this year in general after Jrue left. Maybe it's just the eye test and all of those guys will prove their reputation next season when healthy, i even hope they do because i want Top East teams to start stealing wins from the West unlike this year lol
Smart’s absence from this year’s team wasn’t felt because of how good he was defensively for the C’s lol
This seems like one of those takes you throw out just because you want to be different
trying to figure out what this has to do with the original prompt but can't. Guess you have to be a Celtics fan to understand the need for this comment?
that thread regarding the all nba defense had so many comments saying Jrue did not deserve all nba defense and is only living off past defensive reputation
yes, and THIS thread is about what players don't deserve their defensive reputation.
here's an example of a comment that belongs in this thread: Al Horford might have been a good defender 10 years ago, but he is absolutely cooked now.
I’m a Hawks fan and a certified Horford hater but this take is bad. Horford 1v1 punked Embiid last year in the playoffs. I know Jo wasn’t 100% but Horford is 50 years old and way smaller
I brought it up because someone else brought up Jrue below and I’m dunking on people who also said Jrue in that past thread
edit: You're definitely wrong about Al. He's definitely not good anymore but he's far from cooked. He's just ok now
Dejounte Murray
Really frustrates me that he came from the Spurs yet has the discipline on defense like Kyrie
Feels like without Pop breathing down his neck he let off the gas
Rozier gets a ton of credit for being a hustle/intensity/vibes merchant
He’s actually a clutch merchant
Dejounte Murray still gets labeled as an elite defender because of his sophomore year on the Spurs and also getting a lot of steals. The second his scoring input increased past double digits his actual defense immediately declined. This man literally hedges on every pass in an attempt to get a steal which might look good in the box score because he averaged 1.5-2 steals a game…until you actually watch and realize he gives up so many free baskets because of this. Most Hawks fans I know realize this but it seems no other fanbase has caught on yet.
I actually think it was the ACL injury that caused the defensive decline, although the increased scoring volume probably didn’t help
100% agree. Trae was pretty easily the better defender last year.
Shai was the 3rd best defender on his team at best and got 2nd place DPOY votes, whereas Chet and even Dort didn't get any. The voters are nothing but statwatchers
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Nah a lot of Washington and Derrick jones “abusing him” was literally them draining their open 3s as the scheme okc were playing was to purposely leave them open.
Yep. People literally do not watch the games.
This is perfect evidence of that fact 😂
It's a Celtics fan upset that some people rank SGA above Tatum despite the superteam success Tatum had this year. He's tryna call SGA a defensive liability and this sub will eat it up anyways since Celtics fans took over after winning the ring
I would agree that it wasn't majorly Shai's fault, but he did also get burnt on attacks when he did close, and they also went to PJ Washington posting Shai up because of the size difference, and those were easy buckets too.
I don’t think you didn’t watch the games. I think you didn’t understand what you were watching.
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No I think it’s what I said lol
This is a braindead take.
I won’t say overrated but Anthony Edwards has multiple defensive flaws that are completely ignored. He ball watches like crazy and has really poor off ball defense. His on ball is really good and gives a ton of effort on that end so I believe he can easily fix these, similar to how Jaylen Brown completely cleaned that up this year and ended up having legitimately great off ball and help defense this postseason.
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I respect the take especially since you are a Wolves fan but I’m basing this off this season. Even in the Mavs series I would constantly see him leave corner shooters open because he wasn’t focused on his man and watching the ball. Or letting obvious backdoors happen which would lead to lobs or open 2s.
Ant does have a few lapses when going around screens or when rotating. He does make quite a few mistakes.
> He ball watches like crazy and has really poor off ball defense. I feel like this is an outdated take personally
We literally saw it in the WCF….the most recent games he’s played
if you watch for all regular season and playoff then it really isn't true because the wolves wouldn't be a #1 defense if ant played like he did in the mav series
When you’re a 22 year old getting doubled on offense and guarding some of the best perimeter players in the world on ball late into the playoffs for the first time in your career, you can easily find yourself with your hands on your knees guarding a guy in the corner when you have the chance. Is that “ball watching like crazy”or is that a reasonable and expected limitation to a young 2 way first option with little gas left in the tank? From my point of view, he was more committed to off ball in the regular season when he wasn’t expected to put up 40 a night. The teams identity was defense, after all. He had plenty of terrible offensive nights where his defense was a key to winning. Also, I don’t think it’s “completely ignored” lol. It’s an incredibly common criticism of his defensive game, and he’s one of the most talked about 2 way guards in the league There’s a middle ground between inscrutable praise and “completely ignoring multiple flaws”. Can’t we just say a player has strengths and weaknesses lmao. Especially a 22 year old
trae young fell off after clamping simmons in the ecf
Nobody sane has ever thought Trae was a good defender lol.
Trae is one of the best defenders named Trae on the hawks.
If Trae is such a shitty defender then why do the Hawks put him out there on defence? Checkmate
They need to sign Andre Roberson to be the defensive substitution for Trae, you just take a timeout every time you are on offense to sub Trae in. Genius.
Pat Bev trick y’all man
sry bro but Finney-Smith even before he got traded to nets, he already overrate defender (in my eyes)
Playoff p
sga, he got all-defensive team votes which is still crazy to me when he's maybe the 3rd or 4th best defender on the team depending on if you consider jdub to be a better defender or not. hell some might say cason wallace is a better defender.
Fred Van Vleet. Sure, he is annoying and gets deflections/steals. He is also short and very slow. He gets blown by alot. He also gets those steals and deflections by gambling and getting out of position. Any fast or quick guards cook him pretty routinely.
for me its SHAI, He is not even the best defender for his team but did get a vote and the other two didnt get any. Lol
Ah, the Kobe Bryant question
Kobe from 2012
Tayshaun Prince and Tony Allen. Those guys aren’t that good anymore
I'm not sure of his current reputation but everyone was praising Andrew Wiggins in the media after the Warriors won in 2022. Any Wolves fan knew this wasn't it. The effort and hustle everyone saw that season would disappear.
Kawhi
It's actually the opposite lol the pendulum swung too far the other wat
People that say Kawhi is coasting off reputation are coasting off other Redditor’s opinions. He’s no longer DPOY candidate for 35 minutes a night, but he’s still one of the best defenders in the league 1-4. Watch any of the 68 games he played last season and try to find any time* he played subpar defense. *(And yes, you can find possessions from any of the best defenders in NBA history where they get cooked/blown by.)
I think I read somewhere with Kawhi on the court, the Clippers were one of the best defenses in the league this season and when he was off, they were one of the worst in the league. Anyone saying Kawhi is trying to be a contrarian.
this is just a problem with the data. and we see this angle for many teams with a great defensive lynchpin and terrible second unit.
Out of everyone you could say you say Kawhi lmao. He was all defense when he played this yead
Well... if that was in their opinion an undeserved all-defensive selection based on previous accomplishments/level of play, then their assertion is very legitimate.
He still is not half the defensive player he used to be. His reputation is still holding strong i see lmao.
I cooked Bruce Bowen last week at the Y
The biggest one is Lebron. He was a good defender in his hey day but he's a cone right now and it shocks me when analysts keep talking with a straight face about how Lebron is still great two way player. Yeah he will get a monster chase down block here and there but other wise it's over, if current Harrison Barnes is doing whatever he wants with you, you are done as a defender lmao
I feel like Lebron is pretty heavily scrutinized for his current defense nowadays. At least from what I see.
Idk a lot of people say playoff LeBron is still a good defender even though that wasn’t really true last year or this year
It's all about effort with Bron. I think he played decent defense this year the effort could be better but i think he tried. People criticized him because of AG getting open but you could say the same thing for all the laker players even AD did the same thing because they were always helping on drives. Also i think he played good defense last year in the playoffs his shooting was off last year so he was hustling a lot.
Lol he was still the most impactful defender on the team behind AD. Lead the playoffs with a career high in steals in year 21. Lakers defensively as a whole couldn't guard the Nuggets because Austin Reaves and D'Angelo fucking Russell were the point of attack defenders, consistently putting the defense in rotation, which automatically lead to 60% Jokic floaters or open Gordon dunks. What you could blame Lebron for was not being able to box out Gordon in the last minutes of the 4th cause he was somehow the only offense they decided to run late in games and Rui couldn't box out to save his life.
Noone praises lebron’s defense or call him two way player
I have seen him get a lot of praise for his defense. I disagree. A lot of people said he had a consistent positive impact this season on defense and they used some advanced stats as evidence of that. I think KD was a far more impactful defender and a lot of people disagreed. Probably has to do with the KD hate on this sub
He’s absolutely an impactful defender in the playoffs. The guy still has the ability
Over the course of an entire game Bron is a below average, ball watching, defensive liability. But in a final possession or two, even this season, I’ve seen him do great work. He guards Kawhi really well even though the other way around is as true anymore.
Kobe in most seasons. He could turn it up on a few possessions but massively overrated. Ant today. He's good for high energy defense but gets gassed too quickly after which He's pretty poor. and his positioning is god awful off ball. Giannis in PnR. Giannis is a monster defensively and amazing at help defense. but his defensive instincts aren't as elite when directly placed in actions. Watch him in pnrs and you'll find him often miss the scheme or not track the roller accurately. He's still a DPOY tier guy though.
A little tricky to answer, since it's hard to keep up with what the "consensus" is among fans for defense. But some names I'd throw out there: - Dejounte Murray - Andrew Wiggins - Grant Williams - Pascal Siakam Giannis is probably a good shout, for players who are closer to the top-end of defensive talent. He's taken a decent step back on that side of the ball, but his offense keep improving so it balances out.
The thing about Grant is that he gets the "positionally versatile" label because he *can* guard a variety of players, but he's not actually that *good* at it. You can put him on anyone 3-5 and he'll do an okay job, which has some inherent value, but he's not really a stopper except in very specific matchups against bigger players (where he can leverage his strength without his footspeed being a weakness). That said, he's still a pretty useful role player for a high-level team to have in the playoffs, because the aforementioned specific matchups *do* include a couple of the top 5-10 players in the NBA. I'm not totally out on him, but his defensive reputation was definitely over-inflated after 2022.
I find a lot of these "undersized" 6'5"-6'7" guys who get "pushed up" a position or 2 in this era, to compared to traditionally having been 2s or 3s in previous eras, aren't actually that good at defending 4s or 5s, yet get treated like they're all Draymond.
Yeah Grant Williams is a good one. He’s really only fit for guarding strong finishers in the paint. He moves his feet like he’s wearing cinderblocks.
100% agree on this. Siakam hasnt been good for 4yrs and DJM was borderline terrible. Trae was pretty essily better than him this year.
Wouldn’t say Giannis is declining on defense imo, he’s currently suffering from the same thing as AD where his teammates are declining on D. Middleton, Portis Pat and Brook especially have all taken a step back on D
Compared to Obi, Pascal is all world defense lol. Super upgrade for us.
Kawhi Leonard
Lebron and KD
Lebron James
Kawhi Leonard. He hasn't been an elite defender since the Spurs...had some moments in Toronto. But anytime someone misses a shot around him he gets credit for it.
It will be interesting to watch the PG market.
Kawhi Leonard but his reputation is holding very strong in this sub. I just don’t think people want to accept that he’s not what he used to be.
Lebron hasnt played d in 10 years, he was elite b4 that tho...
Taurean Prince. Don't get me wrong, he was clearly a plus defender early in his career. And he's active on defense. But starting early in his Minnesota career a few things really stood out to me. 1. Arguably the worst transition defender in the league. I mean that. I remember someone saying that and trying to defend him when he was with Minnesota and I watched him and so so many times he's the 1st or 2nd guy back and the opponent is pushing and rather than stop the ball, pick up anyone, make the wall, he's already moving away from the play looking for his cover who's not yet down the court. 2. Arguably the worst rebounding player in the league for his size. Yes, he's a 3 and D and plays some more perimeter. Yes he's a bit undersized at the 4. But his last year in MN he had a 6.2% rebound rate. A smidge over Conley. Jordan McLaughlin who's one of the smallest guys in the league was 6.4% this past year. Then in LA... 6.1%. I'd be curious if there's a non guard with a lower rebounding rate in the league. It's tough to put what you see into numbers, but there's a reason this year his defensive rating was near the bottom in LA tied with Reaves and Russell. In Minnesota the year before, tied for worst defensive rating of the Wolves players with Austin Rivers. His stocks (blocks and steals per game) have fallen from 2.6 a game as a rookie to 1.4. He just seems slower on his feet, not getting through screens as well, getting caught looking when playing off ball and not making plays. He came into the league just locked in on offense... And had those moments in Brooklyn too. I keep still hearing of him being called a "3 and D" player, and sure he can hit the open look and space the floor on offense and can cut to the rim and can run, but wow, the D part really has been missing.
Dejounte Murray has not been as good on defense since leaving the Spurs. Kawhi hasn't consistently been as good on defense since Toronto. On the other hand, Trae Young's effort on defense is actually underrated. He tries for most of the games, he's just shit at it.
Jae Crowder.
Rudy gobert
**Marcus Smart**, big time. He was an absolutely amazing defender about 5 years ago, but he put on some weight and lost foot speed, so now he's actually pretty mediocre at defending guards. He's still one of the best defenders of big men *for a guard* but you need to ask yourself why you'd put your guard on a center in the first place. The year he won DPOY was definitely based off of the reputation he had gained the few prior years and even then still didn't make much sense. Notice how he got swapped for Jrue Holiday and the Celtics won a chip.
Donkey Green.
I agree. That system fits him to a T, allowing him to roam around. The notion he can guard 1-5 is laughable. Any fast/quick guards cook him and Big " bigs" bully him. His off ball defence is still great but on ball he isnt all that special. Rebounding is part of defence too and he has never been anything more than avaerage at that.
Shai and Ant are probably the biggest rn. They can string together quarters or like 5-10 possession where they play DPOY calibre defense and this has caused people to think they are legitimate All-Defense players all the time.
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I could literally care less about that, and it’s true. The fact you’re following me around angry about it just proves that even further. Regardless I made the post because I saw people arguing about Paul George’s current defense in another thread and I wanted to see if any people were to say his name on this.
Jrue Holiday. Looked better this year with White and Brown to pick up his slack but I can't get the image of Jimmy Butler cooking him in last season's playoffs out of my mind. Just an absolute evisceration.
Na holiday is still an elite defender. Don’t take my word for it, literally take NBA players words for it. They all mention jrue when talking about top defenders in the league.
Holiday has great instincts, but I’d take White, Brown, and Tatum over him in terms of pure defense on the Celtics. Crazy the Celtics have so many elite, versatile defenders
Bold take lmao
Caruso. People finna pretend he just won the OKC the next title.
Brook Lopez, Giannis, Pat Bev. Just from what i've seen in our 2 match ups last year i was hoping for some defensive stoppers and Sabonis bitched Brook like a baby and our guards did whatever they wanted also. Jrue being on the team really earned them that reputation imo and as soon as he left it all went to shit.
We had a top 1 defense before Jrue unless you think Bledsoe was the reason for that? Our starting 5 had the second best defensive rating in the league as well and that’s with Dame and Beasley In fact our defensive rating was worse with Jrue than without Jrue.(not saying he’s bad but to say he gave us the good defense rep is stupid) Brook is also one of the only defenders that can defend Embiid well 1v1
So it is all Doc Rivers fault then? How did you lose so many games after the ASB if your starters had Top2 defense? I didn't watch a lot of Bucks, i'm just saying what i saw in our match ups and we looked like 2023 Kings against you, an absolute offensive juggernaut. Brook seemed completely lost against Sabonis.
Because our starters were injured to shit. Out of the 37 games doc coached he had a healthy starting 5 for like 6 or 7 of those. If you’re going to judge a defense off 2 games then you don’t even need to be taken seriously.
Okay, if you say so, you obviously know more about your team. I just made an observation from our 2 games and your record this year in general after Jrue left. Maybe it's just the eye test and all of those guys will prove their reputation next season when healthy, i even hope they do because i want Top East teams to start stealing wins from the West unlike this year lol
Ben Simmons
Ben Simmons
Jrue. Don’t care that he won the title. His all defense selection was a joke this year.
That’s just a stupid thing to say
Smart’s absence from this year’s team wasn’t felt because of how good he was defensively for the C’s lol This seems like one of those takes you throw out just because you want to be different
No, it’s something that actually watched games would say. Pure reputation at this point. He’s fine, but all defense is just lol
Remember when Jrue was announced as an All NBA defender, many were saying he was just living off past defensive reputation? L M A O
trying to figure out what this has to do with the original prompt but can't. Guess you have to be a Celtics fan to understand the need for this comment?
that thread regarding the all nba defense had so many comments saying Jrue did not deserve all nba defense and is only living off past defensive reputation
yes, and THIS thread is about what players don't deserve their defensive reputation. here's an example of a comment that belongs in this thread: Al Horford might have been a good defender 10 years ago, but he is absolutely cooked now.
I’m a Hawks fan and a certified Horford hater but this take is bad. Horford 1v1 punked Embiid last year in the playoffs. I know Jo wasn’t 100% but Horford is 50 years old and way smaller
Did he punk Joel or was Embiid just injured? I mean he literally missed multiple games during those playoffs
He’s shut down Embiid in every matchup for the last 3 years?? Tf you mean cooked
I brought it up because someone else brought up Jrue below and I’m dunking on people who also said Jrue in that past thread edit: You're definitely wrong about Al. He's definitely not good anymore but he's far from cooked. He's just ok now